With Father's Day just around the corner, everywhere we turn we are
bombarded with advertisements suggesting a wealth of things families
should buy for dads. But this year, instead of asking for some sort
of material object you want, do something that will engrave your
paternal love onto the minds and hearts of your children.
Start something that will stay with them for years, something that
will open them up to a positive view of the world. They say that young
people these days are ungrateful to their parents; this generation is
given so much stuff and so little time, especially with dads. So this
year, let us instill gratitude in our children. Instead of getting
yourself a new toy like a DVD or a bike or some new golf clubs, that
is, instead of getting something to amuse yourself with, get something
that will create a lasting bond between you and your children. Buy and
read your children C. S. Lewis' series, The Chronicles of
Narnia. It will make your family resemble a tree -with leaves
and branches united to a trunk.
The Chronicles of Narnia follows the dramatic
confrontation between a band of relatively powerless, little heroes
and a number of powerful and even superhuman villains. The heroes are
normal children, simple, comfort-seeking children, and yet they are
humble enough and sincere enough to manage great accomplishments
against the villains, who are cunning, supernaturally powerful, and
extremely diligent, and who never waste time. The children must choose
to fight nobly and heroically, sacrificing themselves and their
desires to the demands of obedience, humility, and honor. In most
cases the goal is to find, establish and defend the rightful authority
and order of creation that should reign in Narnia, an order which has
been broken through their own doing. This sets the stage for an epic
battle of good against evil, a battle the children must wage first
against themselves, for they are at times forgetful of their task,
usually because of some form of comfort-seeking, and they are
continually harangued by the ruses of evil. The children are also
typical in that they are superficial, uninformed and unprepared for
the battles they are to fight, and as a result, they must make the
most difficult moral choices, for their enemy is clearly more informed
about human nature and its weaknesses than the children are.
Nevertheless, they are sincere and loyal children, with noble
intuitions of right and wrong, honor and shame.
Such children as these are pitted against cunning enemies, enemies
with a tremendous ability to throw the children into states of moral
confusion with the deftly manipulated tools of illusion. Such masters
of illusion are enemies of freedom, creating and then enslaving their
subjects with a blend of agnosticism, skepticism, and fear, and in
some books, especially the later ones, the agnostic and skeptical
environment is created and held in place by a strange pact among the
elements of the world, elements at once mercenary, blasphemous and
pragmatic to the point of murderous.
Caught between the two main, warring groups of characters, masses of
creatures stand by like spectators, watching on and awaiting their
fate and the fate of their world: some tired and sick; some frightened
and jaded; and some actually stand by enjoying the entertainment of
destruction. The children can only triumph over such evil and
indifference by making the right moral choices they constantly face.
I read the 7-book series of The Chronicles of Narnia
to my own 4-year old boy, and he absolutely loved it. And what was
even more exciting is that he learned a great deal from it. Honesty,
courage, loyalty and service come knocking at the hearts of children
when they read these books, because in them, Lewis does what we all
wish we could do: he makes goodness attractive. The good guys are
good, but they are not pushovers. They fight. They get involved. They
have adventures and they conquer. The book is filled with the
healthiest lessons of life, for children and for adults. Through
exciting adventures in the woods among talking animals and strange
creatures, the author deftly opens up a world for the parent to bring
to the child, the world we all want them to know, the world which
calls them to be brave and courteous and good and to fight for what is
right and just in the world, counting on the help of God, especially
in the little things of each day.
Disney is set to release a film version of Book 2: The Lion,
the Witch and the Wardrobe in December, and most likely, you
will be taking your children to see it. I think that there is a
message in this book, and it is this: take care of the little things,
because they have tremendous consequences; do not neglect virtue in
the small incidents of every day, for it is precisely the little
things that determine one's final, momentous, eternal destiny. This
book is an allegorical and rendering of the suffering, death and
resurrection of Jesus Christ and how it is related to the role of
character and virtue in the moral struggle of life to attain
happiness, a struggle in which the tiniest act has great consequences,
because each act directs the agent toward one of only two possible
ends: heaven, represented by Aslan and the ultimate celebration of the
children and good animals; and hell, represented by Jadis and the
paralyzed gloom and slavery of her victims and subjects.
The main character of The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe is a young man with flaws, but they are very
ordinary flaws, really no different in degree from those possessed by
you or I. Edmund teases his sister just a bit too much. And when he is
proven wrong, he lies. And little lies lead to serious betrayal. Also,
Edmund likes to eat junk food. What could be more ordinary than that?
Normally, the consequence is no more than indigestion. But Edmund
likes it just a little too much, enough to accept it from a perfect
stranger who, from the beginning, shows signs of untrustworthiness.
His little greed in such a little thing leads him to be a little less
prudent than he should be around this stranger, who turns out to be a
creature of superior intelligence, and who takes advantage of his
seemingly insignificant flaws, using them against him until he is a
slave and a prisoner condemned to death, a death from which he can
only be saved by the sacrifice of Aslan's own life.
Likewise, the virtues great and small of others come to his rescue,
with the result that children will see something in this book that
they need so desperately to see today and are not getting: they see
that their own actions have consequences, that every act, even the
most secret, has a consequence, and that, therefore, the moral life is
a adventure, a glorious adventure in real life available to them right
now, wherever they live and in the circumstances in which they find
themselves today. The entire story, therefore, is Lewis' attempt to
make the moral life attractive to the young. And I think he succeeds.
Disney's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is
going to be one of those films children will remember for years. So
this is our chance to take an active part in something our children
are destined to experience, love and remember.
Warren Hinkson is the father of two young children, an English
professor, and co-author of The TeachNarnia Guides to The
Chronicles of Narnia. His books and articles on teaching the
Christian and literary aspects of Lewis' novels can be found on his
website: www.TeachNarnia.com
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