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Meditations with C. S. Lewis: Men without Chests and How to Prevent Them

Posted in C. S. Lewis, Meditations, The Abolition of Man, tagged , , , , , , on July 2, 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.

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We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor, and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.

—The Abolition of Man

It is hard to believe how prophetic Lewis could be at times.  In his little book, The Abolition of Man, he looked down the stream of logical conclusions that started with the educational trends he saw around him in his own time and, with his usual incisive clarity, he made comments that apply directly to the broken system we see in contemporary society.

The essential question for Lewis on this point was this: Can we really divorce truth and values from education?  Many of the “experts” of Lewis’s own day thought so.  Since that time, the idea of “values neutral” education has been all the rage.  It began with a simple relativistic assumption that there is really no such thing as transcendent “right” and “wrong.”  This is, of course, the ultimate conclusion we are forced to draw when we adopt some form of naturalism and place humanity the ultimate arbiter of reality.  As we proceeded into the Post Modern era, that assumption spread like a cancer through academia.  From there, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “the philosophy of the school room in one generation [became] the philosophy of government in the next.”  Today, there is hardly a part of western culture–including the church–that isn’t infected with the idea.

At the time, it did seem ideal:  If there were no absolute values to impart, then teachers need not waste their efforts on them.  Let the students’ families take care of that!  If they did, that would leave more time for schools to focus on the sciences that “really mattered.”

This has become an unmitigated disaster.  First, when the schools stopped teaching moral truth, the family did not pick up that burden.  How could it?  That same period of time saw the beginning of the almost complete dissolution of the family as an institution.  The schools assumed that the teaching of morals would be handled by the parents and the parents delegated that responsibility to the schools.  Several generations of students have thus far fallen in the massive crevice between the two sides.

As time passed, the educational theorists realized that they must teach some form of truth and morality, if for no reason than crowd control.*  In keeping with their attempt to be value-neutral, they settled on a hollow secular-humanism that simply compounds the problem by demanding that children act morally while giving them no compelling reason to do so.**  With the advent of power-theory and Post Modernism (where students are taught that right and wrong are determined by who happens to hold power), students were essentially led to believe that it only pays to be moral when you think that someone will catch you.

This was, of course, precisely what Lewis predicted.  As a culture, we produce men and women “without chests [hearts]” and we expect them to do the right thing anyway.  Hollywood, famous authors, political pundits, teachers, and Ivy-League professors mock and demean ideas like honesty, honor, and faith, and we are “shocked to find traitors [or even murderers] in our midst.”

There are no easy, quick fixes.  A full repair might take generations to effect, if it happens at all.  It begins when we, as parents, as students, and as a society decide to dethrone the departments of “education” and take responsibility for our own learning and that of our children.  Here are a couple of places to start.  They are especially good if you have children, but also have links for adults too:

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*In the end, the effort was and is self-defeating.  Many public school teachers spend more time teaching students to act responsibly than they do on actual content.  That fact is evident in most schools of “education,” where most emphasis is placed on “education” classes and relatively little on the subjects teachers are supposed to pass along.  You often end up with graduates who are well trained in group counseling and don’t even have a bachelor’s level knowledge of the content they are supposed to teach.

**Secular humanism is, after all, is assumed to be neutral when it comes to religious truth. In reality, secular humanism is itself a religion that worships humanity as a form of practical deity.  It is “fair” to other competing religions only in the sense that it maintains that they are all equally worthless. As a result, the schools simply teach a collection of alternative values in an attempt to be “value neutral.”

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: 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.

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“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!

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*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.

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[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.

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*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: Promised Sufferings

Posted in A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis, Meditations, tagged , , , , , , on June 10, 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.

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We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, “Blessed are they that mourn,” and I accept it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.

—A Grief Observed

In A Grief Observed, Lewis wrestled with the implications of the death of his wife, Joy.  It was the first time that much of what he had been speaking about philosophically came home to him in a literal way.  He found in that terrible moment, as we all do, that pain and grief are one thing in the abstract and quite another when experienced.  The very best philosophy at that moment will seem nothing more than mere moonshine (though it may still be objective correct simultaneously).  This is a realization to which much of the western church–the American version in particular–is being rudely awakened.

America has been a nominally Christian nation* since its founding era.  As far back as the beginnings of its individual colonies, it was a haven from persecution.  We most often think of the Pilgrim Separatists of Plymouth, but there were many, many other sorts of believers that fled here to escape persecution, real and imagined, including Baptists, Anabapists, Moravians, Quakers, and Catholics.  They created a society were religious differences would be tolerated, including deism and atheism.

