Live Like a Narnian Quotes

“Our lives are to be a long obedience in the same direction, and our direction is far more important than our pace.”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“We are, all of us, en-storied creatures, living our lives in a narrative, which means our lives have directions, trends, and trajectories. And these trajectories are guided by an Author who teaches us that we will reap what we sow.”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“We ought not think of all magic as simply sleight of hand or eye-tricking illusions. Magic is a real feature of the world that God has made.”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like a Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“the reason that order and structure exist in the world is so that good things can run wild.”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“For manners, whether in the court or at the dinner table, are simply love in the little things, love in the trifles.”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“This desire for “something beyond” does not empty the real world, but actually gives it new depths. “He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.”10”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“But 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. It makes me want to eat my bread with joy and drink my wine with a merry heart, because God approves (Eccles. 9:7).”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“Lewis’s hero George MacDonald once put it (and as the children’s journey to Aslan behind Lucy’s leadership demonstrates), “Obedience is the opener of eyes.” Or in the words of Jesus, “If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God” (John 7:17).”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“A child (or adult) who lives in such stories will have developed the patterns of thought and affection that will be well-prepared to embrace the True, the Good, and the Beautiful (that is, to embrace Jesus Christ) when he finally encounters them (Him!). Like John the Baptist, Lewis and his cast of Narnians will have prepared the way.”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“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.”11”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“The challenges we face are Narnian challenges. The victories we win are Narnian victories. But our time in Narnia is not an end in itself. 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.”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“The difference between the dark magic of the Egyptian magicians and Elymas on the one hand, and Moses and Paul on the other was not what they were doing, but the source of their power. Indeed, what distinguishes sorcery, witchcraft, and black magic from godly miracles, signs, and “white magic” is the source of power (God or demons) and the purpose of the power (worshiping the true God and serving people, or worshiping idols and dominating people).”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“Growing up doesn’t mean replacing old loves as much as it means adding new ones.”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“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.”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“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.”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“All stories in which children have adventures and successes which are possible, in the sense that they do not break the laws of nature, but almost infinitely improbable, are in more danger than fairy tales of raising false expectations.”9”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“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.58”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“Lewis’s friend J.R.R. Tolkien described as a “secondary world.” By creating Narnia, Lewis invites us out of our own skin and into that of Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy (and later Caspian, Eustace, Jill, Shasta, and the rest). The challenges we face are Narnian challenges. The victories we win are Narnian victories. But our time in Narnia is not an end in itself. 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”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“I stand by Aslan. Have patience, like us beasts. The help will come. It may be even now at the door”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“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.”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“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.”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“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.19”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“As G. K. Chesterton reminded us, the reason that order and structure exist in the world is so that good things can run wild.”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“But suppose casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past the watchful dragons? I thought one could.18”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“Only the Tao provides a common human law of action which can overarch rulers and ruled alike. A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“To summarize, Lewis sees the progression like this: 1) the marginalization of value statements leads to 2) the separation of fact from value, which leads to 3) the creation of men without chests, which leads to 4) the elevation of “instinct” as an ultimate value, which, because of its own self-contradictions, leads to 5) man’s attempt to conquer nature through science and technology and 6) the tyranny of the conditioners over mankind, which in the end is 7) the abolition of man.”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“is a rebellion of the branches against the tree: if the rebels could succeed they would find that they had destroyed themselves”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“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.”14”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles

“Indeed, the Witch provides two meals to Edmund: the enchanted candy and stale bread and water. The Witch and her”
― Joe Rigney, Live Like A Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles