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livNarnia-related conversations in several places have sparked my curiosity: where were you when you understood that the Narnia books are about Christianity? Or did you always know?
I read The Magician's Nephew and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when I was quite little, maybe 5 or 6 ish? I didn't know about reading in publication rather than chronological order, and I have an unusual degree of affection for The Magician's Nephew. I found it slightly weird, but, well, I was reading a lot of books that were really meant for somewhat older kids (or even adults) and I was generally used to the idea that everything in books is weird and half-understood.
So I went looking for more books in the series, and found Prince Caspian which felt very sequel-ish, the Pevensies return to Narnia and a bunch of unmemorable stuff happens. And then I found The voyage of the Dawn Treader, which felt properly exciting again (I do slightly muddle it in memory with Arthur Ransome's We didn't mean to go to sea). And then there's that scene at the end where Aslan turns out to be a Lamb as well as a Lion, and that was the moment where my lovely portal fantasy turned out to be preaching about Jesus.
One of the discussions I read, I think on Making Light, roughly divided people into two groups, more or less that people from a Christian background realize the allegory at the end of Dawn Treader, and people from non-Christian backgrounds get all the way through to The Last Battle with their innocence intact. I don't know why as a seven-year-old Jewish kid I had any idea about Jesus as the Sacrificial Lamb, I think I was just a sponge for random facts about about the world.
The thing is that this was really bad timing for me, because I had just started at a new school and I was in a class with a teacher who bullied me really badly, for lots of reasons but a prominent one was that she was upset that I didn't share her Christian beliefs. So I was getting shouted at a lot for not believing in Jesus and particularly for not believing in Original Sin (which the teacher felt should have been a gimme as it's in the Old Testament), and to find out that Aslan, the fantasy character I loved, was Jesus after all was really upsetting.
I mean, getting bullied about religion had made me really stubborn about the fact that I don't believe in Jesus. So I think my main feeling was not the more typically reported sense of betrayal that preaching was sneaked into the story, but more like feeling excluded, this story was not for me, it was for Christian children. I felt vaguely guilty for cheering for Aslan, given that I was personally fighting for my right not to consider that I was Saved by Jesus' sacrifice, whereas within the story I had accepted the idea that Aslan's sacrifice saved Edmund. It wasn't until I was older that I started worrying about whether Aslan's sacrifice was meaningful if he was really the creator of Narnia and outside the rules that normally mean dead people have to stay dead.
Later on I met OICCU types (I'm always tempted to call them oiks) who quoted Lewis at me, and I thought, you're not tapping into childhood nostalgia, you're evoking childhood misery because it's only been a decade since last time someone tried to bully me into believing in Jesus. Besides, I may have quibbles with how CS Lewis understood religion, but college Christian Union zealots really really don't understand Lewis.
I read The Magician's Nephew and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when I was quite little, maybe 5 or 6 ish? I didn't know about reading in publication rather than chronological order, and I have an unusual degree of affection for The Magician's Nephew. I found it slightly weird, but, well, I was reading a lot of books that were really meant for somewhat older kids (or even adults) and I was generally used to the idea that everything in books is weird and half-understood.
So I went looking for more books in the series, and found Prince Caspian which felt very sequel-ish, the Pevensies return to Narnia and a bunch of unmemorable stuff happens. And then I found The voyage of the Dawn Treader, which felt properly exciting again (I do slightly muddle it in memory with Arthur Ransome's We didn't mean to go to sea). And then there's that scene at the end where Aslan turns out to be a Lamb as well as a Lion, and that was the moment where my lovely portal fantasy turned out to be preaching about Jesus.
One of the discussions I read, I think on Making Light, roughly divided people into two groups, more or less that people from a Christian background realize the allegory at the end of Dawn Treader, and people from non-Christian backgrounds get all the way through to The Last Battle with their innocence intact. I don't know why as a seven-year-old Jewish kid I had any idea about Jesus as the Sacrificial Lamb, I think I was just a sponge for random facts about about the world.
