rainycity

As you could probably tell from the title, I’m re-reading these books I loved so much as a kid. I remember loving the adventure aspect and the fantasy world and couldn’t imagine how someone could come up with such wonderful books. When the movie for The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe came out, I was beyond excited. But I started hearing murmurs that it had a very “Christian” theme. During this time, I happened to be on the path discovering my own spirituality (happened to be Christianity) so I found it extremely intriguing. I saw the movie and instantly drew similarities- especially with Aslan’s murder.

So now I’ve decided to read all of the Narnia books again, now that I’ve developed a critical mind. It’s really provoked a bit of deep thought. Today I sat down (after a looong week) and just read “The Magician’s Nephew” which was the sixth (I think) book written, the first book of the series (prologue). Everything just clicked for me! After a few chapters it sunk in “oh…this is supposed to be Genesis.” It’s the founding of Narnia, and it draws obvious similarities to the Garden of Eden. Very interesting, in my opinion.

 Of course, as a critical thinker, I can’t help but wonder…could this be considered propoganda? I personally don’t find anything wrong with it as when I was younger I had no idea and it certainly did not instill aspects of the Christian faith in me…but the purpose of these books was to educate young children about the Bible with an intriguing story they were interested in. I guess what really prompted me to think about this was the uproar protesting “The Golden Compass”, many churches spoke out against it even though it is obviously just against the old Catholic church and reinforcing that “knowledge is power”. Do Christians not want to encourage critical thinking and gaining knowledge? It seems that this is quite contradictory. I do know that “The Golden Compass”’s author was very outspoken against C.S. Lewis. I saw this movie but found no way in which anyone would be insulted by it. It’s all interesting to think about…what is everyone’s agenda? What is the purpose of these books? Are there other children’s books with hidden agendas we don’t know about?

Now…don’t want to seem like a conspiracy theorist so I should head to bed! But it’s definitely food for thought.

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