Glorify Him!

If you are still reading this post, then you should be with your family.

Of course, I am writing this post and I should go be with my family.

Let us go forth and have jollification!

Merry Christmas, gentle readers! God rest you merry!

I am nothing special. Just a guy really. And then one night we had taken the sheep out of the city to the hills, because the city was loud and full of people. I cannot stand crowds. I suppose it is part of being a shepherd to like quiet and loneliness. We can sit together on a hill, my mates and me, and not say a word an entire day in a comforting, friendly quiet. You could never get a townie to do that. They always have to be saying something. Or asking questions. I ask a great many questions, but they stay in my mind, being chewed on slowly, like a cow with a cud I guess. Shepherds may not be quick, we think slowly, but when we reach a conclusion it is pretty sound. Practical wisdom.

The town was still lit up at midnight and even the caves where the townies keep their spindly animals were still busy. More and more folk were flooding into the town on the latest Roman tax scheme to keep us moving and paying. Moving people cannot rebel and poor people are too busy trying to get food to eat to think about politics. The Romans are good at disturbing and taxing . . . and crucifying. They are really good at crucifying.

There is no way to tell you what happened next that will make you get it, so I will just say it. The Angel of the Lord appeared. I am not mad and we had not been drinking anything strong. It was the Angel of the Lord. How do I know? I don�t know, but I just saw and I knew . . . like when I finally understood addition, suddenly I just understood that fifteen sheep and three more were not just a lot, but eighteen. This person carried his identity with him like a number carries its . . . you saw him and knew who he was.

How did I feel? How do I feel more like it! There will be no forgetting those feelings. An Angel is big, but not space wise. He just feels big. How big was he? Come to think of it, I cannot quite say. He was big. And powerful of course. How do I know? It was not that He was shiny, though he was bright, but it was a light that was different than starlight or even sunlight. It came from within himself and lit up only himself. It did not make me any brighter. It looked like light that was the father of all our light and that is powerful. Or something like that, I am not sure I can say.

Anyway I was afraid, really afraid. Who would not be? Before I was married, I was not always as good as I should have been and I thought of that and of how I had spoken to my children that day . . . and the fact that I was a bit short on my gift at the temple. Would heaven send an angel over a few dollars worth of doves? The angel was holy and I just knew everything that meant I was not.

He spoke, �Be not afraid!� Good news! Our hearts slowed down enough to let us listen, but the words were loud without being audible. I don�t know how to say it. . . but they were monstrous loud without disturbing the sheep. All of us men heard the Angel, but none of the sheep.

�For behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people . . . for to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you; you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. �

I cannot forget a word of it and never will. Once I learned to shear the sheep it became part of me and I have seen old shepherds on their death beds still able to make the motions in their dreams. I learned the Angel�s words that way . . . though it was more like remembering than learning. It was something I had always known but forgotten. Big words. Too big for me, but true and not so big. A babe. I understand babies since I have a few of my own!

We went to see of course and found the mother, what must have been the father, and the baby. You could not take your eyes off her when you saw her until her eyes drew you to Him. Not the father, I can scarcely remember him, but the baby. He was just a baby I suppose, though God forgive me for saying so. He did not look special, but he was special. You wanted to bow and to dance and to dance and bow. Trust me you cannot do both things at once.

I still cannot speak for laughing and I cannot laugh for weeping. How can I feel both ways at once? Messiah has come! That is a cause for joy, but then the troubles of my people overwhelm me. Why have we let Messiah stay in a stable? Why is he lying in a manger? What are we doing?

Of course what can be done? We cannot call Herod. We know what he would do if he heard the news that Messiah would come. The pigs in his piggery have a longer life span than any rival to his throne. The Romans? They are the Romans. And the religious leaders have become consumed with getting theirs . . . pigs at the Roman trough . . . or they act like holy men, but are not. What can I do? Messiah is in a stable. That is a wonder and curse.

Come to think of it: why did the good news come to me? Shepherds are not all like David and I have been no better than most. I am as common as the dirt under my nails. Why me? Why the lot of us?

Perhaps, just maybe, we have been wrong about Messiah. He is King, but maybe like David he will come from the commons to rule and so He will be great, but in a new way. If God is coming down to be with us, it would not matter to him whether he was in Caesar�s house or a stable. The fall from the courts of Heaven would be just as great. Falling one thousand feet or one thousand feet and one inch would not make much difference to a person.

He will be, is (blessed now!), holy, but maybe his holiness will be so great that he will be able to stand our sin and change us without being changed himself? He might be a holy one for sinners like I am. That is what we need, I think. Someone so good, so just, that He can afford to seem unjust and not care what the wise and the powerful say about Him. He will be just, but able to rescue and redeem bad men like I am.

I should go back to the hills now. She is wanting to rest, her eyes are full of the weary joy of motherhood. My own babies, all those new lambs, should also have their shepherd. Nobody will remember this night or what I saw I suppose unless she does. She looks as if she would never forget anything . . . her boy looks so much like her . . . which is lucky for her husband I would say, the child really looks nothing like him, but is so much like her . . . and yet not like. There is something else there. But nobody will every know about tonight I suppose even if they all remember for whom would any of them tell? No writer would care about the wild stories of shepherds about angels and babies in mangers (nobody would ever put those two things in one paragraph!), so I must be content to know myself. And what a thing to know . . .

I forgot to mention, in the wonder of thinking about the baby, that after the Angel of the Lord appeared with his message that the whole sky seemed full of angels. They were singing . . . the kind of singing that could create a world if it wanted to do so. Pitch so perfect that for a moment I could sing along, had to sing along, my vocal chords vibrating at just the right pitch. Tuneless me! I could sing and oddly enough I still can . . . that one song that they repeated over and over. Good news! For all men . . . including sinners and shepherds such as I am!

�Glory to God in the Highest, and on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased!�

I can watch Buffy!

Never let it be said I cannot change my mind. I have been persuaded by an email from luminous Torrey alum Mrs. Lindsay Marshall (Nate�s Beatrice) and the following argument by a former professor at Biola (our real loss!) Dr. Elizabeth Rambo that I can go ahead and finish Buffy without guilt. I should add that I still think �Restless� is bad, very, very bad.

In any case, this vindication of Buffy is good news since we will be using images from it in our discussion of the text of Dante and popular images of hell, purgatory, and paradise this spring. I cannot wait!

The following is Rambo lightly edited:

So, after reading your Narnia review, a previous entry on “Buffy” caught my eye. You can read my essay on season seven here:

*Buffy* only seems amoral because you think it is supposed to be amusing. Well, it is, of course, but like all true art, it is both entertaining AND educational. Amoral? Not at all! Please at once order (via inter-library-loan, if necessary), Gregory Stevenson’s TELEVISED MORALITY: THE CASE OF BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER.

Even if you’ve only seen season one, you’ve seen Buffy the Christ-figure dying and rising “strong, better” to save the world at the end of season one–but I suspect you may dislike the idea of a female Christ-figure, though it’s not unprecedented in orthodox (small “o”) sources. You’ve seen B and Angel give in to their obviously inappropriate desire in season 2’s “Surprise”/”Innocence”, and the wages? Angel’s curse? Hello? In the end B has to kill him, again, to save the world–remember, it’s a metaphor, we’re not recommending that anyone actually kill his or her own sweetheart, but isn’t it metaphorically true that sometimes we have to “kill” our earthly loves?

