Narnia and the Crucifixion

July 17, 2006

Joe,

Sounds like Rummikub may cause you to have a little less time to be posting for all of us here at Blog Nation!  I’m surprised you didn’t mention that as one of your recommendations (maybe next week). 

Anyway, I had a thought a little over a week ago that I never was able to get up here, so here goes.  Last weekend when we stayed at the Bowers’ house we all watched the Chronicles of Narnia.  You guys were in Italy when it was released and if you haven’t seen it I do think it is a good investment of two hours. 

Well the part that really gripped me, I think the part of the movie that really was the best done in the whole thing, was the “crucifixion” scene.  Obviously I am only speaking allegorically, but I mean the part when Aslan gives himself up to the Witch and she kills him.  Of course the imagery of Christ making the agonizing journey to Calvary is in view, and as I watched this scene in the movie my heart was just so engaged in what I was watching.  I’m watching the way they taunt this lion and my whole insides wanted to scream out “No!”  It really is a horrible scene.

Now what really struck me is that during that same weekend I was reading through John 19 in my devotions.  I was reading the reality of this fictional allegory that I had been so gripped by.  And as I read John 19, my affections were just so paltry.  I felt pathetic, feeling no sense of the horror of this atrocity, that the perfectly spotless Son of God should be mocked and spit upon and beaten and bloodied.  Yet I was thoroughly engaged in this movie which was nothing in light of the reality that it was seeking to portray.

So I concluded my reflection on these things with two feelings: gratitude to God for ordaining the making of a movie like Narnia to give me a sense of the great evil that happened two thousand years ago on Calvary; yet at the same time, very frustrated with myself that it takes a fictional movie to stir my heart while the real thing made so little an impression on me.

So what do you think my problem was/is?  Was my reaction to the movie simply what Edwards would call “animal spirits”, which really has no spiritual value in and of itself?  And what can I do to make the reality of the Cross as dreadful in my experience as this simple movie made it to my heart?

You know as well as anyone (except my wife) how handicapped my emotions are; but this has been on my mind over the last week, so I thought I would throw it out there for discussion.  The same could be said over Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ movie.  Should it really take a movie such as this for people to say that they saw for the first time the terrible suffering of the crucifixion.  Should not the infallible Word of God be enough to make us tremble at these astounding realities? 

Let me know what you think,

Larry  

Posted by Larry | Filed Under Uncategorized 

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