A
Narnian
Guide to Su
Have you noticed a recurring theme in the books we read, the movies we see, or the TV shows we binge watch? As those great theologians of the apocalypse, REM, once sang, It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
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But seriously, why all the doom and gloom, the world-is-going-to-beblown-to-bits-like-Alderaan hysteria? Is it the money? Let’s face it, Judgment Day sells like oceanfront property in Arizona when the Big One hits. Bookstores, theatres, and Netflix queues are full of stories set in an apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, or dystopian, world. We can’t seem to read or watch enough of this genre. Is art reflecting reality? Screenwriters and storytellers frequently use their art forms to warn us about problems common to human experience or reveal thought-provoking themes and moral dilemmas like those that regularly occur in The Walking Dead or The Hunger Games. Or is it just entertainment? Some like romantic comedies, while others enjoy the adrenaline rush of surviving yet another alien invasion of planet earth. Truth be told, reality is a mix of all three. But there’s something more than money, madness, and marketing revealed by our culture’s obsession with the End Times. There’s a lot we know: the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, the distance to the moon, or how long it took Magellan to circumnavigate the globe. But when faced with hard questions—the ones we’re unable to answer, such as, “When will the world end?”—we panic. And when we’re afraid, survival instincts kick in. Ironically, as much as we want our story to have a happy ending, we are incapable of creating the happily-ever-after-ending we so desire, whether it’s on the pages of a good book, the silver screen, or the front page of the morning news. As baptized Christians, however, we know how the story ends: The good guys win. Jesus returns. We believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting. We look forward to the new heavens and the new earth, the heavenly Jerusalem, and the marriage supper of the Lamb. Still we wonder, how do we dare to be Lutheran in a Mad Max world? Consider the Last Days of Narnia, as written by C.S. Lewis in his book, The Last Battle. What C.S. Lewis does in depicting Jesus’ passion in a symbolic and imaginative way through Aslan’s substitutionary death in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, he portrays for the Last Days in our world through symbolism and storytelling in this masterful conclusion to The Chronicles of Narnia. Think of The Last Battle as The Narnian Guide to Surviving the Apocalypse. By seeing the end times in Lewis’ imaginative world of Narnia, we can see Jesus’ Second Coming better here in our own world.