Stevenson writes,

“Buffy operates with a strict moral code. The source of this moral code is a deep and abiding sense of the value inherent in human beings. This concept finds expression in various philosophical and religious systems, including the Judeo-Christian tradition where the value of humanity goes back to the idea of creation in the image of God. Although *Buffy*’s use of this concept cannot easily be traced to any single influence, it manifests in Buffy’s life in a need to protect and serve others.

“Buffy’s moral code does not make her flawless. She is not a paragon of virtue who never acts immorally. Rather, what identifies her is an awareness that along with her power comes a responsibility for others, and Buffy relentlessly sacrifices her own interests in the pursuit of that duty….

“Buffy [often] speaks as though she has no choice in the matter, as though her life is being taken away from her without her consent. Yet, Buffy does not slay because she has to, but because she chooses to. The moral code that Buffy follows is not inherent in the persona of the Slayer; it is inherent in the person of Buffy. She chooses the life of sacrifice.” (Stevenson 107-9)

Stevenson (and other books and articles I can point you to) makes a convincing case that the show may *portrayal* promiscuity and violence while offering a *perspective* on promiscuity and violence that is at least somewhat critical of both. Stevenson acknowledges that

“[c]characters on *Buffy* frequently make bad choices and sometimes engage in immoral or even illegal activity. But to paraphrase Joyce Summers, they always learn that they have to live with consequences (3.2). As such, the moral message of the show derives not from the actions portrayed but from the consequences reaped. In “Reptile Boy” (2.5), high school student Buffy lies to Giles so that she can attend a college fraternity party. While there, she drinks some alcohol and ends up passing out, only to awaken chained to a dungeon wall as a potential sacrifice to a serpent demon. Her later *mea culpa* to Giles is instructive:

BUFFY: I told one lie, I had one drink.
GILES: Yes, and you were very nearly devoured by a giant demon snake. The words ‘let that be a lesson’ are a tad redundant at this juncture.

The use of magic, also something critics of the show get their knickers in a twist over, also has negative consequences even for those with the best intentions–from something as seemingly mild as “nosebleeds and stinky yak cheese” to broken limbs, broken relationships, and going full-on to the Dark Side.

From an interview with producer/writer/director Joss Whedon on moral perspective of the writer:

“When I say we have a responsibility to be irresponsible, I’m not just talking about, �Oh, I’m trying to help kids deal with the world.� I’m talking about the process of telling a story. These stories come from this place, and I think that stories are sacred. I think that creating narrative is a basic human function. It’s why we remember some things and not everything. It’s why everybody’s version of the same event is different. Everybody creates narrative all the time. I think it’s a really important function. And it has to come from this base place to be pure, to be art, to be anything other than a polemic. So I’m not just talking about �Well, I’ve got to help kids deal with their problems by showing them scary stuff.� I mean, I’ve got to fulfill that human need for scary stuff, and sexy stuff, and racy stuff, and wrong stuff, and disturbing stuff. Because I think that’s what storytelling is. Now, am I saying that sex is bad? Unfortunately, because it’s a horror show everything that happens is bad. (Both laugh.} Everything that can go bad, will. Buffy’s gonna drink beer, and it’s going to turn her into a caveman. Now, I’ve been to college, and that’s what happens. (Both laugh.) But we sort of undercut that specifically at the end of the show when Xander said, �And what have we learned about beer?� And Buffy says, �Foamy.� I don’t want to make a reactionary statement. I don’t want to say, �Never have sex.� I don’t want to say, �Quick, go have it now.� I want to say, �Some people have it. Everybody thinks about it. Here’s how we deal with it.� The thing with Angel wasn’t, �Don’t sleep with your boyfriend.� Giles very clearly comes out and says, �I think you were rash, but I know you loved him and he loved you, and I’m not going to upbraid you for that.� That wasn’t about that. It was about what happens when you sleep with a guy and he stops calling you. What happens if you give him what he wants, and he starts treating you like shit. It was about the emotion of it. And that’s a very real, emotional thing that everybody goes through. You consummate a relationship, and it disappears out from under you, and it happens to both sexes.� (Longworth) (found at www.slayage.tv)

I don’t put too much weight on this kind of statement of “authorial intent,” though. Giles gets a bit grimmer about the consequences after Angel kills Giles’s girlfriend and tortures Giles…

A chapter from Stevenson’s book, again full of spoilers for seasons 5-7. He’s a Christian, btw:

http://www.slayage.tv/essays/slayage15/Stevenson.htm

And you’re quite, quite wrong about episode 4.22 “Restless”. Maybe you fell asleep? Here’s one of the best analyses, in which Rhonda Wilcox compares it to Eliot’s “The Wasteland”:

http://www.slayage.tv/essays/slayage7/Wilcox.htm

I’m not pointing you to all these *Slayage* essays just because I happen to be on the editorial board, but because this is where most of the good stuff is, or where you’ll find links to the rest of it, and because Rhonda Wilcox, one of the two co-editors, has been analyzing Buffy for several years now. The other co-editor, David Lavery, gave a workshop on the show at the Cornerstone Festival a few years ago, and is a great guy, also an English prof., who’s been analyzing media and pop culture for several years.

Here I sit trying hard not to wonder if I got Madden 2006 for Christmas. I can only play at this time of year . . . so I can only hope.

If you know the Fairest Flower (Mrs. Reynolds), you might drop a subtle hint.

I have a few more informal comments to make regarding the Dover case before moving on to the Holidays.

First, in many ways this is the best thing that could have happened to ID as others have pointed out on the web. This should quash any politics associated with ID. I don�t agree with the jurisprudence behind the decision, but also am not a big fan of requiring teachers to read statements. It also has never seemed very smart with me to begin pressing the case of an alternative point of view at the high school level before recognition is won at the university level. In this regard, I am just imitating Phil Johnson and the Discovery Institute.

We can win the philosophical argument about ID. Folk like Alvin Plantinga (not mere teachers like I am!) are well able to handle folk at the very top of the game. In philosophy ID has many supporters with good peer reviewed work in related fields. However, we need our scientific friends to begin to do the long hard work of research. Closing off politics will allow money and work to flow there that might have been distracted.

Second, the decision will seem much less impressive over time to an objective reader. Let’s take a topic in the decision that any freshman in Torrey can check on . . . some smallish claims about the history of ID. Note the judge�s association of ID with fundamentalism and his history of the creationist movement which is polemical and debatable (as history).

He claims that ID springs out of creationism or fundamentalism which I personally know to be generally false. For example, Phil Johnson is a mainstream Presbyterian and Michael Behe a Roman Catholic. Both persons had no association with any fundamentalist group. Neither mainstream Presbyterians nor the Catholics fit any normal definition of religious fundamentalism. Is any traditional Christian, including the Pope, now a fundamentalist of the Scopes sort? The decision seems to conflate traditional Christianity (including my own Orthodox Church?) with the fundamentalists of the 1920�s and argue for a simplistic evolution of religious �creationism.� Yet ID is a movement that springs out of and has garnered support in religious communities with no history related to the fundamentalism of the 1920�s. This is easy to ascertain with even a superficial reading of books on both movements.

