Forming Faith in the Chronicles of Narnia

In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed.

Clive Staples Lewis, called Jack by his friends and family, is internationally known as a prolific Christian author, whose musings on God and faith are made all the more interesting because he famously converted from the atheism he’d embraced as an adolescent to Christianity. His conversion came about over the course of many years and was impacted by reading, his experiences as a soldier in WWI, and his studies in the classics, all of which appear to have presented Lewis with an increasing sense of the Divine in the world and in his experiences.

Many of us were first introduced, of course, to the work of CS Lewis through The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and the six additional books of the Chronicles of Narnia series. I remember my first copy of Lion, as it is familiarly called in CS Lewis scholarship circles. It came to me, as so many of my best childhood literary discoveries did, from the wonderland that was the annual school book fair. I was about the same age as the young heroine of the story, Lucy Pevensie, and as I read and reread that book over the next few years, the lessons we learned together in Narnia informed me personally and spiritually. As a child, I was more like Lucy than I was like any of her siblings – the youngest, sensitive yet courageous, feisty, and deeply empathetic. 

My older brother also loved Lion, and received a boxed set of all seven books in the series. I remember him reading Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and handing them off to me, convinced I would love them as much as I had the first story. Yet they failed to capture me, or I should probably admit, I failed to let myself be captured by them. Normally a voracious reader, I couldn’t put into words at that young age what kept me from connecting to the pages of Lucy’s continuing adventures, or the series prequel.

A few years ago, as an adult, I returned to the Narnia series and devoured all seven books. I cried, repeatedly, at the beauty, the humanity, and the divinity Lewis manages to hold within these stories. I wondered at his ability to create metaphorical land—or set of lands—and adventures that so brilliantly hold the mystery that is Christianity. 

Looking back, I believe that part of my youthful inability to read past The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was that Aslan didn’t feel present enough to me in Prince Caspian or The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I needed him, and I needed him to stay close, at that age. What that says about me, and my developing faith as a child, is probably worth exploring, but I will not ask you to venture down that path with me today. How wonderful then to read, as an adult, his words at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, as Aslan sends Lucy, Edmund, and their cousin Eustace back to their own world – our world.

Lucy, grieving, cries, “It isn’t Narnia, you know. It’s you. We shan’t meet you there. And how can we live, never meeting you?”

“But you shall meet me, dear one,” said Aslan.

“Are – are you there too, Sir?” said Edmund.

“I am,” said Aslan. “But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the reason why you were brought here to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there.” (italics mine…I mean…go back and read that again!)

In a world that moves too fast, that is filled with division, with pain, with what feels like crisis after crisis, I ask all parents, grandparents, godparents…anyone who spends time with and cares about the spiritual formation of children…read the Narnia series. Read them with the children in your lives. Read them yourself. Read them years ago? Read them again. Never read them? Read them. 

And as you read them with the young people in your life, the great gift that CS Lewis has granted us is this: you don’t have to explain. You do not need to find the words to describe the Divine, because Lewis has done so, and with a profound beauty that is nearly overwhelming. Read, and if the children ask questions like, “Is Aslan really Jesus,” you have permission to reply, simply, “I wonder?”

Someday you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

Let that day be today; you’ll be glad you did.