Thoughts from "The Chronicles of Narnia"

I just finished reading The Chronicles of Narnia again this week. I read them once before (well, all but the last one) when I was younger, but I got a great deal more out of these books this time through. There is much that could be said about the insights offered in the stories of Narnia, but I will just share one of my thoughts here.

Towards the end of The Silver Chair, the heroes and heroines of the book are trapped underground in a world controlled by an evil witch. The witch uses magic and deceptively sweet words to convince the characters to forget about all the beautiful things they love on the surface of the world. After taking courageous action to break the spell that hangs over them, one of the heroes turns to the witch and says:

"...I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things--trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that's a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We're just babies making up a game, if you're right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn't any Narnia."

Isn't that brilliant? I think it is. Believing in things that are good makes us better people. Even when we cannot see those things, when they become distant to us, or when they become buried under other cares and sorrows, it is still worth believing in them. Even when they become so distant they seem like nothing but a dream. That can happen sometimes, and those times are so hard to push through! But we have to keep believing. It is called hope. Without hope, we would have a terribly glum world and our lives would seem worthless.

This quote also reminded me of The Man of La Mancha, in which a delusional Don Quixote believes himself to be a knight errant and dedicates all his deeds to a lovely and virtuous lady who in reality is the prostitute Aldonza. By the end of the story, we see that Aldonza has changed into a better and more hopeful person because Don Quixote saw more in her than what others saw. While the delusional world in which Don Quixote lived was not real, his belief in Aldonza being better than what she was changed her perspective and her life for good.

So, it is worth it to hope. It is worth it to look up, to believe, and to see and seek out that which is good even when others laugh, mock, or ridicule. Even when our hopes seem nearly impossible, we are better off holding onto them, and as we do so our hopes can have the power to buoy others up as well.

It would be worth it even those beliefs weren't "real" or if we didn't know that good would triumph over evil. I have heard it said that we do not follow God because we know that good will win so much as we follow God because he is good and because he loves us. If Satan were to win, we would still be on God's side because Satan does not love us and would only want to make us miserable whether we followed him or not. Of course, the wonderful thing is that we already know that good will win and that God is far more powerful than Satan. Yet even if we didn't know, it would still be far better to follow God.

Thank goodness for the hope in all good things that gives us courage to push forward!