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

by Joe Rigney

Flannery O’Connor said somewhere that a story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.

It was part of the bubbling.

what Lewis thought about everything was secretly present in what he said about anything.”

In short, I have been discipled as a faithful Christian through living like a Narnian.

C. S. Lewis denied multiple times that the stories are allegories.

We go there so that we then can live better here. By taking us out of this world, Lewis enables us to become something that we weren’t before, something greater and grander, so that, when we return out of the wardrobe, we face our own Giants of Despair differently. We face them as true Narnians.

“He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.”

“Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage… Let there be wicked kings and beheadings, battles and dungeons, giants and dragons, and let villains be soundly killed at the end of the book.”

“I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children’s story which is only enjoyed by children is a bad children’s story.”13 Or again, “it is certainly my opinion that a book worth reading only in childhood is not worth reading even then.”

“When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

when we are confronted with various aspects of reality, we are obligated to respond with certain rational and emotional reactions. What’s more, the doctrine of objective value is absolutely essential for human flourishing, both as individuals and in societies.

An obligation can freeze feelings.

Indeed, we must learn to breathe Narnian air, a metaphor that Lewis uses elsewhere to describe what it means to come to know God.

As G. K. Chesterton reminded us, the reason that order and structure exist in the world is so that good things can run wild.

Through sacrifice, Mercy triumphs over Judgment.

The Witch loves death, and her icy curse on Narnia is simply one expression of this overall hatred of life. Indeed, the accent is not on winter itself, but the fact that it is always winter and never Christmas. Winter has a crucial place in the yearly cycle of renewal and the turning of the seasons. But winter should be inhabited by holiday celebration and should ultimately be propelling us forward to spring, and it’s precisely this forward-looking expectation and celebratory “jollification” that the Witch opposes with all her dark arts.

The size or expense of the meal isn’t the point; the attitude and receptivity of the meal is.

the glorious truth is that Lewis’s vision of feasting through winter and glorying in spring and resisting the seductive dullness of the Witch’s world is not just a fairy tale, but the way the world really is.

Jesus, like Aslan, is Lord of the Feast.

Put simply, who you are determines what you hear, how you think, how you respond to temptation and failure, how you react to unpleasant situations, and how you respond to beauty and glory.

In both cases, his apology is not driven by genuine remorse, but by a thin sense of obligation and a desire to save face. Edmund, we come to see, only seeks forgiveness and reconciliation grudgingly.

What then will Narnia do with a person like Edmund?

“To know what would have happened, child?…No. Nobody is ever told that”

Could it be that Edmund meets her precisely because he’s already on the wrong path?

The evil in his heart is spreading and deepening and hardening.

This type of evil doesn’t simply deepen in the heart; it affects the mind as well.

As he trudges through the cold and snow, his heart grows colder and harder as well.

Edmund thus stands as a warning, a cautionary tale to everyone who reads the book. We are always becoming who we will be.

Given the present trajectory of my life, what would happen if I should find myself stumbling through the wardrobe into Narnia?

Narnia is what Peter Leithart calls “Deep Comedy,” a story in which the characters may face challenges, but eventually rise to a greater degree of glory and joy than when they began.

“Obedience is the opener of eyes.”

For manners, whether in the court or at the dinner table, are simply love in the little things, love in the trifles.

It is this deliberate concern with courtesy, honor, and the dignity of others that is so necessary for us if we are to live like true Narnians in our homes, in our churches, and in the world.

All Christians are called to sacrificially serve one another rather than lording our authority or rights over each other like the unbelievers do

We live in an age of scientific reductionism, a time when material causes are assumed to be the only causes.

Biblical metaphors aren’t merely creative ways to communicate; they are deeply and fundamentally true, divinely designed analogies that enable us to more fully understand God and his world.

By all means, let us explore the physical and material world, wisely and faithfully using the tools of science to discover how the world works. But let us never fall prey to the seductive reductionism that explains away the wonders of God’s world.

Light and Sight. This is what The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is all about.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

Do you think I am trying to weave a spell? Perhaps I am; but remember your fairy tales. Spells are used for breaking enchantments as well as for inducing them. And you and I have need of the strongest spell that can be found to wake us from the evil enchantment of worldliness which has been laid upon us for nearly a hundred years.

(“There is nothing like a good shock of pain for dissolving certain kinds of magic”).

If the Witch is right, then the dreams of children are more beautiful, desirable, and attractive than anything in the “black pit” of reality.

Lewis really believed that pain, suffering, and hardship had a vital role in clearing the mind and enabling a person to see what really matters, and more importantly to hear from the One who speaks through the pain.

“If Christianity is untrue, then no honest man will want to believe it, however helpful it might be: if it is true, every honest man will want to believe it, even if it gives him no help at all.”41

[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)

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.

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

For Lewis, underneath culture is cultus—worship—and if you worship a bloodthirsty and demonic god like Tash, then your culture will come to reflect him, just as if you worship a liberating and loving deity like Aslan, your culture will reflect him.

“We must picture Hell as a state where everyone is perpetually concerned about his own dignity and advancement, where everyone has a grievance, and where everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment.”

“Never taunt a man save when he is stronger than you: then, as you please”