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By Diane Singer|Published Date: May 03, 2010
And he [Jesus] told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. He who has ears, let him hear.” –- Matthew 13:3-9
On Fairy Stories
In his essay, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to be Said,” C.S. Lewis – Medieval and Renaissance scholar, professor at Oxford and Cambridge, and one of the 20th century’s most lucid apologists for the Christian faith – explains why he stooped, if you will, to writing fantasy stories:
I wrote fairy tales because the Fairy Tale seemed the ideal Form for the stuff I had to say. Then, of course, the Man in me began to have his turn. I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed [sic] much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could. [1]
One result of this desire to “steal past those watchful dragons,” of course, is Lewis’ marvelous seven-book series, The Chronicles of Narnia, which continues to delight and teach children of all ages about heroism and cowardice, friendship and betrayal, love and sacrifice, forgiveness and redemption, and such weighty topics as creation, the fall, substitutionary death, salvation, eternal life, and the ultimate triumph of good over evil.[2]
Of course, Lewis admits that he did not start out with some grand Christian theme in mind when he began writing The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Instead, he started with images (a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion); and in the “bubbling up” process that all writing entails, the Christian element “pushed itself in of its own accord.”[3]
Surprised by Joy
While the Narnia tales have a distinctive Christian flavor to them, they are not overtly Christian: Jesus and His work are portrayed symbolically, rather than realistically, through Aslan. The message of the incarnation, the cross, and the resurrection is woven into a seemingly simple children’s story, a story which has the power to astound and delight even those who have never heard about Jesus.
Lewis specifically warned Christian parents not to tell their children in advance that Aslan represents Jesus: he wanted the children to weep over Aslan’s death and, more importantly, to feel overwhelming joy at Aslan’s resurrection. As a result, first time readers are able to feel similar emotions to those experienced by people who actually saw Christ die and come alive again – an experience of being “surprised by joy” which was so potent that it changed a group of fearful, despondent disciples into world-changing apostles (as well as turning a reluctant Oxford don away from atheism and toward Christ).
Preparing Good Soil
So powerful was the effect of literature upon his coming to faith that Lewis later quipped, “A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere .… God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.”[4] He reasoned that fictional works can create a sense of familiarity with truth so that, later, when the reader hears the Gospel story, his soul is more open to receiving and believing the good news about Jesus Christ. To use the analogy of the sower and the seed, stories which hint at or skirt around the edges of the actual gospel prepare the reader’s soul, metaphorically making it “good soil” so the seed of the gospel can be sown, grown and harvested in the future.[5]
As a writer, Lewis found fantasy stories the best way to accomplish this goal, though he himself was influenced by literary works penned by both Christian and pagan authors (especially those tales about a dying god who came alive again). Even as an atheist, Lewis acknowledged that he found himself drawn to works infused with Christian themes: Spencer’s The Faerie Queen, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and the great spiritual poems of poets like John Donne and George Herbert. After his conversion, Lewis could see how the Spirit used their writings to chip away at his resistance until finally, with the help of the many conversations he had with J.R.R. Tolkien and others, he came to realize that the story of the Incarnation is one that “transcends myth”: that Christianity is “a myth which is also a fact.”[6]
The Latent Approach
The power to “steal past watchful dragons” is not only applicable to literature. In an essay called “Christian Apologetics,” Lewis makes an assertion which Christian writers should apply to their writing, regardless of the subject matter: “What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects – with their Christianity latent”[7] This latent approach, he knew, could be far more troubling for the skeptic’s soul and, therefore, more likely to penetrate the veil of untruth which blinds his eyes to the Gospel of the Kingdom.
Though he was specifically writing about scientific writing, Lewis wonders what would happen if, when a non-Christians was looking for information on a given subject, he found that “the best work on the market was always by a Christian.” By application, we could extend that question to any field: What if a non-Christian constantly discovered that the best engineer, the best doctor, the best teacher, the best musician, the best janitor, etc. he knew were all Christians? How would that work to overcome his society-induced prejudice against Christianity? How might their striving for excellence “sneak past those watchful dragons” and prepare his heart to receive the gospel seed?
The Challenge
When C.S. Lewis wrote his fantasy stories, he first wanted to entertain his readers with a rollicking good tale (after all, stories which bore readers cannot be called good stories). He also wanted to prepare their souls for the truth. But he did so in an indirect manner so that the less spiritually-attuned readers of the Narnia tales don’t catch what he’s up to until it is “too late.” Once they weep over Aslan’s death and cheer over his resurrection, Lewis has already managed to “sneak past those watchful dragons” – planting seeds of the gospel that may one day bear good fruit.
Perhaps you have no talent or inclination to follow in Lewis’ fantasy-writing footsteps, but the principle is applicable to any vocation. By striving to make whatever we do the highest expression of the talents God has given us (working “heartily for the Lord” as Paul writes in Colossians 3:23-24), we have an opportunity to soften, if not completely circumvent, the prejudice and spiritual blindness of the non-Christians we come into contact with – chipping away at their resistance until they are willing to give Christ a fair hearing. We may never have an opportunity to actually tell them about Jesus; yet we may nevertheless become participants in the greatest story of their lives – the story of their journey from unbelief to faith.
For the Christian, the tale of how Christ found us and saved us is the second greatest story ever told – one we will undoubtedly tell to one another with high zest and joy throughout all eternity. And I have to wonder how many of us will thank God for C.S. Lewis and his ability to get past the watchful dragons in our own lives.
For more information on this topic, get the book, C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea, by Victor Reppert, from our online store. Or read the article, “Teaching Virtue with Stories,” by Charles Colson.
[1] C.S. Lewis. Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories. Ed. Walter Hooper. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1994. p 37.
[2] In addition to the Narnia tales, Lewis also wrote other fantasy works more suitable for adults, such as The Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength) and Till We Have Faces, Lewis’ personal favorite.
[3] Of Other Worlds. p 36.
[4] C.S. Lewis. Surprised by Joy. 1956. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1984. p 191.
[5] Even works written by pagans can instill a love for biblical virtues like love, courage, honesty, self-discipline, patience, kindness, compassion, etc. All truth is God’s truth, even when it flows from the pen of a non-Christian who knows nothing about the greater and deeper truths of God and Christ.
[6] C.S. Lewis. “Myth Became Fact.” God in the Dock. 1945. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970. p 66.
[7] In God in the Dock. p 93.
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