Narnia

Disclaimer
I like C.S. Lewis. I rather enjoy reading the Chronicles of Narnia. Having discovered that they are short enough to read cover-to-cover in a long bath, I have read them often. I am intrigued by the imagery he uses, and enjoy the allegorical ties to my faith.
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I am looking forward to the upcoming The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It looks to be done alright, though I know it is another Hollywood follow-another-movie's-proven track: we're getting a movie based on a book in a series writen by one of the Inklings with a fantasy background and fat Hollywood budget. I am often disinclined to be led like cattle to every movie that follows a formula, but I will tread loyally to the theaters to see the movie this weekend.

I like the books so much, that it was hard for me to comprehend what the writter of this article so despised. The teaser gives you a sense for where she is coming from:

'Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion'

How could she not like the story? Surely the banner of "everything most hateful about religion" is a bit much?

I read the article closely, because I like to understand why people don't see the same world as me.

Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to? Poor child Edmund, to blame for everything, must bear the full weight of a guilt only Christians know how to inflict, with a twisted knife to the heart.

I think this helps to explain where she is coming from. It is a strange feeling for me to see the cross as a wretched thing, but it is a blessed insight. Having lived my life in the confines of my "church world," I struggle to see the cross as anything but the most supreme example of love. "Did we ask him to?" NO!

I am aware to an incomplete extent of the evils that lurk within me. Anger, jealousy, lust, pride, duplicity - these are just part of my extensive repitoire. I stand condemned before God, a very scary, dark place - the scariest and darkest in creation - but for that unrequested love of Christ for me. The cross is an unspeakable evil, well worth weeping over, a point the author of this article does not even go far enough in expressing. But through this great evil, God reveals the great surprise. It has been said that because evil exists, God cannot be both all-good or all-powerful - that any pain proves the world is less than it should have been. The idea that greater good must come through evil is dismissed by a circular approach to the original question - that a truly all-powerful God could have achieved that greater good without the evil. I cannot imagine this. The love of God is manifest so much more supremely in the reconciliation on the cross than by anything else that ever has been or ever shall be.

God does not just love His friends, He loves the rebellious enemies that we became, and we are then called to do the same. As God loved me, so must I love others, for that is what God is like. To the extent that the church conveys this message, we succeed. To the extent that we muddle this message, we fail.