Most leaders in ID did not just switch from creationism to ID after adverse court rulings. They did not just change tactics. . .since almost none of them to my knowledge ever adopted YEC or supported the earlier positions before adopting the tactics they used. I was involved in creationism at the time ID was being developed and many creationists did not like it at the time (and many still have reservations). Some of us liked ID as a meta-idea. . . and as a big tent we could join. However, we were always a minority in the movement and can easily distinguish between creationism (a religious idea) and the notion of intelligent design in nature which has positive implications for religion, but need not be religious in nature.

The history presented by the judge is just false and one I know personally to be false. Of course, some ID persons (including Paul Nelson and myself) are creationists who are pro-ID, but both of us are out of the closet about it and hate court cases like the devil. We do not argue for ID to cloak our beliefs, but because ID seems an interesting concept. I personally think ID should qualify as science and believe it is a genetic fallacy to measure what an idea is worth or what it is by where it comes from. The fact that most (though not all) ID proponents are religious in the USA is not shocking, since most people in the USA are religious.

Paul Nelson’s response here is excellent in my opinion.


Two final comments:

First, note that any good reader knows, contra the judge, that ID arguments go back further than Aquinas, try Plato�s Laws, (hence need not be Christian.) Aristotle proves that design arguments need not be religious. If I were not a Christian, I would be a neo-Platonist and would still argue for design without any necessary religious connect at all.

Second, Aquinas makes his quoted statement about the designer being God in a very specific historic and philosophic context. It is remarkably irrelevant to the modern case. Of course, if someone told the judge that his point would have been negated. The case did not turn on it, but it is one example of the simplifications that happen in court when one side has a great stable of lawyers and the other side does not. In short, any good reader can look these historical books up on the Net and discover the flaws in the judge�s history of science.

But then the judge was relying on a book that has to be read to be believed Creationism’s Trojan Horse (OPU). This is a book that contains pot boiler polemic of the sort that makes you ashamed of Christians when they publish stuff like it. It might be fine for a blog, but a good philosophy text it is not. Yet because it beats up on politically incorrect suspects Oxford will publish it.

However, when beating up on “creationism,� well, any stick to beat a dog seems to be the attitude. You owe it to yourself to buy the book and compare it to J.P. Moreland�s Christianity and the Nature of Science. If you doubt bias in the academy go look at Forrest the philosophy �expert� at the trial�s web page. Check out her body of work, its level of sophistication . . . and then note that such a body of work wins you tons of praise from the usual leftist suspects and an endowed chair! Compare her work and publication record to someone like Moreland. (See her CV here and his here.) Do this once and you will worry about your own position far less.

Narnia rules again.

However, briefly the best family movie of the year was number one yesterday again! Kong has been slipping every day (so much for the vaunted word of mouth) and the new releases could not catch Narnia which has shown small growth this week.

I think we know what we needed to know. There is a hungry market for high quality religion-friendly films. Will the studios feed it?

According to this source:

Rhode Island, New York and Massachusetts lost population, as did the District of Columbia. The populations of North Dakota, Ohio and Michigan grew, but at a slower rate than others.

Overall, the country grew by 0.9 percent in the past year, to about 296.4 million people.
Every 10 years, the 435 seats in the House of Representatives are divided among the states based on population counts in the census. The numbers also are used to divvy up votes in the Electoral College, used in presidential elections.

At what point are the religious liberals, libertines and secularists (not the same groups but united in the anti-natal results of their worldviews) going to admit that their worldviews have not managed to reproduce? At what point is a worldview a failure if it leads to its own extinction? The question has never been whether the fit survive, but whether that process has, is, or can be guided by intelligence.

The most secular parts of the country are losing population (and the most religious people in those areas are having the most children), while the most religious areas (and groups) continue to grow.
This may explain why they cling so fiercely to control of the curriculum in government schools at all levels. How else could they avoid simply dying out?

The future does not look bright for the anti-natal crowd. It is tempting to just sit back and say, �Live for yourself, folks, my grandchildren will enjoy your mc-mansion.� but that smug attitude is no good.

Secularists are people often more virtuous in their own ways than the religious and many are very bright and gifted. We need them and Christian charity calls us to reach out. It is easy to see how we religious, better me as a religious, have been bad enough to confuse issues and cause them to go awry. How can we make Christianity and the religious worldview more appealing so that these folk can abandon secularism, that often appears attractive, but leads to extinction? Can they gain the critical facility to guide their own development and abandon a strategy of short term versus long term thinking?

God help us to live our own ideals of charity, faith, hope, courage, justice, moderation, and wisdom so that we can change perceptions. God forgive us our falling short of the high calling!

By the way, the next time you hear one of those bogus �secular-regions-are-nicer-than-religious-regions� stories on the web ask the writer if he has accounted for the growing senility of those regions. For obvious reasons older people commit fewer crimes. Kids are hard to rear and the toxic culture produced by our mostly secular and childless (or small family) elites don�t help. What is acceptable for an almost all adult population may be harmful to children.

Of course, heaven knows that as young adult I was a stinker. Religion does not �protect� against that time of stupidity and self-centeredness as much as provides hope, healing, and a way forward out of it. Christianity never justifies the sinner, but it never condemns him forever either.
Critics of Narnia were right. Christianity teaches that harming others or living for self are bad. Religion has slowly taught me to live for others and not for self . . . which includes making my family a greater priority than career. This means that my precious children, who grow dearer to me every year, must be the center of my work life. I am a father before I am a professor. My main job is to make these four souls fit for paradise.

Lord Jesus Christ son of God have mercy on me a sinner.

We Need a Little Christmas, right this very minute.

You cannot talk about God in science even if you see Him there. (�No, children, this object that appears designed is not actually designed, but we shall not talk about evidence for design because that would be religion.”)

Barbara Walters thinks Christian orthodoxy is just like Islamic terrorism.

The greatest city on Earth has a transit strike right before Christmas.

The Navy will not let chaplains pray in public in the Name of Jesus.

The very thought that somewhere someone is enjoying Christmas makes the X-mas squad furious. For some reason public secularists have become a humorless lot. Oh, they do sarcasm and irony well, but they don�t seem able to put up with their minority status.

All that could make for gloom, but fear not! I bring you tidings of great joy which shall be fit for consumption by all people. Here are twelve official (non-sectarian) reasons for jollification, followed by twelve sectarian reasons for even more jollification.

Twelve Non-Sectarian Reasons for Christmas Jollification

1. Iraq has a free government thanks to the greatest Army of liberation in the history of mankind.
2. The American economy is thriving with more people working good jobs than at any time.
3. We continue to operate under the Constitution of 1789. Our civil liberties would have astonished most human beings in most places at most times.
4. Americans give huge amounts of money and time to charity.
5. Racist and anti-Semite behavior are so loathed by the mainstream of Americans as to be disqualifying impediments to public office.
6. Home ownership is booming all over the nation.
7. We have the most economically secure senior citizen class in the history of mankind.
8. We have eradicated many diseases, continue to make great strides, and now can afford to worry about illnesses brought on by prosperity.
9. Technology has brought information once held only by the elite to everybody.
10. The majority of American marriages work, and unlike Europe, we are having enough children.
11. Despite all its problems, we still have a world class university system.
12. Most Americans know that outward wealth and power cannot make them happy. They may struggle to live their beliefs, but they are not deluded by their possessions.

