The following excerpt from A Table in the Mist, reminded me of a favorite passage from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which follows it.
"God cannot be manipulated by our behavior. He is not to be coddled or possessed or used. He is to be feared....God is not safe. He is not manageable. His ways are not your ways, his thoughts not your thoughts. He does not follow your rationalizations.
"...It is important to realize that fear means fear. Even though it is reverential fear and even though you also love and trust God, you may not evacuate the word 'fear' of the element of terror, trepidation, alarm, or dread. You cannot collapse fear into faith or love. Fear is a crucial element of the believer's personal response to the living God.
"...Subtract fear from a Christian's response to God and what remains is a faithless Christian."
"Who is Aslan?" asked Susan.
"Aslan?" said Mr Beaver. "Why, don't you know? He's the King. He's the Lord of the whole wood, but not often here, you understand...He is in Narnia at this moment. He'll settle the White Queen all right..."
"She won't turn him into stone too?" said Edmund.
"Lord love you, Son of Adam, what a simple thing to say!" answered Mr Beaver with a great laugh. "Turn him into stone? If she can stand on her two feet and look him in the face it'll be the most she can do and more than I can expect of her. No, no. He'll put all to rights as it says in an old rhyme in these parts:
Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.
"You'll understand when you see him...I'm to lead you where you shall meet him."
"Is - is he a man?" asked Lucy.
"Aslan a man!" said Mr Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emporer-beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of the Beasts? Aslan is a lion - the Lion, the great Lion."
"Ooh!" said Susan, "I'd thought he was a man. Is he - quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."
"That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs Beaver; "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."
"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.
"Safe?" said Mr Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."
"...they shall seek me diligently, but they shall not find me, because they did not choose the fear of Yahweh...their waywardness shall kill them and their complacency shall destroy them. But he who listens to me shall live securely, and shall be at ease from the dread of evil." Proverbs 1: 28-33
8 comments:
That is one of my favorite, if not most favorite Chronicles dialog, too.
The whole book is amazing, isn't it?! Everytime I read it I am astonished anew at Lewis' ability to incorporate deep truths so extensively into his fiction...layer upon layer. I am unable to think that way on my own, which makes it even more awe-inspiring for me.
I would encourage you to go on and read Lewis' "Space Trilogy" too. Particularly the first two of the three: "Out of the Silent Planet" and "Perelandra" (a potential "Fall" on another planet [Venus a.k.a. "Perelandra"]). These works are much overlooked by many, I think, but well up to the mark for Lewis' brilliance as a "fiction" (more truth than fiction, of course) writer.
Hey, Mr. Dad: You may notice I have "Out of the Silent Planet" listed to the left as one of my Favorite Books. I make it a practice to read books before listing them as favorites. :-)
I concur...they're brilliant!!
So, when does "Perelandra" come onto your reading list?
Onto my Favorites List? I sort of let "Out of the Silent Planet" represent the whole trilogy - although I haven't yet read "That Hideous Strength."
In the same way, "Nicholas Nickelby" represents the larger body of Dickens work, and "Persuasion" represents Jane Austen's work. I choose the one I prefer, even if only slightly, for my favorites list.
Let me put in a good word for "That Hideous Strength" -- it is probably the most difficult book of the trilogy to enjoy, but it's the most rewarding of Lewis' fiction, I think. It doesn't have as much fantastic imagery as the other two books, taking place as it does entirely on Earth; but the subtitle is "A Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups", and as Lewis says in the introduction, all fairytales are set against a mundane background. Lewis' contributions to apologetics and theology are not trivial, but they pale in comparison to his work in furnishing the Christian imagination, and I think "That Hideous Strength" does so in a powerful way precisely because it draws these imaginative elements into mundane adult life just as the Narnia books do so into childhood life.
Mr. Short,
Your highly articulate pitch for "That Hideous Strength" is convincing enough to cause me to move it ahead on my reading list! Thanks for your input. Well spoken...well taken.
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