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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Joe Rigney
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January 21 - February 2, 2020
“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.”
Mimesis or imitation is one of the fundamental realities in the formation of the self. Children learn language, manners, gestures, parenting (!), and a host of other habits and passions from their parents, without either parents or children putting much conscious effort into it.
this separation of fact and value is not a creed that is taught explicitly, but an atmosphere and tone that is inhaled and absorbed. It is something “in the air,” which becomes a part of a student’s mental framework and assumptions, exerting substantial influence upon him without critical analysis or reflection.
How do we get people to sit down and think? To consider their presuppositions and the source, reasoning, and logic (or lack thereof) whence they came?
all the time—such is the tragi-comedy of our situation—we continue to clamour for those very qualities we are rendering impossible.
In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.
appeals to Instinct plant our feet firmly in mid-air.
For Lewis, the Tao is a combination of the absoluteness of reality and the human way of life that conforms to this reality.
Lewis identifies the Tao as Natural Law, Traditional Morality, and First Principles.
the doctrine of objective value is absolutely essential for human flourishing, both as individuals and in societies.
The Narnian stories display through imaginative fiction and fairy tale the way that the world really is. Here is courage and bravery in its shining glory. Here is honesty and truth-telling in its simplicity and profundity. Here is treachery in all its ugliness. Here is the face of Evil. Here also is the face of Good.
The very suggestion that Aslan work against the Emperor’s Magic is met with a shock and a disapproving frown, so that “nobody ever made that suggestion to him again.”
As G. K. Chesterton reminded us, the reason that order and structure exist in the world is so that good things can run wild.
beneath the power encounters and magical warfare is Deep Magic and Deeper, the inflexible solidity of the Moral Law and the breathtaking beauty of Sacrificial Love. Lewis reminds us that substitution is a kind of magic, a mysterious and supernatural force that transforms the world, overcoming every form of treachery. In Narnia, as in our world, Deeper Magic triumphs over Deep Magic. Through sacrifice, Mercy triumphs over Judgment.
It’s the combination of frigid bleakness and the absence of true festivity that makes February so depressing. And this is precisely the Witch’s mark: winter without expectation of joy, winter without Christmas.
Indeed, the Witch provides two meals to Edmund: the enchanted candy and stale bread and water. The Witch and her evil are the origins of both gluttony and asceticism, of sinful indulgence and sinful austerity.
The size or expense of the meal isn’t the point; the attitude and receptivity of the meal is.
more than just awakening my hunger, breathing Narnian air awakens a desire for a particular type of meal, one with tasty food, good conversation, lots of joy and laughter and revelry and strategizing about how to defeat the White Witch.
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. Or to put it in more biblical terms, out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks, and the mind thinks, and the heart feels.
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.
I wonder if we can see Lewis’s guiding hand in the fact that it’s Edmund who meets the Witch and not Peter or Lucy. Could it be that Edmund meets her precisely because he’s already on the wrong path? Might we not recognize the providential will of the author in guiding a particular character to endure a particular temptation? And might this Narnian providence give us a window into the invisible hand and plan that guides our own lives?
This type of evil doesn’t simply deepen in the heart; it affects the mind as well.
Lewis’s dramatization of the intellectual effects of sin and rebellion is worth keeping in mind whenever we encounter incessant doubts and “rational” objections to Christ, either in ourselves or in others; as Paul notes in Romans 1:18–23, the futility of natural man’s thinking is rooted in our ingratitude and rebellion.
Edmund thus stands as a warning, a cautionary tale to everyone who reads the book. We are always becoming who we will be.
So we ought to ask ourselves some probing questions: Where am I compromising? Am I nursing small grievances, the kind that grow and fester into hatred of those closest to me? Do I treat those around me with respect and kindness, or do I love to show off my own perceived superiority? When I wrong someone, do I repent thoroughly, seek forgiveness sincerely, make restitution quickly, and then move on properly? Given the present trajectory of my life, what would happen if I should find myself stumbling through the wardrobe into Narnia? Will Providence guide me to meet a faun who becomes a friend,
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“Send me, Sire, I’ll go.” “But I thought you didn’t believe in the Horn, Trumpkin,” said Caspian. “No more I do, your Majesty. But what’s that got to do with it? I might as well die on a wild goose chase as die here. You are my King. I know the difference between giving advice and taking orders. You’ve had my advice, and now it’s the time for orders.” (Ch. 7)
This is the central lesson of Trumpkin: embracing obedience to lawful authority, even when you disagree with the orders.
Trumpkin shows us that coming to faith is not always like getting knocked off your horse by a blinding light. Sometimes it’s a slow process filled with unexpected twists and turns. Sometimes those who protest the loudest are the nearest to the kingdom. Sometimes the heart prepares the way for the mind to follow.
The key is that Peter is a skillful leader who knows how both to control his own temper and to diffuse potentially explosive situations.
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.
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.
“These tales say that apples were golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.”24
The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in the fairy books, “charm,” “spell,” “enchantment.” They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery. A tree grows fruit because it is a magic tree. Water runs downhill because it is bewitched.25
The heart of the story is the characters’ growing ability to see light in Aslan’s Light, to have their darkness scattered by the brightness of the great Lion, to not only see Aslan, but by him to see everything else.
Crime is viewed in pathological terms, as a disease in need of mending, rather than as an evil act in need of just punishment. This view of punishment has the appearance of mercy, but in reality is wholly false.
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.
naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.
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
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If the Witch is right, then the dreams of children are more beautiful, desirable, and attractive than anything in the “black pit” of reality.
If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
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.
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.
Our mountaintop experiences of God and his grace are wonderful, and cause for gratitude and rejoicing. 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.
Our lives are to be a long obedience in the same direction, and our direction is far more important than our pace.
It is very difficult to imagine genuine friendship developing in such a self-important, posturing, flattery-filled society.
Are we overly concerned with appearances and status? Do we find ourselves always jockeying for position and competing with others for the highest place? When in authority, do we lord it over our subordinates, demanding that they serve us and treating them with contempt? Are our expressions of affection genuine or simply a show to impress others? Beneath our words and actions, is there seething resentment or grasping envy or deceitful malice? Do we engage in vain flattery of others as a way of manipulating them? Are our compliments and encouragements sincere? Are we overly concerned with our
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Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call ‘humble’ nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.