Twelve Sectarian Reasons for Christmas Jollification

1. Jesus is Lord.
2. Jesus is not only Lord, but He is Good.
3. Jesus Christ was fully man and fully God. We have a divinity that does not just feel our pain, but knows it.
4. Christianity is growing at the fastest rate in its history and is the fastest growing movement in the world.
5. China is rapidly become Christian.
6. Homeschool moms.
7. Classical Christian Education is booming (and allows for the Torrey Honors Institute) as is Christian philosophy. Just the existence of the Torrey alum should cheer you up!
8. Missionaries and faithful pastors exist in every corner of the planet.
9. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien were on our team.
10. Christian culture embraces science and the arts. Bach, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Trollope are all products of Christian civilization.
11. Hugh Hewitt, Frank Pastore, J.P. Moreland, Nancy Pearcey, Phillip E. Johnson, Alvin Plantinga, and Doug TenNapel are on our team with thousands of other thoughtful folk you should know about!
12. Benedict XVI
13. Christ was born and is coming again to rule and reign on the Earth!

In the present legal climate there is no shock that ID was ruled out of the science classroom. It is now illegal in yet another district to argue that the facts of Biology point to intelligent design.

The intellectual chattering class in the US is overwhelmingly secular. This is not because secularism is “more intelligent” but due to the huge and increasingly secular government education system and a publicly funded university structure that favors secularism as well. You get more of the ideas you fund.

In fact, the intellectual force of theism or design related theories is best seen in the fact that a large minority of intellectuals reject it in the US at great professional cost. One thinks, for example, of Alvin Plantinga of Notre Dame whose ideas about science (as one of the nation’s leading theorists regarding knowledge) your child cannot read if he lives in Dover.

The judge (like previous judges in creation trials) has adopted a naive philosophy of science based on a misunderstanding of the data. For example, the judge claims that the philosophy of ID folk would allow astrology being considered as a potential science. This is, of course, true, but not shocking. ID does not require that astrology be found true or useful as a description of reality. It would allow the claims of astrology to be measured and found wanting. In fact, scientists now frequently claim to have shown that astrology is bad science (which I think is true). Science can now claim that personal causes are not in effect, but one is not allowed to argue that they are. It is as simple as that. Secularism will be treated as untouchable in your child’s public school science class.

Critics of ID like to say that it is “religion” disguised as science. It is, of course, compatible with religion and most people who support it are religious. However, it is also compatible with non-religious ideas (like those of Aristotle). Once again a court has decided that religious motivations of supporters are enough to ban an idea (that is not essentially religious) from tax payer funded schools.

Even worse is the notion that a religious idea is so dangerous to the health of sensitive secularists that it cannot even be discussed in a neutral manner in science class. Send your kids to private schools or home school them for now so that they can follow the argument wherever it leads. Otherwise, your kids will not be allowed to ask certain questions. Don’t, of course, send your kids to a school that will not seriously consider atheism. On the other hand, don’t send your kids to a public school that must cut off discussion if it seems to suggest (horrors) that religion might be true or that there is a personal cause that accounts for the cosmos. Find a school that will allow freedom of thought. Right now that will not be a Dover public school.

One of the best things about Narnia is that it defends hierarchy. Peter and the children recognize their betters, including the Lord of Narnia Aslan, but do not feel demeaned by it. In fact, they are able to be thankful and have appropriate desires because they know their place. We cannot hear this term without thinking of demeaning demands for submission from those who have no right to demand it. However, we now infected with the opposite disease.

We frequently fantasize that we are the equals of the leaders of different fields of cultural endeavors. As a native of West Virginia, I have great respect for the common man and for folk culture. The folk, my folk, are very strong and are the backbone of the nation. However, we need not fantasize that the home made quilt is the artistic equal of the Renaissance painting to enjoy its homely beauty. In fact, we demean it by making the unfair comparison. As a member of the commons, I delight that there exist the wealthy, the powerful, and the very gifted.

I am happy blogging gives power to the folk, but do not expect (or even hope to see) the end of all elites. Natural elites based on God given gifts are to be celebrated and not resented. They are (after all) my betters in role and abilities, but they are not better men! Sainthood is, after all, the one great role open to all!

Americans frequently confuse our equality of personhood with equality of function. As the Declaration makes plain, building on the Biblical world-view, all men (persons) are created equal. There are some rights that one has simply as a human being because God has given them to every person. The Declaration lists the right to life, liberty, and the ownership of private property.

This does not imply that all persons have the same roles. My bishop has no greater right to life than I, but in the order of Christendom he is a better man. I owe him my allegiance on issues ecclesiastical. Without being his inferior (as a man), I bow the need to him as my superior in the church. In the same way, if the President were to come to Torrey, I would have to recognize his superior status. I must honor him as President because in the order of American politics, he is my better. Even for him to speak to me is an act of condescension.

The old word condescension has only bad meanings today. We think of it as what a snob does, but it did not always mean only this. It is also a useful word for when a person who really is superior (functionally) graces a lesser person with undeserved favor. When Dr. Cook speaks kindly to a faculty member at a party where he is acting as President of the University, this is a gracious act of condescension.

During a Super Bowl party, I once had a chance to meet Bart Starr, the great quarterback on the championship Packers teams of the sixties. Now in the world of football it would be impossible to find a lower ranking person than I. It would be hard to find a greater individual than the Hall of Fame quarterback that I desired to meet. There was certainly nothing about my role or status that should have led me to expect kindness and personal attention from Mr. Starr. Of course, he owed my common human dignity, but he did not owe me a conversation or an autograph. He gave me both and I was thrilled with his condescension. To speak to me was to lower himself (functionally) and to elevate (for a moment) me by his attention. I was grateful for his attention for it was not owed, but freely given by a man who turned out not to be just a great football player, but a gentleman.

How much we miss in our culture by failing to understand this distinction! As a dad, I am not better than my children as a person. They have the right to always be treated with the dignity due every human. On the other hand, as their dad, I will always be entitled to a certain respect and honor. Of course, the age of obedience soon passes, but there will always remain the role of aging patriarch which my own Father now fills. May he continue to fill it for many years! When Dad condescends to share his wisdom with me in a kindly way, I am blessed. When he gives me good gifts, I am thankful. He owes me nothing at this point and all that he gives me is a super-abundance of blessing.

I think we fail to enjoy so many blessings, because this confusion makes us view all of these blessings as our right. We demand and so are not able to enjoy what is, after all, merely our due. The man who knows he does not deserve what he is given can rejoice in it, but though a man is glad to get his wages he is not thankful for them. He deserves his pay, receives it, but nobody is thrilled with mere virtue!

The divine condescension of the manger is the best example, of course, of the undeserved gift. We did not deserve what God did for us and yet He did it. We can only enjoy it when the full glory of being able to commune with God hits us. He speaks to us, reveals Himself to us, and allows us to know things about the Unknowable!  Glory! It is greater condescension than if the President were to become a worm to reveal the glories of Western civilization to those that live burrowing in the earth.

Christ is born! Glorify Him!

  

Thank you, Colin, for making my family safe.