Since that time, America has been slowly redefined into a bastion of secular humanism, a peculiar kind of belief that, while claiming no god in particular in practice worships natural law and humanity as its chief expression.  Like the other religions it claims to critique, secular humanism can tolerate no meaningful dissent in public, and therefore we have seen Christianity’s special place in America regularly rolled back in favor of this new faith through movements that have redefined such classic ideas as the separation of church and state.  As that has happened, we have seen accompanying howls of outrage and indignation from politically active Christians who often have had trouble distinguishing their patriotism from their faith.

To this, I believe Lewis would say, “So what?”  As he noted above, we are promised sufferings and persecutions.  Anyone who signed you up for the Christian faith with the understanding that you would be guaranteed a happy, successful life free from frustration and grief is as bad a historian as they are a friend.  The reality is that the state of affairs that existed in the United States for its first 200 years is the exception, not the rule. Indeed, when things go back to “normal,” we will “have gotten nothing that [we] hadn’t bargained for.”

Of course, that is very easy to say.  The real rub will come the first time I personally have to confront what that actually means–in my life, for my family, and for my loved ones.  I can only pray I bear it well when it does.

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*By “Christian nation” I mean a nation that was founded largely (but not wholly) as an outgrowth of philosophical presuppositions native to the Christian faith and meant to govern a population that largely agreed with that faith.  I do not mean, as many secularists do in such conversations, that it was a theocracy.  It was not and has never been anything of that sort, and to point that out is not particularly noteworthy.

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: What Love Can Do

Posted in A Grief Observed, C. S. Lewis, Meditations, tagged , , , , , , on June 4, 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.

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For this is one of the miracles of love; it gives — to both, but perhaps especially to the woman — a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.

—A Grief Observed

Love–in its truest sense–is not something that obscures our view of reality.  Instead, it sharpens it.  Through real love, according to Lewis, we see the one we love with crystal clarity…and we decide that we will love them anyway.

To Lewis, as to any really wise person, love is much more than a cascade of fuzzy emotion directed at what amounts to an idol.  It is something that really transcends both the lover and the object of his/her affection.  To use another of Lewis’s famous quotes, “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person’s ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.”  It is a decision to which we choose to adhere far more than it is mere feeling. We want the best for someone we love, even in the times we may not like them very much.

Most of the modern world defines “love” no more deeply than the flurry of emotion that accompanies infatuation.  Unfortunately, this does not last and eventually we see through the idealized fantasy version of the person that we have “fallen for” and realize who they really are (who we all are)–a broken, imperfect creature with a tendency towards selfishness and failure.  In that moment, if we define love on terms as shallow as infatuation, our “love” for them ceases.  We become “disenchanted.”

Shortly after we quit “loving” them, we begin to feel that we need not be obligated to them either.  We go in search of a new “love” who will excite in us the same feelings the first one did.  Relationships fall apart, marriages end in bitter divorce, and children are often the innocent victims.  Society as a whole then suffers as a result of a misunderstanding by the sum of its parts.

The cycle is vicious and predictable. It also can be broken with a simple, infinitely difficult step:  We make the decision to practice real love with those to whom we have offered the word in lip-service for far too long.

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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.

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“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.

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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 Cosmic Grandfather

Posted in Books, C. S. Lewis, Meditations, The Problem of Pain, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 21, 2012| 2 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.

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We want not so much a Father but a grandfather in heaven, a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, ‘What does it matter so long as they are contented?’

–C. S. Lewis The Problem of Pain 

This is indeed symptomatic not only of modern Christianity, but of humanity in general.  From the very beginning of recorded history, we see that as a race we care first and foremost about getting what we want instead of doing what is right and best.  All too often, we project that demand directly back onto our expectations of God.

The examples are too many to examine in so short a space.  Consider only a sampling:

  • In the political realm, there is the battle between secular capitalism and socialism.  On the one hand, I demand the ability to work all things around me for my own good–even other people’s lives.  On the other, I demand that the government forcibly take from someone else to insure that I can have what I want.
  • In deism and atheism we see worldviews that demand people be absolute sovereign of their own destiny and morality.  Not only can I have what I want, but no one–least of all a non-existent or irrelevant God–has grounds to even express disapproval.  I am only held accountable to myself and a standard of natural law that rarely, if ever, enforces itself.
  • Moral relativism takes it even a step farther and declares that there is no standard by which what I want can be measured at all.  Since nothing is “right,” everything is.  It is, perhaps, the ultimate example of the grandfatherly indulgence that humanity has come to expect and demand.

The problem has only gotten worse since Lewis first wrote about it.  The idea of “grandfatherly Christianity” has spread like wildfire through western churches.  We long ago abandoned the idea of “meeting people in their need” (a good thing) to “giving people what they want” (a much more questionable proposition).  The end result is a castrated faith that, in many ways, bears a pale resemblance to what the world it imitates looked like five to ten years before.

And we wonder why people don’t respect the modern church?

