August 27, 2007

Um, I don't even know what to say about this one

I'm having another book crisis (surprise, surprise), but this one has been brewing for quite some time, and it's real. It's troubling me. I don't know what to do about it.

Since the sixth grade, The Chronicles of Narnia have been at the top of my favorite books list--especially The Voyage of the Dawn Treader--but now... Now. Oh, they're too damn Christian. This was not a problem for me when I was a teenager and still, nominally, Christian my own self, but then I had a spiritual crisis right before Easter junior year of college, and I have been unable to accept the beliefs of Christianity ever since. I was able to reconcile Madeleine L'Engle's Christianity with my own lack of it easily. She's Episcopalian, which was my denomination until I fell into heathenism, and she's... I don't know, but it's so much more than some stupid doctrine, her religion, so I can get behind that. I like Jesus just fine as a dude. I will never believe he is the son of god. Never. But the things he said--some of them, the important ones, anyway--I like a lot. But everything that grew up after he died--that's what I have a problem with, and C.S. Lewis is often too rigid about that shit. I have been uncomfortable for quite some time with the entire existence of Calormen, because it sounds just like the Middle Eastern Muslim countries, and Lewis has nothing but contempt for these dark-skinned Southerners. They're all evil, except for two of them. I don't know. I don't know! I had this problem when the movie came out, with the Jesus thing, but I made it go away, because I liked the movie.

But you know what I really hate? That scene at the end of The Last Battle when all the creatures of Narnia come before Aslan, and those who look at him and love him are permitted into heaven, and those who look at him and...don't love him are banished into the darkness. That's horrible. Like Lewis wants people to be excluded from his world. Like Susan. I have such a problem with how Susan turned out. Such a problem. But whatever. I can't articulate it well enough for it to be worth it. I can't articulate any of this well enough, except... Why does Christianity always end up excluding people? That's not the point.

Anyway, here's the crisis, in a nutshell. I hate the theological tenets of Christianity--I hate the belief in the existence of heaven and hell, especially. So how can I still love The Chronicles of Narnia? Can I even? Is the phrase "theological tenets" redundant?

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