On Thanksgiving Day, I thanked Torrey alum Colin Anderson for spending the holiday in Iraq when I am sure he would rather be home with his loving family.

Given all of that, is this War worth it? I belong to a Church in which the War is not popular (it is majority Arab) and where I hear the arguments against it every day. As a good churchman it is my duty to take the opinions of my bishops seriously when they address moral questions such as war and peace. In this case, I think them wrong, but do not take this position lightly.

The President gave us good reasons for the War last night. One can trust the Commander in Chief or get the fever that sees conspiracy and evil in every action he takes. One can take the straight forward reading of his character that he is a man of strong principles who is acting as he believes best despite the winds of fortune or the oddly self-contradictory position that he lied about one thing, but would not lie to cover up his first lie.

There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), but the foolish lie was told by Sadaam and not by George W. Bush. Why would Bush lie? If he knew there were no WMD there, he must have been aware of the heavy price he would pay when his lie was uncovered. If he were willing to lie to start a war, why not simply plant such WMD in Iraq. How hard would this be? Would it require any more people than it is alleged he corrupted to fix the intelligence in nations like France (which also believed Sadaam had WMD)? His critics give Bush too much credit for duplicity and too little.

Sadaam did lie. Everybody, even critics of Bush, agree with that fact. He lied to UN weapons inspectors and to his own people. He did not have WMD, but did everything he could to pretend he did. In the warped macho world of his imagination, Sadaam needed to have WMD in order to be somebody. He wanted them badly and was spending money to get them. The fact that he did not have them irked him enough it seems, in his megalomania, that he was willing to risk his own removal. Of course, such men never believe in their own defeat. Surely the gods will save their favorite man of destiny! How could the world after 9/11 trust a leader who would use WMD, claimed to have them, and applauded the destruction of the World Trade Center?

The next time someone asks you, �Why Sadaam?� respond that he was one of the few heads of state to not even pretend to be sorry about 9/11. He was one of the few to applaud and he meant to go on applauding. Since there was no way of knowing how far his support of the terrorists would go, he could not be allowed to stay.

The essential reason for the War in Iraq was always that Sadaam, a declared enemy of the United States, could not be trusted in a world in which we have effective enemies. Sadaam himself could not strike us, but his nation, with its millions in United Nations Oil-for-Food money, could not be trusted. Some nations like the fiefdom of the house of Saud are very bad, but can be leveraged into rational behavior. They are ruled by utterly selfish autocrats, but by rational bad men. Practical politics, where the US has no desire to colonize every nation it does not like, allows for dealing with such nations.

The time of change is coming sooner rather than later in Arabia, but it can be managed without blood shed especially if they are next door to a peaceful multi-ethnic democratic state. We can count on the royal house of Saud to act in its own self-interest as the members flee to Switzerland to avoid the executions squad that are surely coming. Sadaam would not act in his own self-interest and was one that those unique, paranoid world leaders who might do anything. Iraq provides an alternative model to Iran against the gulf.

We know the Islamic terrorists did not favor his secular regime. We also know that the view of these renegade religious as �pure� is utterly false. The 9/11 terrorists went out breaking all the moral laws of Islam before breaking one of the greatest by killing non-combatants on 9/11. They were, as all these groups are, pseudo-Moslems living in a religious world where the righteousness of their own cause justifies any evil.

There is no doubt that they will take money from atheist regimes if it furthers their cause. Can anyone doubt that pseudo-Islamic terrorists and Sadaam would have made common cause, were beginning to make common cause, in the post-9/11 world? Sadaam was not involved in 9/11, but he would have quickly become involved in post-9/11 planning. He was rich with a UN funded source of even more income and something like a nation behind him. We could not allow Iraq to become a haven for pseudo-Moslem terrorists (as it already was with certain non-9/11 terrorist groups)

The Middle East has been the sick man of the global community for too long. It is full of vile states that abuse their own people in the name of ideologies, secular and religious, that are known failures. The poverty of these ideas breeds resentment with reality that becomes addicted to terrorism in its impotent rage. If this does not change, then Israel (our best ally in the Middle East) will remain at risk and the citizens of the United States remain in peril. Arab and non-Arab citizens of those nations will continue to suffer and die under their brutal regimes. While we cannot, and should not, try to remove all of those regimes, a task beyond our capacity and moral authority, Iraq presents an idea case for such removal and change.

Iraq is small enough to be dealt with, unlike Iran, but large enough to matter, unlike the small Gulf states. Iraq is historically important to real Islam so that a functioning republic there can serve as a model that matters to other Islamic states. Iraq has a well educated population that does not hate the West. It is multi-ethnic so it can serve as a model for other multi-ethnic, and multi-religious, majority Islamic nations. It contains one ethnic group, the Kurds, which admire the US and have been supportive of our goals.

An Iraq that is fairly free will act as a permanent bastion of liberty in the Middle East. Imagine the force of the images of voting in the houses all over the US. Imagine the long term impact of an Iraq that prospers and allows more civil liberties than any other state in the region. One does not have to imagine very hard, because it is happening now. This last year saw the greatest explosion of freedom in the history of the Middle East. It is very imperfect and much will go very wrong along the way, but if it can made to stick one of the great sources for the virus of terrorism that infects the global network of nations will have been purged by the US Armed forces.

Our behavior in Iraq will be key. As we let Iraq manage its own affairs, even at the cost of Iraq defying us on important things, then certain lies about the United States will be falsified every day that a free Iraq exists. Soon liberals will decry the sort of people the people of Iraq have elected. They will not be to the taste of any of us we can be sure. Growing republics often elect charlatans and cads, but the important point is that they keep electing somebody. With time will come the maturity of institutions that will bring more responsible men and women to office. With God�s blessing, we might be blessed to find a man of the stature of our own George Washington to help shorten that time of development, but we need not depend on such a miracle. As long as the venal and the cads allow republican forms to develop and the rule of law to (mostly) prevail in the end, they will be forced from office. Their own stupidity, in the case of the radical ideologues, or corruption will become obvious. Voters will learn how to punish such offenses!

Colin Anderson and his mates may do what has not been done in the history of humanity. They may bring representative forms of government and the rule of law to the Middle East. They will not conquer, heaven knows we wish them home as soon as possible, but will stoop to serve. They are liberators and history will treat them as such. In the short term, we honor their sacrifice and in the long term we honor their accomplishments.

We serve the people of Iraq and in doing so we also serve our own best interests and the best interests of the global community. A republican Iraq will do more good for the world than the United Nations has accomplished in the Middle East in its entire existence.

We are here in this life for such a short time. We cannot live a good, flourishing life in constant fear of sacrifice. Doing one�s duty for future generations means the sacrifice of time, health, and treasure for eternity. Ever woman does this when she gives of herself and becomes a mother. She places her time, health, and treasure in something greater than herself. This is just as true of our soldiers in Iraq. They have chosen to live for us instead of for themselves. For this we must honor them and respect their decision. Whatever their individual virtues and vices, they are acting bravely in the greatest choice of their life. They would, I think, decry the cheap inflation that would call them all heroes. Instead, they are men . . . real men, common men, who have done their duty. In our culture of narcissism and celebrity such men are so rare that they seem like gods. We had forgotten what duty, honor, and patriotism look like. So we will not shame them by false praise, but we will honor them by calling them valiant and courageous.

