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INTRODUCTION
Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. —1 Corinthians 3:18–19a
I read The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe for the first time when I was in elementary school. I loved to stare at the cover, a picture of the four children in fur coats, framed by a forest with the White Witch’s castle looming behind them. They looked like kids I might know. The lamppost was like lampposts in my Chicago neighborhood, but it stood by itself in the distance. The castle told me that this was a fairy tale, which thrilled me. It was both familiar and unfamiliar: a whole world on the other side of a closet door.
C.S. Lewis said that he began to write the Narnia Chronicles because an image appeared in his mind: a faun with an umbrella and his arms full of packages, walking under a lamppost in the middle of a snowy forest. He also saw a queen riding in a sleigh and a majestic lion. As he wrote, “At first there wasn’t anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord.” The novel unfolded as a work of imagination and faith.
When we deeply trust something we can’t see, we must use our imaginations. Consider Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Too often, Christianity may seem to be a known quantity. We can take its radical values for granted and see Jesus as a cliché instead of our Savior. Lewis, by placing Christianity into another world, makes it unfamiliar again. He gives us the chance to feel a newfound wonder at the depth of God’s love, the power of Christ’s grace and the totality of his sacrifice, and the wonder of a world infused with the Holy Spirit. We all can use a spiritual wake-up call like this, whether we aren’t sure Christianity can mean anything to us, or whether it means everything.
Entering Narnia, though, means becoming a little bit “foolish,” as St. Paul would put it. Reading children’s liter- ature might be embarrassing for adults or teenagers, but it can be a deep source of wisdom (and fun); as Lewis wrote, “When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly.”
In 2013, I first thought to use The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe for an adult Advent series at my church. We had a wonderful time reading the book; watching scenes from one of the movies; discussing spiritual imagination, temptation and repentance, lions and beavers, witches and fauns. It was such a rich experience that I wanted to share it with other individuals and churches as a way to observe Advent and prepare for Christmas.
Lewis’ first book about the land of Narnia is a perfect fit for the season of Advent. The snow, a glowing lamppost, the children, the waiting for the return of a savior, and the visit of Father Christmas make it a natural reading partner for this time of year. The novel very quickly moves from Advent into Christmas, then Good Friday and finally to Easter; so, for the most part, the reflections and activities in this book focus on the first half of the novel, which is most pertinent to Advent.
There is a whole theological world Lewis created in the Narnia Chronicles (for more on this, read Rowan Wil- liams’ book The Lion’s World) and while I do refer to The Magician’s Nephew and The Last Battle, I focus on the char- acters, images, and themes of the first novel.
You can read along in The Lion, The Witch, and The Ward- robe as you do this Advent study; relevant chapters are listed at the start of the reflections that focus on the novel. You can watch one of the movie versions, if you’d prefer (see Appendix for details on the three most commonly available). Either strategy will help you get the most out of the reflections, the discussion sessions, and the “Narnia Night” for families.
However, my purpose in writing this book is not to help you to know Narnia better but to know God better. Rowan Williams wrote about Lewis, “The reader is brought to Narnia for a little in order to know Aslan better in this world.”3 I hope that by spending a little time in Narnia this Advent, you will get to know Aslan—and Jesus Christ— better, and to prepare for Jesus’ birth at Christmas all the more richly for it.
