Narnia: Understanding The Supernatural Series

NARNIA:

UNDERSTANDING THE SUPERNATURAL

November 27, 2005

Chris Brady/Nelson Searcy

Today we are launching our Christmas in Narnia series. Fantasy…the supernatural…there is something about supernatural stories that I love. In fact at any given time you will find a fantasy book in my bag. I don’t think I am alone. You may not be as fanatical about them as I am but stories of the supernatural and of the fantasy realm are extremely popular to us. Just look at Lord of The Rings, Harry Potter and The Matrix.

I think that we love fantasy so much because we yearn for something more than this natural world around us and a fantasy story allows us to suspend our disbelief and believe in the supernatural if only for a little while. There something about a story, any good story that awakens our desire for something more than our natural world.

During this series we are going to explore the world of Narnia which is the magical world of the Chronicles of Narnia series. The most famous being “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” During the next four weeks we are going to dive into this series which was written by CS Lewis whose real name is Clive Staples Lewis but he disliked the name Clive so he liked to be called Jack.

CS Lewis was born in 1898 in Ireland, he fought in WWI, became an Oxford professor and is one of our times most prolific writers. He completed THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE, the first of a series of books set in Narnia in 1948. He went on to write 6 more books in the series. The Chronicles of Narnia books have sold a combined 85 million copies in more than 40 languages. And there is a soon to be released big budget Hollywood movie coming out.

During this series we are going to discover in depth how the lion, the witch and the wardrobe continue to speak to us but today I am going to give an overview, using Narnia, on how the supernatural is real and is all around us.

Now this message today contains spoilers if you have not read the story. But discovering the reality of the supernatural by using the parallels in Narnia is worth it.

Before we begin its important to note that CS Lewis never meant the The Chronicles of Narnia to be a biblical allegory. He referred to it as is a supposal; an exploration of “What if?” Therefore there are not 1 to 1 comparisons between this story and the biblical story. But there is quite a bit of symbolism which is what we are going to explore.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is about four children who find their way through a secret portal in the back of a wardrobe that leads into the magical land of Narnia. While they are they there they discover a supernatural world of talking animals, endless winter, a White Witch, a powerful Lion named Aslan, and they find themselves as main characters in a story of redemption, sacrifice and good versus evil. It’s a great classic story! But if we look deeper it can help us reveal the real life story of redemption, sacrifice and good versus evil that we are a part of right here and right now.

In order to get the most out of this series we must first understand the supernatural world all around us. We understand the natural world. We interact with it every day. This morning we climbed out of our natural bed, we brushed our natural teeth, well I hope you all did, we put on natural clothes, and we came to this natural building and met our natural friends and felt natural emotions. I am standing on a natural stage, speaking on a natural microphone which uses natural electricity to amplify my natural voice so you all can hear what I am saying.

We might not know how everything in the natural world works but we understand it because we live in it.

But we also live in a supernatural world

Look at

“The seed sown is natural; the seed grown is supernatural - same seed, same body….” -1 Corinthians 15:44

There is both a natural and a supernatural existing together. The difference is that we have to search for and allow in the supernatural into our lives. First we have to know what to look for.

How many of you recognize this kind of artwork:

[Slide of stereogram]

This is a stereogram. They were very popular way back in the 90’s, you could find them in every shopping mall and it was even featured on Seinfeld. When you look at this, what do you see? Do you see only 2D patterns like I do or is there something else there. If you are good at these things you will see the 3d “hidden picture”. It may take a little work but many of you would see the hidden picture if you had enough time. But there are also many of us, like myself, that no matter how hard we try we cannot see anything in this picture but the 2D patterns and colors.