When my kids were growing up, I read “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
I had never been overly enthusiastic about fantasy, but the author of the Narnia series, C. S. Lewis, touched on themes that stirred something in me. I remember meditating on the seemingly paradoxical images of young warriors armed with gleaming swords. The protagonists that inhabit Lewis’ alternate universe heed the values that we associate with medieval chivalry. Not surprisingly, Lewis was a professor of medieval studies at Oxford University.
J.R.R. Tolkien and other writers met with Lewis in Lewis’ college rooms to read and discuss manuscripts. The Inklings group first heard “The Lord of the Rings,” in which Tolkien represents the imminent darkness presented against Britain and the world by Nazi Germany. The move toward national collectivism that occurred in England and other countries during the 1930s and 1940s also provided a background to some of the important themes developed by Tolkien and Lewis.
In the latest Narnia movie, “Voyage of the Dawn Treader,” Eustace Scrubb is the cowardly lad transformed into a dragon that finally discovers his true self — a warrior committed to unchangeable values. He starts as a caricature of a conceited individual, benighted by a shallow modernism disguised as critical thinking and scientific values.
But there is even hope for certain “progressives” that want to take away my gleaming 1911 pistols! J.R.R. Tolkien once proclaimed that “… I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
Each person that I meet in Federal Way (even those that denounce me as a right-wing loon) may experience the feelings that changed my heart so many years ago. Warfare directed by a lion named Aslan to restore the throne to its rightful line changed the Pevensie kids in the Narnia yarn. But Aslan, despite his loving nature, is wild and can be dangerous. So I remind myself that I was once a Eustace Scrubb with a know-it-all, self-righteous attitude.
The stakes are high during this holiday season. Our nation confronts ominous storm clouds that gather on the horizon. There are those within that would surrender many values that Americans traditionally hold dear in order to achieve security or short-term economic progress. There are also enemies outside the gates watching and waiting.
The proof is within each of us and does not lie in public pronouncements or the political creed to which we adhere. C.S. Lewis’ works focus on character that is revealed during times of crisis. Lewis might say that your attitude toward Christmas reveals what is in your heart! Start looking at your neighbors differently at church or shopping at the mall — wherever you go. Many Federal Way residents have the potential to rescue each other from evils about which you and I may not even have thought before.
