Theological Lessons from the Children's Reading Section

The great Christian apologetic C.S. Lewis wrote many books during the span of his lifetime. We here at Insense highly recommend all of them, even a certain series that is supposed by many to have been written for children. Of course I am talking about the beloved Chronicles of Narnia. The Chronicles entail a number of journeys and adventures through the fantasy realm known as Narnia. The main characters in every book are indeed all children, and therefore appeal very greatly to a younger audience. All of the books, however, all contain strong allegorical and metaphorical allusions to Christianity and the Bible, well in keeping with the author and his other works. This latter fact makes the series an exciting read for even more mature readers of adult age. It is surprising the number of referances to a deeper meaning one can find included into the books. One that particularly stuck out to me came from the fourth book in the series, Prince Caspian. It was made by the youngest of the children, Lucy, after the party she was traveling with was attacked by a bear. She raised the issue that it would have been horrible if the bear was actually a friendly Old Narnian on their side rather than a bear bent on having a tasty human morsel for lunch. The dwarf who ended up disposing of the bear with a well placed arrow made the comment that it was almost certainly a real "dumb" bear because there were almost no true and noble Old Narnians left alive. C.S. Lewis, and Lucy, saw a very prophetic thing here that she made known through her comment:

"Wouldn't it be dreadful if some day, in our own world, at home, men started going wild inside, like the animals here, and still looked like men, so that you'd never know which were which?"

Unfortunately enough, if Lucy (or Lewis) were alive today they would be heartbroken as to what they would see. People today in our world act no better than animals sometimes. Fornication and adultery are rampant among high schools, colleges, and disturbingly even work places. Murder is more frequent, and now it even takes the form of abortion and euthanasia. Islamic fundamentalists destroy as many lives as they can because "God commanded them to." The world is truly a sad place and C.S. Lewis was able to cleverly insert this all into one single line from a children's book. People today do act no better than animals sometimes, actually most of the time, and it will not get better until Christ returns and takes his rightful place.

~Tribal~