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Meditations with C. S. Lewis: Successful Stupidity

Posted in C. S. Lewis, Mythlore, The Chronicles of Narnia, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 25, 2012| Leave a Comment »

C. S. Lewis, best known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, was also one of the most profound thinkers of twentieth century Christianity.  Along with J. R. R. Tolkien, he has inspired millions of people, include all of the authors at Lantern Hollow Press.  On Sundays we would like to take a moment to offer up a little Lewis for your consideration.

__________

“Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.”  The Magician’s Nephew (126)

We forget that the we ourselves are the most important ingredient in the making of an idiot.  That usually means that we are more effective in making idiots our of ourselves rather than of others.

Of course, I’m not making any particular statement here about the state of education in general.*  There is a significant difference between “ignorance” and “stupidity.”  The former is a simple lack of knowledge about a particular subject or subjects.  That can be be caused by influences external to ourselves that we may not have control over.  The latter, on the other hand, is generally willful in some way.  It implies that the requisite knowledge to address a situation is at least available, but the person has somehow failed to do the right thing.  It is therefore possible to be ignorant without being stupid, and to bear no responsibility for it.  On the other hand, when we are being stupid, we are almost always ignorant and it is almost always our own fault.

In the character of Uncle Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew (to whom the quote above was applied) we have a brilliant example of stupidity in action.  He is perfectly capable of following what is going around him, but he chooses to understand only what suits him.  He has decided that he is, in fact, one of the “profound students and great thinkers and sages” and a powerful magician (18).  That presupposition renders him unable to see truths about himself that are very plain to everyone else–that he is really a doddering old coward, a greedy fool, and a ridiculous knave.  He is oblivious to his cowardice in forcing Digory to rescue Polly and deludes himself into thinking that the witch could fall in love with him.  Is it any surprise, then, that when he arrives in Narnia at its creation, he succeeds in making himself “stupider” than he really is?  As a result, he not only misses out on a tremendous adventure, he goes down in Narnian history as the least of all men–and in human history this “profound student, great thinker, and sage” is remembered not at all.

I’m afraid to ask myself how often do I follow Andrew Ketterley’s example.  Often enough, I have no doubt.  Lewis is reminding us that we should do all we can to see ourselves, the world around us, and how we relate to it was as much clarity as we can muster,  especially if we don’t think we’ll like what we see.

After all, I am “stupid” enough already–I need go no further!

__________

*Were you to ask, I could give you an earful.  In fact, I will in a few more weeks.

Interested in more about writing and reading from a Christian perspective?  Check out While We’re Paused–the official blog of Lantern Hollow Press.

References:

  • The Magician’s Nephew.  New York:  Collier Books, 1974.
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Meditations with C. S. Lewis: The Deep Magic and the Human Mind

Posted in C. S. Lewis, Meditations, The Chronicles of Narnia, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on June 18, 2012| 1 Comment »

C. S. Lewis, best known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, was also one of the most profound thinkers of twentieth century Christianity.  Along with J. R. R. Tolkien, he has inspired millions of people, include all of the authors at Lantern Hollow Press.  On Sundays we would like to take a moment to offer up a little Lewis for your consideration.

__________

[T]hough the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still that she did not know.  Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of Time.  But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation.

–Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

One pre-requisite of any religion worth my time and effort is that it must be able to blow my mind, to provide me with insights that no mere human invention could.  In order to do that, the object of belief must, by definition, transcend anything that intellect could obviously produce.*  It is that fact about Christianity, and its Narnian equivalent, that Aslan is alluding to here.

