My daughter and I watched The Magic Never Ends yesterday. According to the Duncan Group’s website:

“The film chronicles Lewis’ life from his early days in Ireland, through his military service, to his acclaimed career at Oxford University. Many of his books are covered in detail including The Chronicles of Narnia, Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters and A Grief Observed. The show also features The Inklings, The Kilns, and Lewis’ renowned love story with his wife, Joy.”

Lewis’ approach to Christianity fascinates me - especially since it is full of myth and fantasy. To him, fairy tales, myth and fantasy carry more truth than any other kind of writing and he had no problem mixing paganism with Christianity in his stories.

Dabney Hart, PhD is interviewed on the film and says that myth is the truth that has survived and the reason it has survived is that it appeals to the human imagination. Ancient myths of all cultures represented the human imagination’s attempt to express the relationship between human beings and divine power. And of course that’s why there are so many similarities throughout cultures.

Lewis saw Christianity as the only true myth in that it was the only myth that was historical fact. In this way, it was the only “true” religion.

But that is not the same thing as saying it is the only valid religion as many conservative Christians claim he believed. I’m not sure I completely understand what he means by this and wonder if perhaps his belief that Christianity is the only “true” religion is widely misunderstood?

My daughter and I finished the first book of Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia series tonight - The Magician’s Nephew. (We’re on to the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe tomorrow.)

The Magician’s Nephew is the Genesis story of Narnia. It explains how Narnia was created and how evil enters the world. My daughter and I also read the Greek myth of Pandora’s Box (well, actually Pandora’s Jar) and the creation story in the Bible story for comparison’s sake. They are all quite similar actually.

Aslan is the Creator (God). He is able to create through thought. His breath is the Holy Spirit. The apple represents the fruit of temptation as it does in Genesis (which parallels Pandora’s sealed jar.)

I found the idea that Aslan creates through thought quite interesting so am looking forward to how Lewis continues this idea.

The story ends with the knowledge that Narnia will regress.

Speaking of regression, I looked up Hesiod Five Ages of Man on Wikipedia today. Here is what it said:

The Ages of Man are the stages of human existence on the Earth according to Classical mythology.

In his Works and Days, the Boeotian poet Hesiod described Five Ages of Man:

1. The Golden Age - This took place during the reign of Cronus. Peace and harmony prevailed during this age. Humans did not grow old, but died peacefully. Spring was eternal and people were fed on acorns from a great oak as well as wild fruits and honey that dripped from the trees. This race eventually died out.
2. The Silver Age - These people lived for one hundred years as children without growing up, then they suddenly aged and died. Zeus destroyed these people because of their impiety.
3. The Bronze Age - These humans were fierce and warlike and their tools and implements were made of bronze. They destroyed one another in wars.
4. The Heroic Age - In this period lived noble demigods and heroes. This race of humans died and went to Elysium.
5. The Iron Age - This is the current age where humans bicker and fight, and have to struggle to eke out their existence. Zeus will someday destroy this race of humans.

Sounds more like a conservative Christian perspective than the idea that we are moving out of the iron age and back into the bronze age. Hesiod was writing this around 700 BCE.

It will also be interesting to see how (and even if) this plays out throughout the Chronicles.

The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

by Andrew Adamson

My daughter and I went to see The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe which we both absolutely loved. Her comment on the way out of the movie theater, which almost made me stop the car, was “I didn’t really like the movie because I couldn’t tell who Jesus was.”

I later learned that this was something my son had been repeating based upon the adult conversation at the Christmas Eve party we attended. Which is true – pretty much everyone present had seen the movie and none of them (not one single one) understood why it was a Christian movie. My daughter was completely joking but she said it in such a deadpan way I had no idea she was joking. (My son and I had read 3 books of the series when he was 8 or 9). The reality is, the kids get why this is a Christian movie. What’s wrong with most adults? Lack of imagination, I tell ya! Do the adults not know that this story was written by one of the most influential thinkers of our contemporary times? C.S. Lewis’ philosophies are right up their with Freud in terms of their influence upon Western civilization! And of course he was right-on with his assessment of the adult inability to recognize what possibilities exist within such mundane things as a wardrobe.

Anyway, I’m grateful for my daughter’s deadpan comment and the fact that she had enough understanding of the content of the movie to make such a deadpan response! (She hadn’t even read the book!)