THE WORLD THROUGH THE WARDROBE
C.S. Lewis was a Christian with a deep love of stories, but he and his friend J.R. Tolkien (
Narnia is a cosmos, a
world with a discernible beginning, middle, and end, whose ordered existence
Aslan sings into being. Under Aslan’s rule, there are both a natural
order and a supernatural or spiritual order. There are the day-to-day
deeds, thoughts, and outcomes wrought by each individual, and there is meaning
beyond these deeds, thoughts and outcomes, that points to Something Else and to
Someone Else. In this, we discover that our lives are not our own but
that they rest in Another.
(Bruce
Edwards “Not a tame lion”.)
In Narnia there is the
world as it is – winter but never Christmas and then there’s the world it was
and the world it will become again when it’s out of the rule of the
witch. The parallel to earth is obvious and Aslan/Christ is the only one
who can restore the original way of life.
Narnia and this/our world
share the themes of creation, evil treachery, catastrophe, spoiled lives,
sacrifice, grace, redemption, love, judgement, resurrection and restoration –
all because Aslan who created Narnia is Christ who created all things.
(Colossians 1:16) sung
into being!
The children are us. Aslan
represents Jesus. The witch is Satan. The baddies are the demons.
In the story, Lucy finds Narnia
first, then tells Edmund, then there are 4 of them who discover the situation
and they choose to be involved and fight against the role of the witch to
restore Narnia. Aslan then says he will help too, and they carry on until he
returns.
Throughout the story there
are several Biblical parallels:
A) gifts
from Santa - Magi giving gifts to Jesus for His future
use
B) changes – Edmund - the power of forgiveness
changes Edmund and changes
us
C) tent of meeting - the place where God lived and
met His people and Aslan met the children
D)
E) Women at the tomb - the girls were first at the
broken altar and Mary was first at the tomb
F) Curtain torn in two - altar cracked in half, the
curtain in the
G) It is finished - Aslan and Jesus on the Cross
H) Jesus’
breath restores life/unfreezes - end of John’s Gospel,
Jesus breathes on the disciples and they receive the new life in the Holy
Spirit, Aslan’s breath unfreezes the stone people back to life
I) Kings and queens = monsters - Biblical
references to principalities and powers, rulers and authorities
J) Aslan going to return –“when you’re not looking but it’s best to keep
your eyes open”. - Jesus said that only the Father knew
when Jesus would return to this earth
K) What’s done is done. - God’s forgiveness seals
the past - “now there is no condemnation for those in Christ
Jesus” Romans 8:1
Aslan is not a tame lion,
and Christ is no weak, watered-down Saviour. He’s the Son of God, present
as the Word in creation, born to live, teach, inspire and die to be raised to
life as Conqueror of death and Hell. Jesus is ‘Christus victor’ – the one
who defeated Satan and his evil. This untamed lion in Aslan willingly
surrendered his royal title, his freedom, his power and his life to save Narnia
from the rule and reign of the White witch. Aslan is Christ.
At the end of the book
‘Voyage of the Dawn Treader’, Lucy and Edmund meet a lamb who invites them to
share breakfast with him. Hoping to see the lion, Lucy asks whether they
are on the right path for Aslan’s country. “Not for you”, replied the
lamb. “for you, the door to Aslan’s country is from your own world”. Edmund is
worried he has misunderstood and so before his eyes, the gentle lamb changes
into the great Aslan who says, “There is a way into my country from all the
worlds”. Wherever we are, there is a way to Jesus.
Lucy and Edmund have to
leave and are deeply sad at the thought of not meeting Aslan again. “But
you shall meet me, dear one”, he reassured. “But there I have another
name. Here, right where we are, Jesus is known as Saviour, Lord, Redeemer
and King.
In June of 1953, and
eleven-year old girl named Hila had just such an awakening while reading the
Narnia stories – an experience she later described as “an indefinable stirring
and longing”. She wrote to C.S. Lewis, inquiring about this “other name” Aslan
suggested. She, like Edmund, wanted to know the way into Aslan’s country from
our world. Lewis replied:
“As to Aslan’s other name, well I want you to guess. Has there never
been anyone in this world who
1) Arrived at the same time as Father Christmas.
2) Said he was the son of the great Emperor.
3) Gave himself us for someone else’s fault to be jeered at and killed by
wicked people.
4) Came to life again……Don’t you really know His name in this world?
You must learn to know me
by that name. This was the very reason you were brought to Narnia, that
knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there”.
In May of 1955, the mother
of a nine-year old boy named Laurence wrote to C.S Lewis, explaining that
Laurence was concerned that he loved Aslan more than Jesus. To her
delighted surprise, she received a reply ten days later that included the
following:
“Laurence can’t really love
Aslan more than Jesus, even if he feels that’s what he is doing. For the
things he loves Aslan for doing or saying are simply the things Jesus really
did and said. So that when Laurence thinks he is loving Aslan he is
really loving Jesus: and perhaps loving Him more than he ever did before.”