The problem for any of the purely secular religions–including all the variations of scientism, atheism, and secular humanism–is that they are limited by the very real shortcomings of the human mind, since we are dependent wholly on ourselves for their formulation.  A purely naturalistic intellect and the evidence it observes can only take us as far as the edge of all possible human knowledge (to assert otherwise is to make the claim in blind faith and to imagine something frankly akin to a supernatural god).  We know that human knowledge, while impressive to creatures like us, is not and never could be infinite.  We are severely limited to the few years allotted our short lives and, were we to somehow extend them, we would still be bound by the realities of our position inside time and space.  Even if I lived forever, I could never know everything, especially things that happened before I came along or that fell outside the purview of time itself.  In the words of Hamlet, “there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”  Indeed, there are more things out there than philosophy or science ever could dream of, even in theory–and that is saying something.**

The Christian God, quite explicitly, transcends both Time and Space.  Genesis tells of God hovering over the deeps when there are no words to truly describe what He knew.  With Him was Christ, the Word, through whom “all things were made.”  As such, the power and majesty of God and Christ emerge as not only believable but what we should expect to see if Christianity is actually what it claims to be.  This stands in sharp contrast to so many other early religions, where the gods are really little more than exalted, petty men and women, squabbling with themselves and with humans for pieces of a self-created pie.

Of course, it isn’t my purpose here to convince anyone of the essential Truth of particular facts–those are discussions for another time and place where space isn’t so limited.  I am merely attempting to say that on this one point–the sheer size and majesty of the God to which Lewis alludes–makes good sense indeed.

In a few short words, then, Lewis has pointed us to precisely the sort of God I would expect to find as the mastermind behind Time itself.  In comparison, the vaunted might of the human intellect seems suitably small.

__________

*It must also exist.  While I’ve never been swayed by his famous argument, I would agree with St. Anselm on that much.

**That said, I must stick up for the many, many amazing things that we can know and are still learning through the very good, very useful pursuit of science.  In the end, though, the more we discover, the more we realize how much there is still to learn!  All of human experience, which is much more vast than the tiny slice we’ve collected and call “human knowledge” is but the blink of the cosmic eye.  The effect of all this should be humbling, to those not drunk on the tiny draught of understanding of which we as a species have so far partaken.

Interested in more about writing and reading from a Christian perspective?  Check out While We’re Paused–the official blog of Lantern Hollow Press.

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Meditations with C. S. Lewis: The Power of a Name

Posted in C. S. Lewis, Meditations, The Chronicles of Narnia, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 28, 2012| Leave a Comment »

C. S. Lewis, best known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, was also one of the most profound thinkers of twentieth century Christianity.  Along with J. R. R. Tolkien, he has inspired millions of people, include all of the authors at Lantern Hollow Press.  On Sundays we would like to take a moment to offer up a little Lewis for your consideration.

__________

“Peace, Beaver,” said Aslan.  All names will soon be restored to their proper owners.  In the meantime we will not dispute about noises.”

–The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe

Names are powerful things, even though we may not often think of them as so.  Most cultures take them very seriously, and this is often reflected in literature.  We need only think of Hermionie Granger’s admonition to Lucius Malfoy that “fear of a name only increases the fear of the thing itself,” to see it.  While I don’t know that Lewis was thinking along these lines in particular, I find Aslan’s statement to be almost prophetic.

Christians believe that names matter.  God has promised this Himself:

He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.  To him who overcomes, to him I will give some of the hidden mana, and I will give him a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but he who recieves it.

–Revelation 2:17

A True Name, directly from God, that only He knows.  That is a gift indeed.

Of course, in the short run, not all names are going to be with their proper owners.  People who should be held in esteem and spoken of in terms of honor and grace are regarded with disdain and subjected to names so vile that I won’t repeat them here.  Others who should be ashamed of what they’ve done are held up as the finest examples of humanity and showered with praise.  There is something in us that cringes at both extremes.  We get angry when we see this kind of injustice, though at times we may not even realize why.

The good news is that God sees through to the very heart of things, and He is the ultimate Namer of whom we are but a poor imitation.  One day, as Aslan promised Beaver, all names will be restored to their proper owners.  In the meantime, we “need not dispute about noises” and let what others think of us weigh too heavily on on our minds.  We should take curses and praises both with the proverbial grain of salt.

Remember, the One who really matters sees us as we truly are.  His name is waiting for us.

__________

Interested in more about writing and reading from a Christian perspective?  Check out While We’re Paused–the official blog of Lantern Hollow Press.

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Meditations with C. S. Lewis: Narnia, rightly!