I pray every night for the safety of Colin and the brave men and women who are doing their duty in Iraq. Men such as this have volunteered to do a great thing. They are living lives of noble service and sacrifice that might, if we are blessed, lead to a more peaceful and better world. I still believe that this cause is just and warrants the risk they choose to run. May the price paid be as small as it can be and may our own sacrifices of service on the home front make us somewhat worthy of their priceless actions. God bless the President of the United States and God bless the fighting troops over seas.

Here is a continuation of my letters to friends about Narnia inspired by Hugh�s question. The following is a letter to a friend who is a secularist. (I do have such friends!) Yesterday, I wrote to my religious friend.

Dear Edmund,

You just finished Narnia and I admire your being open minded enough to see the film. It is the sort of thing that irritates you a bit; the way a paean to atheism can ruin an otherwise fun night out for me. You end up wanting to argue with the movie and talking back to the screen simply ruins any date!  

Christmas must make the USA seem like a god-centered culture. I know �Merry Christmas� must grate on your nerves the way the �God bless America� closing of a President�s speech does. You have to put up with hymns to our God, disguised as holiday cheer, on your favorite political shows. The easy assumption of all your friends (eighty-five percent of us!) that everyone is religious is also tough. I have been in �tiny minority� situations so I know how it feels. Good cross-cultural manners taught me to accept my minority cultural status, when in Mongolia act like a Mongolian and not the �ugly American,� and that is one thing I have never understood about you.

You are a sensible guy. You know that most Americans are religious, have always been religious, and are likely to stay that way. Yet for some reason the fact that you have chosen to reject majority American culture means that the rest of us must change in order to become what you wish us to be. I don�t expect the Buddhists of Ulan Bataar to wish me a merry Christmas, but you seem offended if the Baptists of Alabama wish you one. That is odd, I think, and may have more to do with your personal pain than the best side of your personality.

Of course, my strong disagreement with your position often strains our friendship. I would argue that best evidence suggests that if society adopts your views it will ruin our culture (or it least make it extinct in short order) and damn our souls. There are plenty of people who are wrong, but Christians believe you to be perniciously wrong. You often return the favor by viewing us as the Taliban or a group of theocrats.

The problem, however, seems to me to be simple. You really do want America to be secular, more like Sweden than it is now, while I don�t want it to be a theocracy. No Christian I now wants the kind of religious rule found in Iran, for example. We are opposed to your actual position, while I feel that sometimes your Internet friends are opposed to a cartoon version of ours. Thank you for not making that mistake about your Christian friends!

Of course, I know you are smart. Your position is not stupid and there are good arguments for it. Heaven knows we can be annoying (or at least I can be annoying!) in our seemingly smug surety that we are right. However, please forgive us for that and realize that we too (at our best) are on a dialectical journey. I believe Christianity is true at some personal cost because I believe best reason and best experience demand it. It is not always what I wish were true, but it is what my intellect and my heart unite in demanding of my better self.

Christianity has problems, of course, like the problem of natural evil that are very difficult. I feel the force of them and sometimes think you might be right. Sadly, that old demon logic keeps forcing me back to traditional Christianity. But enough of that . . . philosophical argument can be endless! I will quote Plantinga and then you will quote Flew . . . at least the earlier Flew! I will get my favorite IVP book and you will lug out your Prometheus titles. We are not going to make much progress that way.

What does this have to do with the Narnia film? I think that the problem with your world-view is that it is fundamentally without beauty. It is not ugly since your world view cannot allow for a real beautiful.  If we struggle with the problem of evil, it is because we rejoice in being able to see goodness that is not subjective or merely an arbitrary label placed on reality by our own prejudices. Christianity can lead to ugliness, but it can explain that ugliness with resources from within. We don�t expect humans to be perfect and can account for forgiveness.

The story of Narnia, which is very much a Christian story, contrasts so strongly with the story of secularism. Ours is the world view of Aquinas, the founding of the Universities, medicine, modern science, the Renaissance, and most of the great art of the West, but we are also the religion of the fairy tale. Now I know you have been taught to be view fairy tales as childish nothings . . . myths by which you mean merely false stories.

But isn�t it obvious from a film like Narnia that some stories strike very deep? Themes of redemption and divine love may be overdone in our Western culture, but they are overdone because they still have the power to make men and women weep. Aslan dies for Edmund. That makes no sense by the calculus of atoms and scales that will not allow for the personal, but makes perfect, logical sense to a cosmos full of personality. Narnia is a grand romance and it is not an accident that secularists are not able to tell good fairy tales, but must rely on those old Oxford dons, Tolkien and Lewis, to do it for them. Your great truths cannot be found in myth for you have reduced romance to nothingness in a university without personality.

It is personality and romance that is missing from your universe. When your best thinkers tell me that my love for my wife is one set of selfish genes looking for another set, then I think that he has never read Trollope or Shakespeare or been in love. This is not soft sentimentality, but a set of facts that must be taken into account. Your worldview explains them away by reducing them to some fog floating off matter and energy in mindless motion. My worldview recognizes that we are more sure of love and passion than we are of the existence of that matter and energy themselves. Christians do not explain love away . . . they account for it in the Divine Mind.

Can secularism produce beauty or must it always be parasitic on it? If it is true that religion has produced horrors like the Inquisition, but we have also produced the Renaissance and the great cathedrals of Europe. Can a world-view that believes at bottom that life is meaningless (finding meaning only in the creation of meaning by the individual) inspire the sacrifice necessary for great art? There is no evidence that it can.

Narnia stands for the small against the strong. It stands for the importance of even the animals against the barren and bleak efficiency of an all powerful state. Christianity cannot tolerate the abuse of the individual by either big government or big business and as Narnia demonstrates provides a basis for the nobility of the common. Every sentient being is created in the Image of God and has value. Every voice must be heard and in that universe a hierarchy of gifts can be recognized without fear for basic human rights are secured by who were are and not what we can do.  

The mindless consumption of the unfettered pursuit of wealth, living for self, and not for others can never be made consistent with the religious mind. The jollification of Christmas can be commercialized but only destroyed in doing so. A feast day is about human values and can be enjoyed as well by the poor as by the great and mighty. Religion can account for this, but secularism cannot. Where is the value of the small man in the world where personhood is reduced to DNA? If merit can be measure and worth is based on merit, I fear that is mere sentiment on your part (or a residual Christianity) that prevents debasing the average in favor of the great god of the famous and the powerful. Heaven knows that this is a great enough temptation for Christians, even with our example of the humble Virgin and the crucified Lord, what will happen when our role models come not from the martyrs, but only from the �successful?�

I love free markets, but do not worship them and where they break the dignity of the human person and the laws of God, and then I can limit them. Where shall you find your limits to the desires of the brightest and the best in the meritocracy that you would create?

Can secularism even produce children let alone children�s literature? Children are difficult and they get in the way. They seem a bother and secularists, who proclaim that they are only a Darwinian vehicle for making babies, seem very chary about actually having them. I understand that feeling and Lewis himself, steeped in the comfortable atheism of his intellectual class, missed any chance to have his own children. Surely it is no accident; however, that he began to write stories for children, got married, and became something of a step-father in his later years as he became more thoroughly a Christian? He had a basis in an immortal soul and in eternity to think that present selfishness would be judged as bleak and worthy. Exactly what does a secularist need children for and if secularism itself causes its proponents to stop making babies then how is its embrace of Darwinian fitness coherent?

