So this is why saviors aplenty turn up in every land and from age to age. Human urge unrestrained too late realizing it has lost all wants to recover it somehow. In passion trampling down justice, we want to restore it, make it ‘as it was’ but we don’t know how, and we refuse to believe that what we’ve done can’t be reversed. Sick as we are, we would rather go to a quack and be told we’ll get better ‘by and by’ than wait for a real doctor to show up. If he did, what would he do to us? We suspect the treatment would hurt, might be unbearable, maybe even kill us. Then there’d be no one left to feel better. If that’s what the doctor will do, I may as well stay home. My medicine cabinet has drugs ‘for whatever ails you.’
Back to the story of Edmund and the White Witch (for that is who she actually is, not a queen), after he betrays the whereabouts of his brother and sisters, he has no choice now but to go along for the ride, as the witch prepares her pursuit by stealth, ‘use the sleigh without bells,’ of the other members of his family. He doesn’t yet know why this madwoman wants to capture them. The fact is, that all four brothers and sisters have been called, summoned out of their world—our world, earth—to fill roles assigned to them by prophecy, ‘When Adam’s flesh and Adam’s bone sits at Cair Paravel in throne, the evil time will be over and done.’ But only together can they fulfill the prophecy, and inherit a kingdom.
Sounds vaguely familiar? It’s no secret that C. S. Lewis wrote, as children’s literature, and mythologically, Christian theology of a very high order. He must’ve known, being a man of our times, how jaded the Christian message now sounds to our ears. A few of those ears were caught by these strange tales, and made to take another look at the real story in the real world. Ironic that for some of us, we must look away into a myth to find the mythless God. Humanity in its condition universally deflected produced myths to declare our dissatisfaction with the world we have made. And the Divine Nature in His wisdom has put on our flesh to dissolve our diseases and restore us to the world that He has made.
And that is no tray of stale bread and water.
2 comments:
The BBC Narnia mini-series was so much better than the blockbuster movie.
Yes, indeed! and why? Because it was a faithful rendition in film of what Lewis wrote.
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