The very reason we are
here on this earth is so that we can know Jesus a little so that we can better
know Him in His Kingdom for ever.
1. Aslan
is not a tame lion and Jesus is not a tamed God.
The Beaver says, “Aslan is
a lion – the Lion, the great Lion”. Mrs Beaver adds, “If there’s anyone
who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver
than most or else just silly”.
“Then he isn’t safe”?
said Lucy.
“Safe”, said Mr Beaver, “who
said anything about safe? Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I
tell you”.
Good people are not always
gentle, kind, quiet. Jesus said to a young man looking for an easy way to
heaven (Mk 10:17-18) “why do you call me good? No one is good
except God alone. Good = right – righteous – of the Kingdom. Not always gentle.
Quiet, unassuming, gentle, kind people are not always good. Going along with
the crowd for a quiet life, not rocking the boat by standing up for the truth,
saying nothing when you know something is wrong so that no trouble is caused is
not necessarily ‘good’.
Like light, goodness is a
powerful concept and a powerful way to live. Goodness can be
dangerous. Not letting wrong, evil win can take you to dangerous places,
in life and in relationships, at work, with friends. Goodness threatens
Satan and his kingdom of darkness, and an enemy of Satan, an ally of the King
of Kings, the Lion of Judah is a walking target. Being good is not
safe. Aslan is no tame lion and, Jesus is no tame God. His people
are not tamed by this world, but are the dangerously powerful force that brings
heaven to earth.
2. Aslan’s courage has a
reason, so did Christ’s.
In “The Voyage of the Dawn
Treader” Eustace says to Edmund “Do you know him – who is Aslan”?
“Well, he knows me” said
Edmund. “He is the great Lion, the son of the Emperor over sea, who saved
me and saved Narnia”.
Aslan allows himself to be
captured, humiliated and killed. He put himself into dangers’ way for a
reason. You only find out if you are courageous when life gets difficult
– when a decision has to be made, and the right thing to do is the most
difficult. Courage to be who Christ calls us to be is a constant
challenge, as obeying the Father was for Christ - in Gethsemane “Father
let this cup pass from me” – Then His courage said “But not my will but your’s
be done”.
The Pevensie
children go to stay with The Professor to keep them safe in the country from
the war – they think they are there for safety, but really they have been sent
there to find a whole new world and to become Aslan’s allies, co-workers in the
battle to free Narnia from the effects of evil and to restore the rule and
reign of Narnia’s Creator.
That’s our story too. We
come to church, faith, Christ to be safe, and when we are there, we find we are
called into living in a whole new kingdom where we recognise the King, become
His allies and fight with Him to free people from the effects of the
sin-wrecked world, to restore heaven to earth.
Christ asks us to be
courageous in our faith, for a reason – we stand for what’s right in a wrong
world, for good in a bad world, for light in a dark world, for truth in a world
of lies. Allying ourselves to the truth and then standing by our decision
and telling our story takes courage.
In the Lion Witch and the
Wardrobe, Lucy tells the Professor she has been to Narnia. Peter and Susan have
not at this point, and so they are worried she has lost her mind. Edmund
has also been to Narnia but hides that truth and suggests that Lucy is
not to be trusted.
The following is taken
from- “Finding
God in the Land of Narnia” Kurt Bruner & Jim Ware
The Professor, dismayed
that the schools don’t teach logic anymore, exclaims, “There are only three
possibilities. Either your sister is telling lies, or she is mad, or she
is telling the truth. You know she doesn’t tell lies and it is obvious
that she is not mad. For the moment then, and unless any further evidence turns
up, we must assume that she is telling the truth”.
There is an exact parallel
to Christ – said by C.S.Lewis
in his book Mere Christianity:
I am trying here to
prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him:
“I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His
claim to be God”. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who
was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great
moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who
says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You
must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or
else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can
spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him
Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His
being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not
intend to”.
Christ asks us to be
courageous for a reason – people’s lives and eternities are at stake.
The Lion Witch and the
Wardrobe is the story of an unexpected journey into a whole other world, where
things have gone wrong. People had allowed that which was good to go bad
and stay dead. “All it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do
nothing”. Aslan offers an alternative to the winter but no Christmas and
is willing to fight and die to buy freedom for people who were under an evil
rule. He sacrifices himself, and in doing so, breaks the seat of the evil
power. A thaw starts and spring arrives. The power of the witch is
broken, Narnia and it’s people are returned to the good King’s rule. On
the way, the children learned about good and evil, about making choices and
their consequences and about the power of love.
The parallel to our life
is obvious. Jesus, Lion of Judah, enters a broken, destroyed world and
offers Himself to buy back people from the rule of Satan. His death and
resurrection set people free. Along the journey with Jesus we get to be
part of the plan of redemption for others, to work with Jesus under His
direction and leadership to rescue lives, one by one, to bring The Kingdom of
God.
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