Narnia and Camelot: A Tribute to C.S. Lewis
Dying on the same day, JFK and C.S. Lewis exemplify two contrasting reasons for hope. |
Courtesy of The Wade Center
4,694 miles—that's what separates Dallas, Texas from Oxford, England.
But on November 22, 1963, they were brought together in the deaths of
two influential men called "Jack" – John F. Kennedy and C.S. Lewis.
I don't remember that day—my parents had not yet married, let alone had
any children. Yet, that day would be significant for many reasons and
to many people—including me.
The president of the United States had been assassinated and the eyes
of the world turned to Dallas, Texas. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic
Ocean, an Oxford professor collapsed in his bedroom, succumbing to an
illness that had ravaged his body for more than two years.
Seeing the president shot dead as he rode through the streets will
dominate the news and grab the attention of everyone. Lewis' death in
his home due to a kidney illness he had been living with since 1961
doesn't jar the senses and beg for headlines quite as much. But, the
latter had much more influence on me than the former.
Over the next decade of upheaval, Lewis' works remained almost dormant.
Disillusionment following the assassination of JFK and Bobby Kennedy,
Vietnam, the civil rights movement and the sexual revolution pushed
aside his place in the culture.
But turmoil and revolution can only last so long. People needed
something solid. There was Lewis, ready to be rediscovered by a
generation of Christians looking to engage culture and move beyond the
isolationist mindset of fundamentalism.
The first book I read was Out of the Silent Planet and read through the entire Space Trilogy.
I was a young teen at the time and my mother (a new Christian) gave
them to me. I knew—because she made a point of telling me—he was a
Christian, but I did not know just how much of an influence he would
have on me later. I simply liked to read science fiction and I loved the
idea that a Christian would write such... and then later saw more such
writing in the Chronicles of Narnia.
But, it was his other writings that would later build my passion for accesible theology. It was first Mere Christianity, which I would later share with hundreds of different people as an apologetic defense of the gospel. Then, later, it was The Screwtape Letters, Miracles, The Problem of Pain, and Surprised by Joy. I read them all as a teenager and again later as an adult.
Honestly, I was unimpressed with a lot of the teen books for Christians
in those days. Having been raised in a nominally Catholic home outside
of New York City, and having come to Christ in an Episcopal Church, I
did not relate to many of the bubble gum devotionals that were birthed
from the evangelical world at that time. As a young, recently converted
believer, I was drawn to his writing—an articulate Anglican talking so
much about this Jesus.
To me, Lewis made it OK to love Jesus and have a brain.
Half a century later, we still read Lewis because he wrote in such an
accessible, but passionate manner about the convictions of our faith. He
was an atheist whose life had been transformed by Christ. In a lecture
to the Oxford Socratic Club entitled, he said, "I believe in
Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see
it, but because by it I see everything else."
He was able to communicate with reason and imagination. The same mind that developed the logical arguments within Mere Christianity
created the fantasy world of Narnia. And Lewis did so because he was
informed and shaped by his Christian faith. He wanted others to know
Christ as he knew Him.
In many ways, Lewis was before his time. There has been a recent
emphasis on telling the story of Scripture. When we were developing The Gospel Project,
this was part of our focus—helping people see the unifying story within
the Bible. With Narnia, Lewis wanted to communicate the biblical truth
through fictional stories.
He discovered that people would automatically become defensive if the
conversation turned to spiritual matters. Even in his own childhood, he
felt his feelings toward Christianity were hampered because they seem to
be obligated. The way around that, he discovered, was through a story.
"But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary
world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School
associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their
real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I
thought one could."
So 50 years after his death, Lewis still influences countless readers,
including many whose dragons are caught unaware. Yet those who believed
Kennedy would usher in an age of prosperity and peace were confronted
with the very reason Scripture tells us to not place our hope in
princes.
Perhaps Camelot and Narnia are a reminder to us. We should not attempt
to use political means to accomplish spiritual goals. Our hope for
change hearts does not come at the ballot box, but rather as we form
relationships with others and tell them the story that has transformed
us. Our hope flows from a blood-stained cross and an empty tomb, not
Supreme Court rulings or Oval Office decisions.
On that fateful November day, Camelot was over, but Narnia lives on.
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