Posted in C. S. Lewis, Letters to Children, Meditations, The Chronicles of Narnia, tagged , , , , , on May 6, 2012| 3 Comments »

C. S. Lewis, best known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, was also one of the most profound thinkers of twentieth century Christianity.  Along with J. R. R. Tolkien, he has inspired millions of people, include all of the authors at Lantern Hollow Press.  On Sundays we would like to take a moment to offer up a little Lewis for your consideration.

__________

There is a simmering debate into which every mere Lewisian descends at some point or other during the course of their life:  What is the “best” way to read the Chronicles of Narnia?  Should we read them in the order they were published or in chronological order according to the actual timeline of Narnia?  Lewis himself weighed in on that question in a letter to response to one of his young pen pals:

I think I agree with your order for reading the books [the chronological one] more than with your mother’s [who thought the published order was intentional].  The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks.  When I wrote The Lion I did not know I was going to write any more.  Then I wrote P. Caspian as a sequel and still didn’t think there would be any more, and when I had done The Voyage I felt quite sure it would be the last.  So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone reads them.  I’m not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published.  I never keep notes on that sort of thing and never remember dates.

—Letters to Children

In the end, readers will likely glean something from either approach.  It is far easier to get a real sense of the growth and history of Narnia if we read chronologically, but also, perhaps, a unique insight into Lewis’s own mind and life to read them in the order they were published.

In either case, the journey is more than justified.  “Further up and further in!”

__________

Interested in more about writing and reading from a Christian perspective?  Check out While We’re Paused–the official blog of Lantern Hollow Press.

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“The green walls of that country far away”: Spirits in Bondage and the Magician’s Nephew

Posted in Spirits in Bondage, Surprised By Joy, The Chronicles of Narnia, Warnie Lewis, tagged , , , , , on May 3, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Another interesting parallel between Spirits in Bondage  and Lewis’s more general biography actually tied into Narnia, particularly The Magician’s Nephew.  It is clear that Lewis did not consider his conversion grounds to discard the vividness of his earlier imagination.  In fact, he mined his own unChristian period for Truth much like he did other non-christian authors.

Consider his description of the “Land of the Lotus” from “XXV. Song of the Pilgrims”:

Land of the Lotus fallen from the sun,
Land of the Lake from whence all rivers run,
Land where the hope of all our dreams is won!

Shall we not somewhere see at close of day
The green walls of that country far away,
And hear the music of her fountains play?

[…]

But we shall wake again in gardens bright
Of green and gold for infinite delight,
Sleeping beneath the solemn mountains white,
While from the flowery copses still unseen
Sing out the crooning birds that ne’er have been
Touched by the hand of winter frore and lean;

This compares very favorably to what Polly, Digory, and Fledge encounter in the quest for the golden apple at the end of The Magician’s Nephew .  There, they find an isolated, magical garden set high on a huge green hill:

All round the top of the hill ran a high wall of green turf.  Inside the wall, trees were growing. Their branches hung out over the wall:  their leaves showed not only green but also blue and silver when the wind stirred them.  When the travelers reached the top they walked nearly all the way round it before they found the gates:  high gates of gold, fast shut, facing due east. […] [Digory] went in very solemnly, looking about him.  Everything was very quiet inside.  Even the fountain which rose near the middle of the garden made only the faintest sound.  The lovely smell was all around him:  it was a happy place but very serious.  (157-58)

Many of the same specific elements are the same–the green walls, the fountains, the colors green and gold, the brilliant rivers (referenced just a few pages earlier in The Magician’s Nephew).  Of course, the expression of the conception is separated by years, and so it isn’t an exact correspondence, but it is close enough to think that, perhaps, they are one and the same.

Perhaps what we’re seeing here is really Lewis’s fleshing out of the toy garden that his brother Warnie had brought into their nursery many years before.  In Surprised by Joy, he described the feeling evoked by that “biscuit tin filled with moss” as similar to “Milton’s ‘enormous bliss’ of Eden” (16).  That does seem to be what Lewis was attempted to capture in both his poem and his book.  Without more specific context, we’ll probably never know for sure.

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