C.S. Lewis, the late Christian apologist and Oxford don who is the author of the seven-book Narnia series, has been the subject of critical, even contemptuous, pieces in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. The press coverage of the movie has emphasized how a (tiny) proportion of its marketing budget has been directed at – gasp! – Christians.
The British author Philip Pullman has said the Narnia books are based on ”reactionary prejudice,” and the British paper The Guardian attacked the stories for representing ”everything that is most hateful about religion.”
For anyone who has been enchanted by the stories (100 million copies sold), this reaction must be bizarre. Who is afraid of C.S. Lewis, and why?
His frank Christianity has a lot to do with it. To put it in terms of the current war over season’s greetings, the Narnia books aren’t ”happy holidays” kinds of stories, but instead verily shout ”Merry Christmas!” (Father Christmas is a character in them.)Lewis’ friend J.R.R. Tolkien, also a believer, thought Lewis laid on the Christian allegory too thick. But it is also Lewis’ sensibility that irks the elite guardians of a culture that so treasures skepticism and irony. In the Narnia stories, Lewis is making the case for the opposite, for a child’s openness to what might seem impossible to the narrow ”adult” mind…..
….. Lewis and Tolkien wanted to re-invigorate the powers of the imagination so it would be primed to detect the hints of a higher and deeper reality – ”further up, further in,” as Lewis put it.
Indeed, this is the very point I wrote about last Christmas:
16 But Jesus called them to him, saying, “Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God.</span>
17 Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.”
He’s talking, I’m afraid, about how you lose touch with happiness and the sense of wonder, as you become an adult. That loss prevents us from seeing the Kingdom of heaven as it is.
For most of us, the happiest times of our lives was when we were children. When we’re younger, we have less in the way of cares, and troubles. Let’s admit, too, that as we get older, we become aware of, and allow more and more sadness into our lives.
It’s true; It’s a hard world out there, and being adults we’ve come to understand this, in a way of understanding that only long exposure and experience… and lots of scar tissue, can bring.
I’ve noticed just now that I’m getting quite a few hits on that writing, daily this last few weeks, so I’ll link it here [1] for your reading. I’d urge you to read it because it will give you a better foundation for my next comments;
[2]Say what you will about John Gibson hyping his book. But the fact was and remains that the current tussle over this movie… and Lewis, for that matter, are part and parcel of the anti-Christian bias of today’s society, of which the legal wrangles over nativity scenes in public places, the reluctance to say “Merry CHRISTmas” as opposed to the more generic (and less offensive to anti-Christians) “Happy Holidays” are merely a token. Gibson does do a fair job of documenting the abuses connected with these tokens, but doesn’t connect them with the anti-Christian biases that run so high in western society today.
Sample for example of this bias, of this war, one Amazon Reviewer of Gibson’s book:
Okay, this nation is full of insanity. The cause: Christianity. It’s why a moron is in the White House. Christmas wasn’t originally about the birth of Jesus (their savior, like a person should be worshipped), it was the celebration of the Winter Solstice. The Christians deemed that a pagan celebration so they turned it into a religious holiday.
I think there no more solid evidence than that, of the war I speak.
I won’t go further into examples of those battling against Christmas and thereby against Christ. You see the examples around you every day, and can pick them out as well as anyone else can, assuming you look around you at all.
[3]
What I do want to point out here, though, is something I’ve been writing about on and off for years; that being that in so doing, such people are also are attacking the culture of the west. It is undeniable that Christianity and the culture of the west are inexorably tied. Our founders as they were riding our founding documents found it necessary and right to acknowledge the relationship between God and man, stating flatly, that rights, and thereby freedoms, are given of God, not of government.
Considering that over the last eighty years we have watched the selfsame people… social liberals, for the most part… who are declaring war on Christmas, also declare war on our rights one by one, one would think the connection would be made more easily in our public discourse between the removal of Christianity and its dominance from our society, and the removal of rights from our society. The culture that we live in, the culture that gave this country life, was and still is heavily influenced by Christianity. If we remove Christianity from our society and from our culture, denying its role in our culture’s foundation, and thereby, our country’s foundation, we are in effect removing one of the bricks from the foundation of the house. And every builder on the planet will tell you that the foolhardy operation. Yet, this is precisely what the social left is asking us to do, and enforcing it with the power of government. In short they are using the power of our government to destroy us as a people.
I suppose it’s true; a world used to darkness will continually struggled to see that darkness continued. And, I also suppose one cannot help but get discouraged by all of this.
However, I will point out that Christmas, and thereby, Christianity itself, has been going on for a little over 2000 years, in spite of all the naysayers, protesters and government regulations that history has managed to toss up in those 2000- plus years. It does so, because at the core of it all, is a message that all the naysayers, Protesters and government hacks will never understand, much less conquer. It is a message that will survive the ravages of time, government, and liberals, facists, and anything else long after you and I are no longer even a memory.
As a result there is only one conclusion that one can draw from all this; if the social left in this country and around the world… in short, those who cannot see ”further up, further in,” … if these are successful in removing that brick from our foundation what will fall is not Christianity or the Christmas message; these are eternal.
What will fall, is America. The damage has already started. It’s time to fight back.
I’ll start with the first blow:
Merry Christmas