Our Last
Battle
Reflections
on The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis and our pilgrimage in Christ.
Robert L. Withers, 2024
One – What Does It Mean?
What does Lewis mean by the title, The Last Battle? Our response to the question seems simple at first; surely we find the answer on page 738, “And then the last battle of the last King of Narnia began.” Maybe this is what he meant by the title, maybe this is all he meant by the title, but maybe it isn’t. If it is all that he meant, then he wrote more than he knew – which is probably the way it should be, for the story and its images are not simply linear and one dimensional, anymore more than Lewis was one dimensional and linear – anymore than the Bible is flat. [I am using the one volume edition of the Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis, Harper Collins].
When we birth life we do not know where
the life will go, how it will grow, how it will be transformed and transform
those around it. Tolkien did not care for the Narniad, he considered its images
incongruous, for example, what in the world was Father Christmas doing in The
Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? What has Father Christmas to do with a
witch or an Aslan figure of Christ? Tolkien wanted Lewis to follow the
congruity of The Lord of the Rings, he wanted Lewis’s creative life to
mimic his own creative life.
How likely was this to happen? After
all, Lewis said that for many years he had an image of a faun carrying a
package, and that it was from this image that life took the form of Narnia – an
unlikely progression to our natural eyes, but who knows the mystery of creation
and birthing in our souls? I think only Christ Jesus.
After decades, The Lord of the Rings is still giving life, likely in forms that Tolkien did not anticipate, as is the Narniad, likely in forms that Lewis did not consider. Authorial Intent can be a poor primary hermeneutic, and Lewis argued that we ought to encounter the creative work of the author rather than the author, and indeed Lewis and others, such as Dorothy L. Sayers, were disgusted with the trend of knowing personal details about authors – including themselves – they thought that creative work ought to be encountered on its own merit.
While my sense is that they both went
a bit far on this, my point is that to encounter the Narniad is to enter into
Narnia and to allow Narnia to enter into us – it is not to primarily ask, “What
did Lewis mean?” We might well ask this question when reading The Problem of
Pain or Miracles, but we ask it because we acknowledge the genre of
what we’re reading – both of these books are didactic and tightly reasoned,
whereas the Narniad is imaginative with imaginative seeds sown everywhere and
cross pollinating. To enter into the world of Narnia is to “take the adventure
that Aslan gives us,” an adventure taking us “further up and further in.”
For the past few years I have been
pondering The Last Battle and wanting to write about it. My motivation
is simple, I love Jesus and I love His People and I think that The Last
Battle is a message of both warning and encouragement. I have come to see
that the question of just what the last battle really is, is a bit more complex
than we might think. Is the last battle found on page 738, or is it found
throughout the book?
I think that the last battle on page
738 is found within the true Last Battle which occurs throughout the book,
which is to say that the physical battle that commences on page 738 is but a
component of the battle that commences at the beginning of the book, or at any
rate that commences no later than Chapter 2, when Tirian and Jewell digest the
news of Aslan’s appearance.
You see, we all have a last battle.
We have this battle as individuals and as a People, and the battle centers
around “What think you of Christ?” That is, “Who do men say that I am?”
Most of the Narnians bought into a caricature
of Aslan, a caricature which grew and grew, which twisted and twisted, until
their faith was transferred from Aslan to Tashlan. In other words, the Narnians
believed the worst of Aslan. Of course they couldn’t see it, because once they
stepped on the slippery slope their descent accelerated.
There would have been no last battle
on page 738 had not King Tirian first fought his own last battle, had not Tirian
come to see the gross caricature of Aslan in the deceitful work of the Ape.
But what of us? Do we worship the
true Jesus Christ, or have we so twisted Him that we’ve created our own
Tashlans – our syncretistic idols? Are we parading our theologies and politics
and worship styles and nationalism and materialism in the skins of dead lions,
convinced that we have the true Jesus? Do our hearts belong to Jesus? As the
deer pants for water brooks, are our souls panting for Jesus?
I have a dear friend who graciously
invited me to preach his installation sermon – it is one of the highlights of
my life. My text was 2 Corinthians 11:2 – 3:
For I am jealous for you
with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to
Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. But I am afraid that, as the
serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the
simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.
The hallmark of all Christian ministry
ought to be leading Christians into a monogamous marriage with Jesus Christ; a
pure and simple marriage to Jesus, in which Jesus is our All in all. We ought
to be teaching others to love Jesus, we ought to be encouraging one another to
love Jesus, we ought to have eyes for Jesus and only for Jesus. Jesus is not a
capitalist, a socialist, a nationalist, a materialist; nor He is “red” or “blue”
or of a particular religious tradition or denomination or of a church that claims
to be exclusive. It seems we have many variations of dead lion skins that we parade
shouting and teaching, “This is Jesus, this is Jesus!”
It is frightening to me that we even
cloak the Bible in dead lion skins – what hubris!
It also seems that we are in
competition to see who can produce the most authentic looking dead lion skin.
We have become adept at making dead lion skins look alive, and it really does
not seem to bother us…I find this puzzling.
So many of our “Christian” books, our
nationalistic pronouncements, our song lyrics, our teachings on “End Times,” our Sunday school and small group curriculum,
our emphasis on money and possessions, and the way we often “do” church – seem to
me to be dead lion skins, for they do not point us to Jesus and only to Jesus,
and they require artificial life support, otherwise they will die quickly. They
also require marketing, manipulation, pressure to conform, and a return on
investment. They must make economic sense.
Well, I trust you will forgive me
for the above, I am simply sharing my heart and the impact of The Last
Battle. There is a simplicity in Jesus that our sophistication has left
behind, there is also a directness in His call to discipleship (Mark 8:34 – 38)
that we avoid, but which Bonhoeffer captures when writing, “When Christ calls a
man, he bids him come and die.”
We like to quote Jim Elliot’s, “He
is no fool who gives what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose,” but we don’t
really want to live it out in our lives – we don’t really want to encounter the
true Aslan, the son of the Emperor across the sea – for while Aslan is good, He
is most certainly not tame.
I hope you will join me in
reflecting on The Last Battle. Every time I walk through this last book
of Narnia it tears my soul but it also gives me hope, for I know that I will
see Aslan and be with Him, going further up and further in…always with Him,
always in Him.
Much love,
Bob
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