Through the Wardrobe with C. S. Lewis

A lot of people got their first introduction to C. S. Lewis over Christmas a few years ago when their kids dragged them to see the movie The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. The film was based on the first of seven books penned by Lewis in a children's series called The Chronicles of Narnia. In the story four children travel through a magical wardrobe to emerge in the strange and mystical land of Narnia where animals speak and the world is locked in a perpetual Christmas-less winter while awaiting Spring that seems destined never to come. The second in the series, Prince Caspian, comes out May 16 when, no doubt, children will drag their parents back to the theatres for the second installment.

My own introduction to Lewis, however, goes back to my college days in the 70's when I studied English. A professor, knowing I was headed for seminary, suggested that I read Lewis as a model for the minister's primary task of helping people to make sense of faith in their day-to-day lives. I devoured his writings voraciously, and he became for me a life-long conversation partner with whom to discuss the “big issues.” Lewis’ writings have not only stood the test of time, but he himself has become for me, save Jesus of Nazareth, the single most important spiritual influence on my life.

And I’m not alone in this. This Oxford and Cambridge professor, though he died in 1963 (November 22nd to be exact, the same day JFK was assassinated), continues to be for many a significant voice well into the 21st century. His writings are more popular now than they were when he was alive. His non-fiction writings are for the most part all apologetic in character; that is, they are aimed at making Christianity credible to a thinking public. The most popular among them, Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, and The Four Loves, continue to draw countless readers into a conversation about life, faith, what it means to believe in God, and what it means to be a “mere Christian.”

Why is Lewis so popular among serious persons who want to think deeply about the “big issues” of life? Well, those who have found Lewis to be a reliable guide into these subjects will have to answer for themselves, but my own experience with Lewis points up three things that he just does better than anyone else.

First, he may have the finest mind I’ve ever encountered. His commitment to careful and correct thinking (logic) is relentless and unremitting. He will not abide sloppy thinking, and he will anticipate and expose it wherever he finds it. That is to say, if you’re not “into thinking,” don’t read Lewis. If, on the other hand, you want carefully argued reasons for believing what you believe, Lewis will gladly guide you.

Second, Lewis has an uncanny knack for knowing just the right example, model, or illustration to help you understand what appears at first sight to be a hopelessly complex idea. For example, in explaining how salvation is both God’s gift to us and our work to do, Lewis quips, “God is easy to please but hard to satisfy.” Then, he goes on to say that every parent joyously celebrates their baby’s first stumbling efforts in learning to walk. But that same parent will never be satisfied until their child can stride confidently across the room. In the same way, he says, God welcomes our most meager stumbling efforts to be the persons he created us to be, but will never be satisfied until we in fact become the persons he created us to be.

Finally, Lewis is a passionate writer. He believes what he’s saying, and it comes through. Agree with him, or disagree with him, but you will not read Lewis with indifference. He draws you in with careful reasoning and homey illustrations, and then, before you realize what’s happened, you're hooked. That passion is in the service of his belief that God has really broken in and broken through to our world and revealed himself to us. That not everyone is aware of it is more a function of our closed-off, two-dimensional thinking than the credibility of God’s self-revelation. But for those who have the courage to “part the wardrobe” with Lewis, a mystical and magical world awaits through which Lewis is all too happy to act as guide.

Wright is Wrong

What I’m about to say requires two caveats lest I be misunderstood, or worse, misrepresented. First, I have no intention, or interest for that matter, of endorsing anybody for president, for two reasons really: (1) nobody cares, (2) nobody’s business. That said, I do want to comment on the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright’s (Senator Obama’s pastor) highly publicized statements made in sermons over the past few years, not so much as to his politics as his theology, which for Dr. Wright seem to be the same. And that’s what troubles me. In theological terms, the particular constellation of ideas that Dr. Wright espouses in his sermons typically goes by the name “liberation theology.” Simply put, liberation theology understands the Christian doctrine of “salvation” exclusively in terms of “justice” – social justice, economic justice, gender justice, racial justice, environmental justice, etc. The means of creating this “justice” is power; more specifically, a power shift – taking the power away from those who have it and giving it to those who don’t thereby putting the power in the hands of the “right people,” rather than the “wrong people,” thus creating “justice.” I think you know my policy on “power” (see my blog “Pagan Power”).

What I want to comment on is the reductionism at work in all these theologies that wants to reduce the New Testament concept of the “Kingdom of God” to achieving justice (in whatever form) in this world. Anyone who takes the New Testament seriously cannot escape the fact (though some, like Marcus Borg, try) that when Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God he meant “another world” that was breaking in and breaking through into this world, but which should never be confused with this world. (If that needs to be defended to you, you need to spend more time reading “the words in red”!) Jesus’ disciples, then and now, are those who have caught sight of and been captured by this “other world” he called the “Kingdom of God,” and even though they are yet in this world, they are no longer “of” it. As Will Willimon and Stan Hauerwas termed it in their groundbreaking book some years back, the Church is a “colony” of the Kingdom of God, and Christians are “Resident Aliens,” in the world but not “of” it. What that means, among other things, is that Christians can never again feel “at home” in this world because we believe that this world as we know it is doomed and that another world called the “Kingdom of God” is already dawning which will not so much “fix” this world as replace it with a whole new one, at first attitudinally, and eventually (in God’s good time) actually. Therefore, any theology of the Kingdom of God, the Church, and the Christian life that reduces the agenda to “fixing” this world is reductionistic and wrong-headed.

Now the second caveat: That doesn’t mean that Christians don’t have a stake in “justice” issues. Of course we do! Christians, because we’re Christians, must be concerned with social justice and economic justice and gender justice and racial justice and environmental justice, etc. But not because we believe that if we can achieve these things we will, thereby, have brought about the Kingdom of God. Rather we work for these things solely because we’re Christians and that’s what Christians do.

I love the story Jesus told in Matthew 25 about the “Sheep and the Goats.” He said that at the final judgment it will be like a shepherd dividing sheep from goats ¬– sheep on the right, goats on the left (no sublimated political message intended). And the criteria for judgment? “I was hungry and you fed me (or didn’t feed me); I was thirsty and you gave me to drink (or you didn’t), etc.” What strikes me in this story is the fact, usually overlooked, that neither the redeemed nor the damned knew they were redeemed or damned. They were merely being what they were. “When did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or in prison, etc. and we didn’t (or did) help you?” When you stand in the Dock, faking and feigning won’t get it, and it’s too late for reformation – you are what you are. Find a stray cat, bring him into your house, bathe him, feed him, give him a name (call him “George”) and after a while you start to feel as though George is a member of the family, not really a cat anymore at all. But bring a mouse in the house and put it in front of George and you’ll find out what a cat is every time. Jesus says, “Put an injustice in front of a Christian and you’ll find out what a Christian is, or isn’t, every time.” Of course Christians are concerned about justice. We’re Christians, for heaven’s sake!

But notice, the purpose of feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, etc. was not to “eliminate poverty in our lifetime” or “to redistribute the wealth” or “to bring about the Kingdom of God by means of establishing social justice;” rather, the redeemed feed the hungry and visit the sick and help the poor because that’s who they are; that’s what “redeemed” do.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.