The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Rereading this book was a joy. 


The wonderful thing about children's books is that there are so many things that you don't understand and appreciate till you're older. 


I love the characters and personalities that he built into each of the characters in the story. He did an amazing job by explaining the fallibility of all of God's creation. 


Alongside that, he had a good understanding of the beauty of the Atonement, along with the consequences of disobeying god. Putting it in fiction, I feel, gives all a better understanding of the concept. 


One passage reads:

You at least know the Magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to kill.... And so that human creature is mine. His life is forfeit to me. His blood is my property... unless I have blood as the Law says all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water."

 

We can subject ourselves to God or the Devil. It is our choice, but a choice that makes all the difference. At the end of the day though, there is one who is the Father and master of the other. As Aslan put it.... 

"It means," said Aslan, "that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backward."

The beauty of the Atonement lies in the fact that it has the ability for us to overcome all. And, we can, if we so choose to.

Christianity and Literature

Reading this essay gave me a better understanding of what lewis was thinking when he started to write his fictional books centered around Christian theology. while secular and Christian literature should have the same literary styles, it is in the message it conveys, much as the Savior did, that makes the difference. Lewis makes a good point when he says that that the Savior's words seemed beautifully poetic to us, and part of that based on the fact that He is a perfect being. To phrases in this piece stop out to me.

First was Lewis' interpretation of Paul's epistle, when he said that "God is to Christ as Christ is yo man an man is to woman, and the relation between each term and the next is that of the head." I think that that is one thing that Lewis could not fully grasp because He did not understand the Trinity. It could not reconcile with his understanding that we could become Gods. That is the beauty of the Restoration.

The second quote, I absolutely love. In quoting Homer's Phemius, he said:   

I am self-taught; a god has inspired me with all manner of songs.' It sounds like a direct contradiction. How can he be self-taught if the god has taught him all he knows? Doubtless because the God's instruction is given internally, not through the senses, and is therefore regarded as part of the self..."

The gifts that God has given us are all within us to use, to learn ang grow and develop. I hope that I always remember that it is God that inspires me in each thing that I do everyday. He is, in every way, the way, the truth, and the life. 

Surprised by Joy

There are many things in life that affect an change us, for better or for worse.

My Mom's parents died when she was in college, at a fairly young age. My mother got angry at God, and was inactive of almost two decades. There are many experiences in life that teach us, whether for better or for worse. The difference lies in the way we respond to it.

Lewis became an atheist for the better part of His life, but when he gained a testimony of Christ, returned with a vengeance. It was interesting to read about the life of Lewis, to gain a better understanding of the themes and characters of his books as a result of looking at his life as he grew up. I love his admittance of his reluctance to take back Christianity.

"You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England."

The beauty of the gospel is that it is always there. The challenge is turning to it and admitting it is the only true way to joy. My mother eventually realized that and return to activity in the Church. I hope that I have a resevoir of testimony and faith deep enough never to have to go through that!

Miracles

“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.”

Though I do not fully understand all that Lewis was trying to teach when he was writing miracles, I do have an understanding of the faith that He had in God. The problem with not having a full knowledge of the restore gospel means that you can only piece to gather certain things, with hunks of the puzzle still missing. 


But in the quote mentioned above, Lewis it it on the head. Miracles are right in front of us everyday, in the lives that we live, in the things that we see everyday. The problem is not in the miracle, the problem is in us. 


Lewis also said: 

The grounds for belief and disbelief are the same today as they were two thousand — or ten thousand — years ago. If St. Joseph had lacked faith to trust God or humility to perceive the holiness of his spouse, he could have disbelieved the miraculous origin of her Son as easily as any modern man; and any modern man who believes in God can accept the miracle as easily as St. Joseph did.

We can have faith in the miraculous birth of Christ. Why can't we then believe in miracles as they happen each day. Looking out for those miracles in our lives will bring us great blessings, one, because we have the faith to look, and two, because we will be so much the better for it when the Lord does bless us with them.