The world of Narnia on the other hand knows nothing of Darwin or of men and women too selfish to �sacrifice� their present happiness for eternity. This is a world where Peter must fight, because it is his duty to fight. It is a world where children are not just called to stern duties, but an entire world rallies to save them from the secular modern who would stamp out all children to preserve her reign for all eternity. It is the essence of Christianity that the old human order changes and gives way to the new. This is not merely sad, but part of the very fabric of the world, and the sorrow is mitigated by our future hopes. Secularism has no such future hopes and so must try to botox what it has to preserve it in the face of change.

And oddly enough this allows Christians to face the world that way it is, full of death and suffering caused by our evils, and still find joy.

The Narnia film calls for jollification! It opposes a world where it is always bleak winter and never Christmas. Pardon me, but that looks a great deal like your world, old friend. The great philosopher W.V. Quine once said that he preferred ontological deserts . . . he wanted a universe with as few things in it as possible. Pardon me, but some of us, for good reason it seems to me, prefer the fecundity of the Narnian spring to the barren �purity� of the Narnian winter.

All things being equal, and surely you must concede that there good arguments on our side as there are on yours  . . . why shouldn�t we prefer to believe in a world where real goodness, real truth, and real beauty are possible?

�God rest you merry, gentleman.� That is the first line of an old carol. It bids busy men, worldly men like the two of us, to retreat from despair. Why? Christ our Savior was born on Christmas day! The fact that it is an old story and a beautiful one does not make it any less true. The fact that it has profound philosophical defenses does not make it any less beautiful. It is the old story that is at once rational and moving. It unites head and heart by worshipping a divine Logic made flesh.

The Narnia film shows that all the old religions had a fore taste of that great truth. Christianity need not be dour or Puritanical. It has been, and still can be, the basis for science . . . which we both know was the product of the Christian West. It has been, and still can be, the basis for a Bach, Mozart, and Michelangelo. Bluntly, it seems to me that you worldview cannot have both. Where are your fairy stories? Where is your beauty? Where is an adequate basis for the life of self-sacrifice, almost monastic self-sacrifice, which high science demands? As religion fades in this land or in Western Europe, I see more sterility in the culture and more death. I see more despair and bluntly more drugs and less jollification.

At least consider that this children�s story might point to a better way!

Merry Christmas my friend,

John Mark    

The Narnia film came in a strong second this weekend. It continues to ring up a big box office. However, it did not do as well as I had hoped and so the jury is still (sort of) out on whether the film points to a great untapped market for religion friendly films. If it had remained number one, then debate would have been ended for all but die hard religion haters.

On the other hand, if it continues at the pace it is on over the Holidays, then I think we will have our answer. Will it be the biggest box office draw of the Holidays or ever close to it? If so, then Hollywood is missing something. We now know that it was far and away a bigger draw than “Kong” on its opening weekend and I believe I could have made money on that bet a week ago!

We all know for a fact that studios did not like this project, this book . . . and this demographic. Some wanted to do the project, but only if they could cut much of the religious imagery. They don’t want to cater to Christians and are almost ashamed when someone thinks they have. (Listen to the questions to those involved in Narnia. “Is it true that Aslan is a Christ figure?” with the tone of a communist hunter looking for Reds under the bed.)

Here is the question:

Will Hollywood make more pro-religion (especially traditional Christian) films? If not, then why not?

(The new excuse of the moment seems to be ‘foreign’ box office. However, Narnia is doing well there. China and much of the world outside of dying Europe is rapidly becoming more and more Christian. Does Hollywood want the giant Chinese market? Perhaps it should make movies that can slip the censors and delight the house church members!)

Here is www.the-numbers.com on this weekend’s movies:

King Kong’s troubles are good news for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, which many had assumed would be crushed by the big guy. However, now it looks like it has a shot at retaining its weekend box office crown with as high as $40 million, but $37 million is a more likely target. That does give the film close to $120 million after 10 days, and puts it in great shape for the upcoming holidays.

How out of touch is Hollywood and how out of touch are film reviewers? First, ask how many reviewers are parents of large families or even parents at all. Which is more likely to draw the Christmas family crowd: a movie set in a winter fantasyland or a remake of a monster movie? Second, ask how many reviewers are church goers. Which film will attract the eight-five percent of America that is very religious? Third, ask how many reviewers are moved by references to the Christian story and how many are subliminally turned off by them. My own hometown paper (OC Register) gave Narnia a C+ (!) with snide references to the Biblical message. Their panel of regular teen movie reviewers all scored the movie in the B to A range.

King Kong looks like a great movie. I will go see it. It may still win the weekend. If I had to bet, I would take the odds (which until very recently would have been in Kong�s favor in a huge way) that it will not or will barely do so. During the summer every film I attended that had the Narnia trailer, had applause (loud applause) for the trailer. I heard no such pre-built audience reaction for Kong. I think reviewers need to admit that they were hoping Narnia would go away. It isn�t (so far). Film studios need to find some sound Evangelical, Roman Catholic, or Orthodox bloggers to clue them into what most of the nation thinks.

Dear Peter,

You told me that you were going to see the Narnia film and asked my thoughts about it.

Of course, I am not a professional film reviewer. I loved the movie, but then the books made such an impact on me as a child that it is safe to say that just the sight of Lucy meeting Tumnus (the faun in the woods) was going to put a smile on my face for the rest of the Holidays. You have not read the books so you are wondering who Tumnus is and if I have lost my mind. How does someone with a doctorate in philosophy from an analytic department end up raving about a modern fairy tale?

Oddly enough to the modern mind what the world needs now is a good fairy tale. Now sadly most people have been taught that �fairy tale� or the better word �myth� just means false stories people make up to explain things when they don�t have science. We both know (thank goodness) that this wrong. A myth, the way Plato or Lewis would use it, is a big story used to make sense out reality. It explains the facts as best it can. It is likely, but can never be known (for sure) to be true. In this sense, all of �big science� is a myth.

Of course, some myths are better than others. When not infected with secularist assumptions modern science is one of the best myths ever developed. It explains a great many facts and does so in a way that uncovers many other important things. However, modern the modern scientific myth has limited itself from exploring the personal and final causes in the cosmos. This is not the place to ask whether that is a good idea. That is the way it is at the moment, but this means science (despite the pretensions of some scientists) cannot explain a big chunk of reality. Amazingly it cannot explain the very bit of reality that must persons (since they are persons) find most interesting.

Personal causes exist. Narnia was written by a person and is not the product of chance. The work of C.S. Lewis or Shakespeare or Isaac Asimov for that matter cannot be reduced (so far as anyone knows) to the impersonal. No little atoms colliding with each other could produce the character of Aslan, Hamlet, or Mule. Narnia, like much of the best literature from Trollope to Tolstoy is partly an attempt to tell a story that explains (without explaining away) these personal facts. Why do people act as they do? What is meaning of sacrifice and of duty? What is honor? These are not questions the modern scientific story even attempts to answer. Narnia provides provisional answers to a few of these questions that is satisfying to both children and to adults.

