Narnia

I have been reading C.S. Lewis's Narnia series to the kids as a bedtime story for a while now. I generally read just one chapter and we don't have time for it every night, so it's probably been a year or so. We've gone through the adventures of all the children from Polly to Lucy to Jill and finally last night we reached the end. Yes, the stories' overly-forced Christian allegories make one wince, but mostly they are tales of magic and adventure where children overcome their fears and triumph over evil, like most kids-save-the-day fiction. And then, last night, we finally reached the end. Once again C.S. Lewis presents the perverted idea that we are all better off dead, as he did for adults in The Screwtape Letters. When I read that back in 2006 I wrote an open letter to the preacher's wife and friend who'd loaned it to me in hopes of harvesting a conversion. Eight years later I can make the rebuttal no more plain so I have reprinted that letter below:

My dear Kara, Thank you for giving me C. S. Lewis's most excellent Screwtape Letters to read. I thoroughly enjoyed reading such an unfilmable moralizing work on fiction. While I don't usually read fiction because of a bias toward truth, it can often be fun. Nevertheless, I think these Letters are a very clear illustration of all that is good and all that is bad in religion. Firstoff, Screwtape's writing from the devil's perspective trying to tempt the man to do wrong is a fabulous vehicle to show how our natural inclinations often least us off a healthy, moral lifestyle. I guess at this point I should also address the possibility of morality outside religion. Morality is nothing more than the distilled experience of humans interacting with eachother - if it works and brings about a positive result, then it is moral; if not, then it is amoral. Since we now have thousands of years of human history to draw upon, this is not particularly difficult. The basic principles were obvious thousands of years ago: don't kill, don't steal, etc. More modern religious thought has attempted to distill this set of rules further to a single axiom for human interaction, Jesus's "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." or Gandhi's "Ahimsa paramo dharma" (Non-violence is the best path). I prefer the second formulation because it does not provide justification for the masochist becoming a sadist. I would also contend that personal behavior toward oneself cannot be amoral. I know of no ancient belief system that makes this distinction; seemingly its genesis is in 19th century liberal and 20th century libertarian thought. Suicide, doing drugs, eating too much, etc. are not amoral, but they are still bad in the sense that they are unhealthy. By telling Wormwood how to ensnare humans in amoral and unhealthy behaviors, Screwtape teaches the reader how to avoid ensnarement. C. S. Lewis's ending, however, eloquently displays the greatest danger of religion: "eternal" priorities. Hell and its demons are trying to keep the man alive, knowing that it will give them greater opportunity to tempt him. They know he is better off dead and in heaven than remaining prey to them. But is a man truly better off dead if life is not eternal? The big lie that leads to the continuation of all religions is that death is not final but merely a transition to something else. As a scientist I doubt first and then gain conviction through experiment. So I come back to my bias toward truth - a supposition can only be considered true for me if has been tested by experiment. An untestable hypothesis is sandy ground to build on; clearly a bedrock of truth is preferable. Islam uses eternal priorities to pervert morality so far that murder is no longer amoral, but in many cases jihad - the responsibility of Muslims to convert or kill the unbeliever. In Islam killing the unbeliever is doing him a favor by shortening the time he has for sinning, and thus his time in Hell paying for those sins. Even an after death conversion is okay for Allah! This is all too similar to Screwtape's position on the man Wormwood is trying to capture: they must keep him alive to tempt him. Such is the perversion of morality by eternal priorities. As I am trying to lead you away from the Enemy of The Screwtape Letters, I find it rather appropriate to sign this letter Your affectionate uncle SCREWTAPE

Apologies if you're not familiar with The Screwtape Letters, but hopefully you get the idea. Which is not to say I don't recommend the Narnia books for the most part. Outside of The Last Battle they are fun adventures. I'm not sure why he went so dark in that one merely to make the you're-better-off-dead argument. Although I guess having the whole world wink out when you do makes it that much less scary for kids and then they're leaving nothing behind when they go to heaven. Wow that guy was messed up. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe is by far the best in the series as one can imagine from its cultural prominence in the English-speaking world. The Magician's Nephew is very much a prequel that expects you have encountered what comes after. I know my kids had seen several of the Disney movies before we started reading the Narnia books in order of their world's chronology. I'm not sure if they would have enjoyed it as much without being able to make those connections. Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader are a pair where different kids get to have adventures with the same Narnian hero, Caspian. Likewise, The Silver Chair sees kids come into Narnia from Earth and do the critical things to save the day, in spite of their inability to care about memorizing scripture. I'm not sure why Lewis included The Horse and His Boy in the world of Narnia because it takes place in an entirely different setting and barely involves kids from Earth coming to save the day (it's mostly local kids this time). Don't take my word for it though; check them out for yourself!