One night in Paris, in December 1976, for three all too brief hours, the Lord Jesus met with me. It was an awesome and unforgettable experience. He spoke of many things that have proved life-changing, but He also talked to me about C.S Lewis. Like so many I have drunk deeply from the work of this literary giant, and feasted especially on the wisdom and images he created in his Narnian chronicles. From a very young age, whenever I read the stories to myself, or Mum read them to me, I was aware of something stirring in me each time Aslan appeared on the scene – and even though I did not know fully how to respond, I knew it was the Lord Jesus ‘knocking’ on the door of my heart, drawing me to something quite beyond myself.
To this day when I read certain passages, I sense very clearly the thinness between this world and the real next. It’s not so different really from when the children finally hear the name of Aslan in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and feel something powerful stirring within each one of them:
‘Peter felt suddenly brave and adventurous. Susan felt as if some delicious smell or some delightful strain of music had just floated by her. And Lucy got the feeling you have when you wake up in the morning and realize that it is the beginning of the holidays or the beginning of summer.’
Knowing how powerfully effective stories are for helping people to grasp hold of challenging concepts, Jesus told many memorable parables to convey heavenly meaning through simple earthly things. Lewis was a fine formal apologist for the faith, but the stories of Narnia are a work of profound imagination rather than a thoroughgoing allegory, let alone an exhaustive theology. There is no call to look to them for our doctrine or spiritual practice, but the stories have the capacity to reach through and beyond our usual reasoning and logic, to highlight truths and to challenge things in us and in the world around that really do need to be faced. And we can really praise God that through His Spirit He has worked again and again to quicken and to challenge so many through each one of these seven short books.
By introducing us to a cast of characters replete with traits we can freely recognise in the lives of those around us, The Chronicles of Narnia offer us a lens through which we can view certain aspects of the great dramas of our own times, in the immediate circle of our acquaintances, as well as on the world stage. They are much more than a welcome escape into an orderly otherworld: they confront us, as they confronted his young protagonists, with the task of following the true Lord, even in the face of serious challenges from evil people and forces. It is often a costly as well as a counterintuitive thing to do. It takes courage to obey all that Aslan asks, especially when a seemingly easier path presents itself, but there is no other way than to ‘trust and obey’ as the children set out to fulfil the plans and commissions that Aslan charges them with.
Beware the great Shift that is happening!
The Chronicles tell of the appearances of Aslan. it is a great thrill when He is said to be ‘on the move’. As we look around us at our own world, we see signs everywhere of the Lord Jesus being on the move across the nations to ‘purify for Himself a people for His own possession, who are eager to do what is good’. (Titus 2:14) There is a first part to that verse, however, that is equally as important, because it speaks of Jesus giving Himself ‘to redeem us from all wickedness’. Evil has been present in the world since the Fall, but the current trends towards protectionism and ultra-nationalism that are ever more increasingly in view in one country after another are creating many new possibilities for ancient manifestations of pride-that-leads-to-violence to resurface, as they have done so many times before throughout human history.
I have found myself being drawn recently to the book that concludes the Narnia series: The Last Battle. It makes for quite disturbing reading, but without it the set would be incomplete, rather as the Bible would be without the revelations in the final book. This is where we see an alien system imposing itself on Narnia, administered at the hands of an alien power (the Calormene) along with the overarching presence of its demonic false god, Tash. [1]
For Lewis, as for the Lord Himself, how we oppose shifts of emphasis that appear to be heading in dangerous directions is a vital matter. Will we just be content to coexist and cooperate with the prevailing spirit, even if we know deep down that much of it seriously inverts biblical teaching? Will we be convinced by the propaganda and swallow it whole, affirming it to be something primarily good, because apparently powerful and effective? Or are we mature enough to be able to discern between good and evil? (Heb. 5:14) Will we, like a substantial remnant of Narnians, remain faithful to our Lord, and refuse to be led astray?
These are the questions facing Narnians in The Last Battle. The catalyst for its final conflict lies not in the rise to power of some all-conquering successor to the usurping King Miraz, the tyrant we meet in Prince Caspian, but in the unlikely shape of a plotting and selfish ape named Shift, whose grand ambition to ‘liberate’ Narnia essentially involves taking Narnians captive to his highly egotistical will.
We first meet this shifty ape at the start of the book alongside his friend Puzzle, the donkey. The narrator of the tale immediately makes the true nature of their relationship clear, for Shift is far more like a cruel and controlling master than a friend. When he comes across a discarded lion skin, he dresses the gentle and easily put upon Puzzle in it, and devises a scheme to pass him off as Aslan. When word gets round that Aslan has returned, everyone from the king downwards is thrilled and happy to hear the news.