Of course, this sort of myth-making, or fairy tale, has its limits. Lewis is not trying to explain how the cosmos goes, but he is telling a counter-factual story (an alternative cosmos) to illuminate who the personal agents in the cosmos go! Narnia is not anti-science (fairy tales versus science) as some silly reviewers might say, but an attempt (and only a rudimentary and partial one) to complete our modern view of reality. Dante could write both best science (of his day) and best poetry (dealing with the personal) at the same time. We have limited ourselves to doing one at a time (to our loss I think), but Lewis is trying to fill the gaps of our scientific education.

At the same time, you will notice how wholesome this is for education. Lewis is not placing fairy tales against reason or science. He is for science and for logic. He just not simple enough to believe that poetry is merely feelings-based while what we call science is merely factual. Both poetry and the most technical of scientific papers are parts of a whole description of the truth of the world. Our fairy tales must account for our science just as our science should account for the truths found in our fairy tales. Scientists who complain about ethical limits to their investigations have not learned the first lesson of what it is to be human . . . and so they repeat the mistake of the wizard in Aladdin and assume that knowledge or power is its own justification. At the same time, the typical Hollywood fairy tale (so unlike Narnia) wants us to follow only our hearts against our best reason. The importance of Narnia is that it will urge you to account for both your head and your heart!

Never confuse reason with bad news.  That is a prejudice of our times. Sometimes my friends who are secularists will have certain doomed nobility about them. They think it brave that they have decided that goodness, truth, and beauty do not exist and I suppose if that is what best reason taught us then they would be right. But surely it has not come to that! There are many good reasons to believe in a real and personal good. Analytic philosophy has been undergoing a revival of the most traditional sorts of theism which, by the way, never died in any case. Just because the news is good: there is a God and He loves us, does not mean we have to reject it. In fact, all things being equal good news should be believed over bad news if one is healthy.

Narnia, even the film which is simpler than the book, is a wholesome vision of reality in an alternative world. One thing to keep in mind, despite what you read in the press: Narnia is not a Christian allegory. Aslan is not Jesus. His death on the stone table is like the death of Jesus Christ, but also different.

Your experience with science fiction should help understand the difference. Narnia is a thought experiment, a bit of what-ifery. We both like the sort of book that asks, �What if Lenin had not taken the German train to Russian?� or �What if Napoleon had won at Waterloo?� Such experiments in the counter-factual often illuminate important events or ideas in history.

If all of that made sense, then you can see that a modern worry is removed by Narnia. Some foolish Christians, aided and abetted by anti-religious types, have acted as if the truth of Christianity meant that our world�s story must be the only story to be told. Now I do not know if there is life in the rest of the Universe. As a neo-Platonist, I think there might be. On top of that, I have no reason to think that this reality is the only one. For some reason, whenever people here that there might be another world they imagine a secular one or one that cannot account for the Divine events (the birth of Jesus Christ) that happened on this planet, but this is just a failure of imagination or better a conditioning of the imagination by hundreds of films and science fiction stories written by folk hostile to Christianity.

Since we have no idea what life is like on any other world or reality there are many possibilities. However, the only world with life on it of which we are aware (our own) is the most reasonable guide to what we will find. If the evidence points to the truth of Christianity here, then that evidence would not change on Mars or Vulcan or any other reality. The Christian God is not some local tribal deity. He rules as Creator over all things . . . which would include any other planet of reality. If this is so, and philosophical arguments for His existence do not depend in any way on the parochial notion that this is the only reality, then it is most sensible to think of those worlds in Christian terms and not secular ones.

In short, we are likely to find other worlds (if we are allowed to find them) either in a sinless state (in which case I hope we don�t go there as their own Satan introducing our evil) or going through their own process of redemption. Since God is rational and the Incarnation has happened, I would assume that process of redemption would be like ours but also take into account the facts that occurred at the first Christmas. Why not?

You should view Narnia as a baptism for your imagination. When I mention the idea that �other worlds� (if found) may confirm not deny the truth of the Gospel, most people are shocked, but they have no good reason for such unbelief. The arguments for the divinity of Christ do not depend on His having no other flock on other worlds. If they are good arguments, then they are not bound by space or time! The fact that the world of Narnia, where our myths are real, seems shocking to you is an indication of the effectiveness of secular propaganda. They pretend to know something (what other worlds will be like) that they do not know or they imagine (as we do not) that what we have learned on this world will have no bearing on the worlds we shall find.

Both of us understand that atheism or secularism is too simplistic to account for the world. Such folk are good hearted, but they try to explain too much with too little. Simple answers are better only if they explain all the facts otherwise they become simplistic. Goodness, truth, and beauty are at least as real as atoms, cars, and trees. I am much more sure that a �self� exists than that �things� exist. Maybe ideas can be reduced to matter, but it seems more likely that �matter� can be reduced to ideas. Better still is the Christian answer (the answer of Narnia) that both exist!

Narnia reminds us that reason and faith are related and not in opposition. You are never asked to believe anything despite your experience, but you are asked (as the children are reminded by the Professor) not to dismiss your experience or some other person�s just because it does not fit your simple secularist picture of reality!

You have often asked me how I can believe that Christianity is the �answer� when there are some many other world religions. What about Zeus or other gods?

Narnia is a very clever man�s partial answer to that question. Lewis believed, and I think he was right, that all the world�s religions (the great ones) have seized on truths. These truths, to the extent that they are truths, must be part of a sane world view. When Lewis has Bacchus, the pagan god of wine, appear in Narnia it is not because he is partly a pagan. It is because he saw the appeal in Bacchus. He knew the jolly times one can have with good wine and merry company, but also the corruption that came of worship of Bacchus. The strength of the Christian myth and Narnia shows this, is that it can account for Bacchus and get the good of him without turning him into God. Bacchus is too small for God and his pleasures too little.  

Of course this is not the silly idea that all religions are equally true. Lewis rightly saw and argued that Christianity was the fullest account of the truths of religion. This was not arrogance, but the product of careful examination. One need not dismiss all other religious as utterly false to say that Christianity is the largest truth nor can one merely assume that only the bigot thinks he is right. I believe that other religions contain dangerous falsehoods, but I feel no desire to persecute them (how contrary to the Law of Love!) or deny the great truths within them. On the other hand, I have never found any great truth in another religion that is not more fully (and nobly) expressed in the traditional Christian faith. Either that is right or wrong, but let�s not be silly enough to simply yelp about intolerance before examining carefully whether or not this is correct.

We live in a world in dire need of a good solid Narnian word: jollification. The Narnia film is cheerful, but realistic. There are real dangers in the woods . . . in a past 9/11 world we know there are real wolves in the woods. Some of our friends will sell us out to the wolves for a bit of personal peace. However, one need not despair or become intolerant. One can simply do one�s duty while enjoying a bit of Christmas. It is the totalitarians (on the right and left) who are always serious. We know how limited is our power and how little our dreams of utopia would match reality in this age! As a result, we can stop in the midst of even the most serious war and have some toast (with jam!) and wait for our gifts from Father Christmas. Our opponents on the secular lefts can never tell jokes . . . they can only deal in sarcasm and irony. They never feast for they fear too greatly dying to enjoy feast foods. Real Christianity is jolly without being unserious.  

I hope this Christmas brings some jollification your way.

Under the Mercy,

John Mark