I saw The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe last nite, and thought it was very well made and pretty faithful to the book, though I must admit I had read it years and years ago. The 9:45pm showing last nite wasn’t packed, but …

The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe is not only a fine film for the entire family (especially Christian families) but is a great epic that pretty much anyone (including Atheists) can and will enjoy.
I took my 5 year old son as my side-ki…

They blast the film as a poor allegory and, odd for unbelievers, as blasphemous. Here’s my response.

Ah, but after writing Pilgrim’s Regress, Lewis seems to have acquired his friend Tolkien’s disdain for allegory. Narnia isn’t an allegory of our world. It’s a different world, created separately and for a different purpose. It’s populated with the sorts of creatures we only dream about and with a “deep magic” similar and yet different from our own. Aslan isn’t an allegory of Jesus. He is Jesus as he would be in that other world. Lewis was simply doing with his imaginary Narnia what he did with two real worlds–Mars and Venus–in his science fiction. He peopled all three with creatures who are different from us but nevertheless live under the same God, making similar choices for both good and ill.

That’s also what Tolkien did with Middle-earth and is tied to what both believed about myth, true myth, and subcreation. (I touch on this on p. 114f of my Untangling Tolkien.) Only God can truly create, but as God’s creatures we can sub-create imaginary worlds in which what is myth in our world becomes true and real, much as the Greek myths about a God who visited earth to die came true in Jesus. It was that very point, made by Tolkien in the wee hours of an Oxford night, that led Lewis to Christian faith.

And why do skeptics think they can tell believers what they can or cannot believe, do, or imagine? The God who populated our world with such odd creatures could certainly populate another world with a different set. If he created a man and a horse, then why not a man-horse combination? If he gave us speech, then why couldn’t he give speech to the beavers? The God who created our world certainly loved richness and diversity. Why assume that same God would create another world that simply mirrored our own? That’s roughly what Lewis was saying when he has a Narnian tell the children that Aslan was a good lion, but he was not a tame one. He has his own ways and does act at our bidding.

Nor is Narnia an example of that favorite buzz-word among would-be intellectuals, a “Manichaean dualism.” Conflict is not dualism. Like Jesus in our own gospels, Aslan is able to fulfil both the law that sin means death and defeat the White Witch. Good in the end does triumph, bringing up (again wrongly) that other buzzword of the critics, “simplistic.” And there’s yet a third– “mindless escape”–already used above, although more typically directed at Tolkien’s masterpiece. If it is mindless, then why is it such a rich source of discussion and debate?

And why label as “inherently blasphemous” the idea of “animals that talk?” In the Old Testament Balaam gets rebuked by his ass. In the New Testament Jesus once referred to his message being so powerful that if human voices were silenced, the very stones would cry out. (G. K. Chesterton suggested that the very stones did cry out in praise with the great Gothic cathedrals.)

One thing is certainly true. In Western societies, for the first time in perhaps 1600 years, we leave in an age when many in the chattering classes know virtually nothing about Biblical Christianity. They’re as ignorant of it as stone age savages were of quantum mechanics. They demonstrate that almost every time they speak.

And that is sad. It’s also why so much that passes for art today is cynical, depressing or hedonistic. As far wiser people than me have observed, the corollary to “God is dead,” is that man is also dead and his life has no meaning.

I once stood in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral in New York City and thought of how small that once-towering building looked surrounded by skyscrapers. Then I realized that there was an important difference. The skyscrapers inspired no awe. Their only message, if they could even be said to have one, was that they were large in the same sense that I was small and that neither of us was of any significance. We were mere things with no intrinsic value. That was most certainly not the message of the cathedral. In it, I was small but significant. In it I could stand in the presence of Someone who inspired awe.

–Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle

- More unbiased coverage from NPR. Nina Totenberg calls recent tax cuts immoral. – Blogs for Bush gives a stark example of how socialized medicine really works, (the government gets to decide if your being in bad health is your…

My son??? He became more interested in myths, science fiction, etc…than Scripture. So sad. A choice and a bent he had. I don’t blame the stories any more than I view Harry Potter as anti-Christian.

Try one of these specials with your weekend brunch:
From the Best Conservative Blog category:

*Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler says it’s time to ACT.
*Right Wing Nut House says Ted Rall is a traitor
*La Shawn Barber is watching Narnia reaction

It doesn’t really matter if “Narnia” breaks any records. All that matters is that it beats “Syriana”.

Therefore, it is your duty as an American–nee, as a HUMAN BEING–to go out this weekend and see “The Chronicles of Narnia”.

It appears that some Disney people have been trying to apologize for making a Christian film. Well, not literally, but for some odd reason they won’t admit that C.S. Lewis was a Christian or that Aslan, the lion, is an symbolic representation for Jesu…

Ditto on the “God Bloggers”

But where are the “Anti God Bloggrs” and pundits?

Why haven’t they jumped on this golden opportunity to condemn the Chronicles because they are “Too Christian?” Where is Abe Foxman?