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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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Meditatons with C. S. Lewis: The Relief of Atheism

Posted in Atheism, C. S. Lewis, Meditations, Surprised By Joy, tagged , , , , on May 14, 2012| 1 Comment »

And so, little by little, with fluctations which I cannot now trace, I became an apostate, dropping my faith with no sense of loss but with the greatest relief.

–C. S. Lewis Surprised By Joy

Lewis, as a former atheist himself, understood something about that particular belief system* that many life-long Christians completely fail to grasp:  for many people, atheism feels good.  Converting provides instant and complete relief from the massive weight of what it means to be a believer, not only in Christianity but in any of the major world religions.  All of them make claims on your life.  All of them require that you conform yourself, your beliefs, and your actions to a set of standards that you have no control over.  Atheism instantly releases you from all those obligations and, in fact, does so much more: It makes you the sovereign of your own little universe.  That can potentially provide an unparalleled sense of temporary security.  After all, who better to trust with your future than yourself?

This also helps explain why many atheists are so loudly sure of themselves to the point of epistemological absurdity–emotion often sits at the center of their position while their reason provides cover.  Lewis was one of these types.  He came to hate the forced prayers and unjustified legalism of what he had been taught about the Christian faith, and so when atheism presented itself, his emotions led him to grasp at it in intellectual desperation.

Lewis later rejected atheism–though he had to be dragged “kicking and screaming” back into belief.  For Lewis it was simply a issue of truth:  he still believed that there was an external world that he must conform to rather than vice versa.  Through his association with J. R. R. Tolkien and Owen Barfield, he was gradually led to accept proofs that Christianity was true, and therefore he changed his mind a result.

For me, there is another issue that speaks against atheism:  knowledge of myself.  While it sounds like a fine thing to be the sovereign of my own destiny, the more I understand about myself and how little I truly know, the less comfortable I am exercising the kinds of power atheism in theory would grant me over others.  I become even less pleased when I think about others having that kind of absolute authority over myself.  I would think that the Twentieth Century–and the bloodbath than certain atheists like Stalin and Mao made of it–bears out that concern.

That is one reason I am thankful that God created humanity able to both think and to believe.  Properly understood, the strength of each keeps the excess of the other in check.  In Lewis, we see a good example of both.

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*While atheism likes to style itself as a “lack of belief,” it is in fact its own separate religion. Modern atheism puts faith in what Lewis would later call the “Total System,” by which he meant the whole of the natural universe and the measurable phenomena which it produces. Since humanity is the ultimate expression of the intelligent side of the Total System, atheism usually (but not always) begins to treat the human race and its needs with an attitude that borders on mysticism.  This faith is often as blind as it is exclusive, and is also couched in a pseudo religious awe–remember, according to modern atheist thinkers “Forget Jesus.  Stars died so that you might live.”  In that sense, I see no particular difference between the basic fundamentals of atheistic belief and the “religions” they claim to critique.  Of course, this is too big a topic for a footnote!

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.

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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!”

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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: Returning to Fairy Tales

Posted in C. S. Lewis, Meditations, tagged , , , on April 21, 2012| 2 Comments »

My dear Lucy,

I wrote this story for you, but when I began it I had not realized that girls grow quicker than books.  As a result you are already too old for fairy tales, and by the time it is printed and bound you will be older still.  But some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.  You can then take it down from some upper shelf, dust it, and tell me what you think of it.  I shall probably be too deaf to hear, and too old to understand a word you say, but I shall still be

your affectionate Godfather,

C. S. Lewis

From  The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

 One of the amazing things about Lewis as a person was the fact that he never “got too old” for fantastic stories.  The tone of his stories changed over time, it is true, and he went through a period where he was “adult” enough to take himself all too seriously.  Ironically, those are the periods of his life where, as a creative writer, he seemed to make the least impact.  How many people, other than serious fans and students of Lewis, have even heard of Spirits in Bondage which Lewis intended to be his dramatic debut as an author of serious poetry?  Instead, we remember best a small book intended as a gift for a child, written with no pretense, at a time when Lewis himself had reached the point he was describing above.

The pressures of life and of ego oftentimes make us forget to see the wonder in the world around us–physically and spiritually.  We feel the weight of our responsibilities all too keenly.  Responsibilities–to God, to family, to country, to community–are good things that remind us of where our priorities should be, but if we are not careful, they can become vampiric, taking up all of our attentions and sucking the life out of us.  Ego does nothing to help that.  It adds a further set of “requirements” to our list, not because we need to meet them but because our self-image demands it.  And so we trudge along, feeling angry, exhausted, and unappreciated, unable to see the beauty and truth literally sitting at our feet, let alone comprehend any of it.

For everyone, the specifics will look different, but the result is almost always the same–we forget to look things as Christ said, with the eyes of a child.  One blessed day, hopefully, with time and true maturity, we awaken to realize all that we have been missing and where our real priorities should be.  On that day we can read fairy tales again.

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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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