For the reader, of course, the irony is sorely painful, for we know from the outset that a great fraud is being practised. The tenson lies in whether these beloved creatures will have the discernment to recognise the false prophet who is emerging in plain sight, and whose character should be easy enough to see through. But swift-thinking Shift muddies the waters by skilfully manipulating the genuine truth that Aslan is not a tame lion, and tells them in no uncertain terms that Aslan has been far too soft with them in the past, and that he is going to lick them into shape now. [2]
It is this injection of a measure of truth into his narrative that permits Shift to convince gullible people that his conduct is justified, even when it flies in the face of everything that Aslan stands for. For fear of offending Aslan, the Ape becomes all powerful in Narnia, and passes a string of ‘executive orders’, cutting down the sacred trees of the forest, for example, and shipping them to traders from Calormen. Narnia is transformed into an unrecognisable place, and ends up being railroaded into the dark evil of the cruel Calormene aegis, the empire that Lewis portrays as symbolising the powers of darkness, and whose leaders had long coveted the wealth of Narnia. Too late, the Narnians wake up and question what is happening.
“No, no, no,” howled the Beasts. “It can’t be true. Aslan would never sell us into slavery to the King of Calormen.”
“It’s all arranged,” the Ape insists. ” And it’s all for your own good. We’ll be able, with the money you earn, to make Narnia a country worth living in. There’ll be oranges and bananas pouring in [3] – and roads and big cities and schools and offices and whips and muzzles and saddles and cages and kennels and prisons – Oh, everything.”
Is it not dismal how successful all too many real-life modern day ‘Shifts’ have been in convincing people to accept a high degree of oppression, which they should have seen through and rejected immediately? When Shift overreaches himself (as tyrants always do sooner or later) and speaks of the reality of whips, kennels and cages, the Bear protests that this is not at all what they want, much preferring their freedom. But Shift retorts that freedom lies in doing what he tells them to do, and the poor Bear is too befuddled to come up with a ready answer.
“H-n-n-h,” grunted the Bear and scratched its head; it found this sort of thing hard to understand.
“Please, please,” said the high voice of a woolly lamb, who was so young that everyone was surprised he dared to speak at all.
“What is it now?” said the Ape. “Be quick.”
“Please,” said the Lamb, “I can’t understand. What have we to do with the Calormenes? We belong to Aslan. They belong to Tash. They have a god called Tash. They say he has four arms and the head of a vulture. They kill men on his altar. I don’t believe there’s any such person as Tash. But if there was, how could Aslan be friends with him?”
All the animals cocked their heads sideways and all their bright eyes flashed towards the Ape. They knew it was the best question anyone had asked yet. The Ape jumped up and spat at the Lamb.
“Baby!” he hissed. “Silly little bleater! Go home to your mother and drink milk. What do you understand of such things? But you others, listen. Tash is only another name for Aslan. All that old idea of us being right and the Calormenes wrong is silly. We know better now. The Calormenes use different words but we all mean the same thing. Tash and Aslan are only two different names for you know Who. That’s why there can never be any quarrel between them. Get that into your heads, you stupid brutes. Tash is Aslan: Aslan is Tash.”
The effect these words had on people were profound. You know how sad your own dog’s face can look sometimes. Think of that and then think of all the faces of those Talking Beasts – all those honest, humble, bewildered birds, bears, badgers, rabbits, moles, and mice – all far sadder than that. Every tail was down, every whisker drooped. It would have broken your heart with very pity to see their faces.
Good King Tirian bursts out that this is a damnable lie, but he is overpowered and tied to a tree. Later, Jill Pole, one of the humans sent from Earth recognises the ‘devilish cunning’ of the Ape’s plan in that, “By mixing a little truth with it, they had made their lie far stronger. What was the good, now, of telling the Beasts that an ass had been dressed up as a lion to deceive them?”
How perfectly Lewis named the Ape, for he successfully ‘shifts’ the thinking of the people away from what Aslan would really have wanted for his creatures. By adding a tiny drop of truth concerning Aslan’s sovereign untamed nature, the Narnians are left bewildered and beguiled, and thereby wide open for the time when more cunning and ruthless actors (Ginger the Cat, and the Calormen captain, Rishda Tarkaan) grow weary of the pompous, greedy ape and take control to become the real power behind this takeover of Narnia – although they continue to use the increasingly unstable and exhausted Ape as a figurehead for their own purposes.
