Learn Like a Narnian

For as long as it takes for you to listen these words, I have the pleasure of aiming to persuade you to love, enjoy, and appreciate C.S. Lewis and his Chronicles of Narnia, if not AT LEAST to love, enjoy, and appreciate fictional stories. And know this is a stated goal for multiple generations of readers- adults and children alike. That’s a tall order, I know. If you have, somehow, gone this long without reading any of the Chronicles–or worse, you’ve only read one or two… here is a little of what you’re missing. Joe Rigney, esteemed Narnian, says this:

“Lewis believed that education or discipleship is about training us to respond appropriately to the way the world is. There is a given-ness to reality and our thoughts and affections ought to conform to it. And so the task of discipleship is to train us in the responses to this objective reality which are appropriate. In other words, discipleship is meant to train us to feel pleasure or liking or disgust or hatred at those things which are really pleasant and likable and disgusting and hateful.

He also believed that fiction and fantasy and fairy tales had a particular value in accomplishing this end. Because what happens is by taking us out of this world into an imaginary world, we’re able to see this one better. In other words, they take us out of our own world into another world so that we can get some perspective so that we can see our own lives, our own circumstances afresh, more clearly. So the Narnian stories, I would argue, display through imaginative fiction the way the world really is.

Here is honesty and truth-telling in all of its simplicity. Here is courage and bravery in all of its shining glory. Here is treachery in its ugliness. Here is the face of evil. Here is the face of good. And if you live in these stories and you soak in these stories and you breathe the air of these stories, you’ll find that your heart and your mind, your thoughts, your affections will be shaped and transformed so that you come to fully reflect all that is true and good and beautiful in God’s world. In other words, you come to reflect Jesus by spending time in Narnia. That’s exactly what Aslan tells Lucy on one occasion: ‘This was the very reason you were brought into Narnia that by knowing me here for a little, you might know me better there.’ ”

Imaginative fiction lets you imagine what evil is actually like; It is like a witch who makes a land to be always winter and never Christmas… It is like believing oneself so wise as to be above the law… And good is like rehearsing and remembering the signs Aslan gives you for your adventure, or everything that King Lune of Archenland is, let the reader understand. You may still be hearing me say "Children need a baptized imagination." But I say to you: all Christians need a baptized imagination.

Imaginative fiction lets you know what this world is actually like. Just imagine a world where serpents and donkeys talk, where men ride chariots of fire into the sky, where sticks can turn into serpents, or where the sea can be split in two for people to walk through it on dry ground. What a fairy tale! Imagine that the God and Creator of a world enters it to die in order to turn beastly boys and girls into just, wise, and glorious kings and queens. Think of it!

Read the wrong books and you end up not knowing what to do when you come across a dragon, or an enticing cave that may have a dragon in it. Read the right books and you get to learn of brave knights and heroic courage. We need good fiction so that we can learn like Narnians, and read the story we are in rightly. Jesus says His kingdom is like a tiny mustard seed that becomes a great tree that all other creatures will find rest under and within its branches. And His word also says that Jesus must reign until all His enemies are made a footstool for His feet. It is only the last enemy, death, that He will personally return to vanquish at the end of history.

This means enemies like secular humanism, evolution, feminism, all false religions, sexual immorality, tyranny, any ungodliness you can think of–and the rest of it you can’t possibly think of–are in the middle of being made a footstool for the feet of King Jesus. Jesus did not come to condemn the world, but to save it, and He intends graciously for His truth to triumph through us. This is our story. Learn of the many chapters of this story as well as you can for as long as you can.

Anyone hearing these words has access to grace enough to face enemies with a thick smile, endure suffering with deep seated joy, and face challenges with relaxed confidence because you know and have the love of God in Christ Jesus. If He is for us, who can be against us? Imagine that.

--Nathan Eleweanya is Honorary Chaplain and sometimes teacher at Schola.