Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

by Joe Rigney

Screwtape’s words to his devilish nephew: Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

[Shasta] had not yet learned that if you do one good deed your reward usually is to be set to do another and harder and better one. (Ch. 10)

But God never leaves us on the mountaintop. Once we have been nourished and learned to obey in the sunlight of God’s felt presence, surrounded by his hedge of protection, he then sends us outside the camp, into the wilderness, where the heat of temptation saps our strength and spiritual refreshment is hard to come by.

We must learn the biblical lesson that God often sends lions to chase us so that we, like Bree, can discover that we weren’t going quite as fast as we could.

Our lives are to be a long obedience in the same direction, and our direction is far more important than our pace.

question: It is not whether we will have a destination, but which destination we will have. Not whether we will choose to go, but where.

in The Abolition of Man. There Lewis argues that men who have rejected the Tao (that is, traditional morality, the wisdom of the ages, the God-given order of the universe) have substituted for it the desire to conquer Nature through science and technology.

One of the more obvious reasons that Tirian and the faithful Narnians persevere under trials is the fact that they face them together.

A second way to prepare to stand firm in the evil day is to know your enemies, both those without and those within.

External enemies are no true threat unless their lies find a willing embrace in our hearts and minds.

Third, root yourself in true knowledge of and obedience to the Great Lion.

In the midst of doubt and depression, a large part of obedience means avoiding idleness at all costs.

Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

Obedience also includes resisting with all of our might the false fatalism that threatens to suffocate our faith.

In Lewis’s telling of all of the Narnia tales, the children’s experiences as kings and queens in Narnia consistently transform them into nobler, more virtuous people in their own world. They are not spoiled children wanting to be kings again; they are noble kings who carry that very nobility back into their non-royal roles as schoolchildren.