As this deeper evil steals over Narnia, even the ‘Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve’ are unable to roll the clock back and to prevail over it in the way that they have be able to do on previous occasions. They are able to rescue King Tirian from his plight, and his beloved companion, the unicorn Jewel, from his, but as they make their preparations for the ‘last battle’, Calormene soldiers prove too strong and Narnia is overrun.
To all evils there is a limit, and the Emperor-beyond-the-Seas decrees that this is the time to draw the whole world of Narnia to a close. Unable to overcome the Calormenes, seven Narnian kings and queens make their way to Stable Hill. With death imminent and victory assured for the powers of evil, King Tirian performs one last bold act. Even as he does so, he hears behind him a voice ‘strong and calm as the summer sea‘ and darkness vanishes. As he begins to grasp hold of the wonderful, astonishing, beautiful truth, he longs to to share it with everyone, and to show them the great deception that has been worked upon them. “The light is dawning,” he joyfully announces, “the lie broken. Now, Dwarfs, you are free. Tomorrow, I will lead you to free all Narnia. Three cheers for Aslan!”
It all seems so simple: let everyone know that they have been lied to, and then everything will be alright!
But not everyone wants to know the truth. King Tirian had never dreamed that the imposition of a false god would blind Narnians to the real one. Of the thirty dwarves rescued in the battle, all but one refuse to turn to Aslan and fight for Narnia. Having been turned off by the counterfeit, they dismiss all talk of him with a profound cynicism that reminds us of so many in our own day, and take themselves to a place where not even Aslan himself can do anything to convince them, for they have chosen to remain in the dark, rather than risk being taken in again. Their repeated comment that ‘The Dwarves are for the Dwarves’ represents their final fate.
The dwarves’ disillusionment is a reflection of Lewis’s own times. The two world wars had deeply shaken people’s trust in the goodness of God. As one commentator suggests, there was ‘a cacophony of despair’ sounding through the Western world. [4] But neither Lewis, nor his friend JRR Tolkein (the two used to gather to discuss their literary creations in a Malvern pub) shared in this despairing philosophy, choosing instead in their different ways to exalt hope in their writings.
Many believers today have felt betrayed by what they had thought was a firm foundation for their faith letting them down, and are at risk of turning away, or allowing their hearts to become hard and cynical, just as the dwarves did, even at the very moment when Hope itself was coming to their aid. As Aslan comments sadly, in a comment redolent with relevance for our own times, “They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own mind, yet they are in that prison, and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”
The humans mourn over the collapse of Narnia, but Aslan has other work to do. Now, three times over, the Great Lion roars ‘TIME!’ and immediately Time itself starts to fold, and to sweep away everything that Narnia had been. Drawing no doubt on passages in Revelation and Hebrews, a precipitous and glorious sequence of wonderful new happenings unfurl.
‘The stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.’
‘They will perish, but You remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
You will roll them up like a robe;
like a garment they will be changed.
But You remain the same,
and Your years will never end.’
There was no need for the dwarves to have despaired. History belongs to the Lord, and He will bring it to its proper conclusion. If we will look and listen, He will reveal Himself in the events that are unfolding around us, and give us a message to share and a course of action to follow. There is hope and truth and, when we come to Heaven, we will not only see that everything that the biblical writers said about it is true, but also that there is so, so much more to discover. Like the Narnians, may we be permitted to stride into its glories and delights, making ever fresh and further great discoveries. [5]
In the meantime, however, we must continue to discern and respond to both the good that is God, and to counter the evil that is at work in our own world and time. For as I hint in part two of this article, I believe that the revolution that Shift brought about has at least a partial counterpart in the far-reaching changes that President Trump is now setting in place in America.
[1] It is interesting to read how different readers interpret Lewis’s depiction of Tash from a biblical viewpoint. Those of us versed in spiritual warfare will find our own way of interpreting both his presence and his nature.
Far more to the point, however, is getting to grips with our real spiritual warfare against the one whom the Bible describes as the god of this world.
[2] See this website for a synopsis of the plot.
[3] An attractive thought for British children in the post war years, when austerity rationing was still very much in people’s minds and memories.
[4] Dr. Joseph Loconte, Associate Professor of History at The King’s College in New York City, quoted in this article.
[5] You can find many wonderful glimpses of the Heavenly City and insights into Paradise in Imagine Heaven, John Burke’s collection of experiences from those who claim to have been permitted to visit it.
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