Narnia: Door To A New Kingdom Series

Compare to the Bible and the story of Jesus: “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to [Peter], “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels. But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” . . . Then they spit in his face and struck him with their fists. Others slapped him and said, “Prophesy to us, Christ. Who hit you?” Matt. 26:52-54, 67, 68.

So clearly, as a Christian, this is a story I hope the whole world will pay attention to. I hope everyone sees the movie. I hope all of you read these seven books to your children. I’ve always thought that this was the finest kind of Christian expression: where the story of Jesus is just underneath the surface of a worldly, well-told, exciting, audience-grabbing tale.

It’s a surprise that Lewis himself always thought that a lot of Christian books were kind of a waste – ironic since he wrote so many of them. But in a book of essays entitled God in the Dock, he made this marvelous observation á la “The Chronicles of Narnia”: “We must attack the enemy’s line of communication. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects – with their Christianity latent.” So we need love stories, kid stories, science fiction, fantasy, soap operas – with a hint about a Redeemer just behind the curtain.

As a writer myself, who once scratched out a series of ten books with a sports-oriented Christian teen fiction theme, all out of the imagination, I’ve done some thinking about all of this lately. And while I want every secular person there is to rush out and spend two hours in Narnia with this lion who will save us from our sins, I’m almost afraid for our Upper Room family to go there. Not afraid, really . . . but concerned. And here is why:

All of us who live close to the kingdom, and who have already read a story about a King dying for us, run the risk of seeing too many fairy tales, and ultimately deciding that this is just one more. In the month of December, America is filled with good people, sincere people, who halfway embrace the Christmas story – but only halfway. They know Santa Claus is a fabrication, but Jesus is probably real. The North Pole is a myth; heaven is an 80% possibility. A man in a red suit coming down the chimney is something we concede doesn’t really happen; will a King on his throne appear in the sky for a Second Coming? Well, maybe. We know in our hearts that Aslan the Lion didn’t really die for Edmund, but we split the difference when it comes to someone named Jesus being crucified on a Roman cross for us. We half-commit to the invisible kingdom, the fantasy world of salvation, but with the other half of our soul we say: “You know what? I am a man of this real world. My business is here. My family is here. My holdings and my home are here. I’ll participate in this movie franchise called Christianity; I’ll go to some of the gatherings and my kids will wear shepherd’s costumes at the December 17 party Upper Room is holding. But in my core, where I make the decisions that really count, I’m going to stay with what I know for sure.”