The UK, more experienced with Narnia, recognizes the very bad theology of this overwrought tale.
I only read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe this year and disliked it. It talks down to kids and Aslan, unlike Christ, knows he dies to play a trick on the Witch (Narnia's Satan). There seems little of the compassion and moral lessons of a Christ-like ministry.
Tolkien hated Narnia: the two dons may have shared the same love of unquestioning feudal power, with worlds of obedient plebs and inferior folk eager to bend at the knee to any passing superior white persons - even children; both their fantasy worlds and their Christianity assumes that rigid hierarchy of power - lord of lords, king of kings, prince of peace to be worshipped and adored. But Tolkien disliked Lewis's bully-pulpit.
Over the years, others have had uneasy doubts about the Narnian brand of Christianity. Christ should surely be no lion (let alone with the orotund voice of Liam Neeson). He was the lamb, representing the meek of the earth, weak, poor and refusing to fight. Philip Pullman - he of the marvellously secular trilogy His Dark Materials - has called Narnia "one of the most ugly, poisonous things I have ever read".
2 comments:
Narnia sucked. I couldn't finish it, and I always finish books.
(Coincidentally, I'm almost finished with the Dark Materials trilogy, and it's pretty good.)
You do have excellent taste in reading material.
I will not finish the series.
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