The Weight of Glory

A great part of the beauty of life lies in nature, in what we see around us. Lewis discusses that, nature being a part of a understanding of the glory of God. But, he says, it is only when we turn our lives to God that we begin to see an even greater beauty.

When human souls have become as perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation is in its lifeless obedience, then they will put on its glory, or rather that greater glory of which Nature is only the first sketch. 

He goes on then, to what is perhaps one of my favorite passages in all Christian literature. The depth and understanding that he has of both humans and the doctrines of the Gospel. 

He writes:

The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat—the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.

I must love my neighbor. I must carry their glory. I must be humble. I must come to the understanding that all those around me have the potential to be like God, because every single person around me made the choice to come to this Earth. They are His sons and daughters. I can't judge, I must not judge because they themselves have the seeds of Godhood in them. They each have their on challenges to face. If I want to return to God, to Heaven, then I have to help my neighbor, because it is only in service, in giving, that I can understand God better, and know what I must do to receive of His joy and blessings. I can have fun, I can, but, at the end of the day, I must remember what is at stake. 

Christian Behavior

This was probably my favorite section in Mere Christianity because it discussed the attributes and characteristics that we need to take upon ourselves to be considered more worthy disciples of Jesus Christ.

I don't know how much I could actually right about this section, in the sense that I think that almost everything is quotable.

Christian behavior, Lewis asserts, is based on the concept of morality. The difficulty lies in what your definition of morality is, and how that relates to us as individuals. If we assume it to be true, and I will, then what Lewis explains to us as essential moral values is extremely valuable to us.

Lewis goes from the cardinal virtues, to social and sexual morality. If I had to pick what I felt were the most important chapters are, I would have to focus on forgiveness and pride, along with the three godly virtues of faith, hope and charity.

.....

What Christians Believe

He brings up a great point right at the beginning of this section.

"If you are a Christian, you are free to think that all those religions, even the queerest ones, contain at least some hint of the truth."

That is perhaps one of the foundational beliefs of Christianity, that because God loves all His children, He has given them light and knowledge, truth, that will lead them in the right direction. The problem lies in the fact that while some believe in God, others don't. That creates a problem because a false premise creates a false result, whether you're looking at Christianity as right or wrong. What is truth if you don't know the difference between that and untruth?

There has to be a separation between right and wrong, good and evil. Without that distinction, then there are no truths. There is no basis, it is just all objective, and then we have a problem. If we do believe that though, then where is the separation. Lewis contends that the only power there is in the world and universe is good, but evil borrows that power and uses it for its unruly gains. Lewis phrases aptly when he says, "And do you now begin to see why Christianity has always said that the devil is a fallen angel?"Lucifer was a son of the morning, but fell from grace because he twisted the good.

Free will, as Lewis reminds us, is the greatest gift that God has given to us. His love is so great that even His greatest desire to have us return to live with Him is overruled by His sense of love that requires us, gives us the choice to choose. The problem with that, says Lewis, is,

"The moment you have a self at all, there is a possibility of putting yourself first - wanting to be the center - wanting to be God, in fact. That was the sin of Satan: and that was the sin he taught the human race."

Humans try to find happiness in different facets of life. But, when they realize that true joy can only come from God, that's when that free will is directed in the right direction. Free will gives us the choice not to do whatever we want, but gives us the opportunity to choose the right. God gave us His Son, Jesus Christ, so that we could look towards Him to make the right decision. Many feel that Christ was just a moral teacher, but He was not. This is one of my favorite quotes from the book, where Lewis explains:

"He was the person... chiefly offended in all offenses. This makes sense only if He was really the God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin." 

We have to try to imitate Him in some measure, to kill off every unworthy part of ourselves that holds us back from God. As we repent, and try and do that each and every day, then we can be better. The "little Christ" in all of us helps us to do that each and every day.