The thing is that this was really bad timing for me, because I had just started at a new school and I was in a class with a teacher who bullied me really badly, for lots of reasons but a prominent one was that she was upset that I didn't share her Christian beliefs. So I was getting shouted at a lot for not believing in Jesus and particularly for not believing in Original Sin (which the teacher felt should have been a gimme as it's in the Old Testament), and to find out that Aslan, the fantasy character I loved, was Jesus after all was really upsetting.
I mean, getting bullied about religion had made me really stubborn about the fact that I don't believe in Jesus. So I think my main feeling was not the more typically reported sense of betrayal that preaching was sneaked into the story, but more like feeling excluded, this story was not for me, it was for Christian children. I felt vaguely guilty for cheering for Aslan, given that I was personally fighting for my right not to consider that I was Saved by Jesus' sacrifice, whereas within the story I had accepted the idea that Aslan's sacrifice saved Edmund. It wasn't until I was older that I started worrying about whether Aslan's sacrifice was meaningful if he was really the creator of Narnia and outside the rules that normally mean dead people have to stay dead.
Later on I met OICCU types (I'm always tempted to call them oiks) who quoted Lewis at me, and I thought, you're not tapping into childhood nostalgia, you're evoking childhood misery because it's only been a decade since last time someone tried to bully me into believing in Jesus. Besides, I may have quibbles with how CS Lewis understood religion, but college Christian Union zealots really really don't understand Lewis.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-06-26 05:45 am (UTC)I read in publication order, and – I'm surprised nobody else mentions this – had a grunch of exclusion when I got to Father Christmas in LWW. I kind of sighed over it and rolled my eyes, and figured (I was about 9 at the time) that the author must simply be so religiously provincial it didn't occur to him that Christmas was a holiday specific to Christians. I mean, my literal first thought was, "Oh, come on, Narnia has Jesus in it? Do they have their own Jesus or did the one in this world suffice to die for their sins? *eyeroll*"
Also, apparently unlike everybody else, I didn't think Aslan's sacrifice in LWW was notably Christ-like, because I was already well-aware that self-sacrificing deathless kings are not a meme owned by Christianity. Also, Aslan gives up himself to save one person, not many, which did not seem at all analogous to me.
But I eventually got to the end of the VotDT, the bit with the Lion and the Lamb, and like a lot of people, had a lightbulb go on.
It's just that in my case, it was a slightly different lightbulb.
I thought: "Holy crap, Lewis thinks Aslan's supposed to be Jesus... and he's wrong."
It took me a very long time to get the language to explain the incongruity I was observing. Adulthood really. But what I was twigging to was that the archetypes don't match.
Lewis thought he was channeling the Christian savior into the character of Aslan. He was channeling a god, alright. Just not that one.
You know that bit about good Tash worshippers actually being unwitting Aslan worshippers? Just like that: people, including Lewis, who think that in adoring Aslan they're adoring Jesus, are actually adoring some other god. Some older, quite pagan, god.
So, that's when I knew that they're supposed to be about Christianity. But where was I when I understood that the Narnia books are about Christianity? Oh, I haven't ever understood any such thing.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-06-26 10:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2015-06-27 07:59 am (UTC)Somewhat less extremely, someone who would bully and shame someone for not "being a Christian" is clearly not speaking truth in love, and by alienating people from the faith in a petty, hate-inspiring and not-martyr-creating way may be even more effective in serving their true master than the daeshole terrorist.
Besides, I think she's got a real good point - especially if the starting assumption is that "Jesus" is the Jesus of the sort of Christianity in which Santa Claus is the main symbol around the time of the north-winter solstice.
(sorry if I seem to be stalking you - I'm just going down all these many comments and replying as I see things worth replying to.)
(no subject)
Date: 2015-06-27 10:07 am (UTC)I definitely have had a similar reaction to SF or fantasy books where Christian symbols show up and have no reasonable basis in the worldbuilding, but I don't remember being that bothered by Father Christmas, I think because Narnia seemed to be connected to our world in a way that follows magical rather than logical rules, it's not like an alien planet or a completely independent secondary world.
And I'm impressed at your youthful knowledge of as a mythological trope .And that you recognized what I've heard from a lot of adult commentators about Lewis really being in sympathy with rather Pagan thought, even though he really strongly wanted to identify as Christian.