I’m listening to the Unbelievable? podcast replay of the discussion with Holly Ordway & Laura Miller: A convert and skeptic in Narnia. As always, I find the conversation on the Unbelievable! podcast intriguing and thought provoking, engaging people on opposite ends of the thought spectrum.
Holly Ordway and Laura Miller had similar experiences in reading the Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis. They read them as young children and loved the books purely for the fantasy. When they were older and discovered that the books had Christian themes and symbolism, they felt betrayed.
Laura Miller explained her sense of betrayal. The fantasy world she imagined and loved turned out to be something different than she thought. The discovery left her feeling like she was on the outside looking in.
As I think about it, the allure of the Chronicles of Narnia is exactly the sense of being on the inside, of discovering a world through the back of an ordinary wardrobe that is unknown and unseen by adults. As a child, perhaps nothing is as intriguing as a secret adventure unknown by your parents.
The experience of finding a whole new world quite by accident through an ordinary wardrobe that is unknown to the greater world, is a fantastical and intimate experience for a child. That intimacy, perhaps, is what gave way to Laura Miller’s feeling of betrayal.
The discovery of “hidden” Christian symbolism, allegory, and themes “planted” in the Chronicles of Narnia betrayed her sense of intimacy with the story. The unveiling of the “secret” behind the secret world she loved for its own sake, destroyed the world of her imagination. The secret that lured her in was a facade.
Holly Ordway felt the same betrayal at first. The secret behind the secret turned the story on its head. The secret, the real secret, was initially hidden from them. When the secret was exposed, they found a world they didn’t expect or know they had encountered.
For Miller, the experience was like losing innocence. In a moment, her childlike fantasy world was forever undone. The story wasn’t the same. The magic was lost.
For Holly Ordway the sense of betrayal gave way to curiosity – like the curiosity with which a young child might explore a hidden world found inside a wardrobe. It led her eventually out of atheism and into the world of faith in God. The secret behind the secret opened up a better, larger world to her.
The discussion was a good one. I am reminded of a series of dreams I had as a child. The first night found I could fly as I clutched Silly Putty in my hand. It was the most exhilarating dream I ever had. It seemed real, and the realness of it lingered after I woke.
I had the same dream the next night, but I became but I self-conscious. I didn’t know how it worked. I was afraid I couldn’t repeat the feat. I was still able to fly but not as long. My self-consciousness seemed to dispel the magic, leaving me with a dreaded sense of not knowing how the magic worked.
The next night I had the Silly Putty in my hand, but my wishful thinking didn’t work. Try as I might, to make myself fly. I could not recreate the magic, and I never had another dream of flying.
In the initial dream I had tapped into magic quite by accident, like wandering into a wardrobe that opened into an unknown world. But, I could not reproduce the magic because I didn’t have the knowledge of the magic. In Laura Miller’s case, the discovery of the secret behind the secret, the knowledge of the magic, undid the magic for her.
She says that the world of Narnia was no longer as she imagined it when she first read the Chronicles. That knowledge was the undoing of her own understanding of that world. Faced with the reality of it, it was no longer magic to her. Some adult turned the lights on, and the magic was gone.
I am putting some words into what she said, but I can feel her sense of loss. It was the same sense of loss I felt when I could no longer fly in my dreams and never dreamed of flying again.
While I feel her sense of loss, the similarities in our experiences end there. In my case, a lack knowledge about the magic flying was my undoing, or so I felt. In Laura Miller’s case, the knowledge of the Christianity behind the Chronicles of Narnia was her undoing, or so she felt.
She developed her own image of that fantasy world of Narnia, and discovering Christian themes in the Narnian fabric betrayed her own imagination. I read the Chronicles of Narnia in college as a very new Christian. The way those Christian themes played out for me in the pages of those books was entering the wardrobe inside the wardrobe. It was like black and white giving way to technicolor. The nuance and subtlety in which Lewis wove those themes into a beautiful story was inspiring. Images from those books live in my imagination still today and color my theology.
Laura Miller had a distasteful experience of religion as a child. She didn’t get into much detail, though she says she grew up Catholic. I grew up Catholic also. I don’t want to be unfair to Catholics or Catholicism, but I can relate to her negative feelings. (Holly Ordway, on the other hand, found the wardrobe inside the wardrobe, so to speak, and became a believer, and a Catholic.)
Laura Miller went on to claim that “believers” live in a reality that “operates on another plane that, if I am lucky, I can fall in a hole and be in the reality they live in.” She assumes that Christian faith is just another fantasy world – one that is foreign to her.
She says, “I just don’t experience it that way,” meaning life, I suppose, though I don’t want to put words in her mouth. I encourage you to go back and listen to the conversation yourself. The following statement, however, sets the stage for my thinking today, which is this:
“I don’t think I ever really feel in danger of accidentally believing… or stumbling into it.”
She goes onto to explain her interpretation of Lewis’s past: that “he found himself wanting to believe…. and then he was able to find the pathway… towards the thing that he wanted.” She goes on to say, “I don’t really feel that desire…, and it’s kind of impossible to accidentally, or sort of inadvertently, to come into a state of a desire to believe.” She concluded, “I have emerged from all kinds of literature from all kinds of faith without feeling [such a desire].”
Her comments about “accidentally believing,” and “stumbling into” faith,” and “a desire to believe,” as she puts it, is what inspires me to write today. It begs for comment.
Continue reading “Narnia, and the Danger of Becoming an Accidental Christian”
