Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.
-The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Aslan….
The name is dear to me.
Oh I know if you haven’t read these dear books or have at least some knowledge of them from the films I’ve probably already lost you. But honestly I believe we can find so much of ourselves and so many truths about the deep places of our hearts from stories.
The Chronicles of Narnia is a selection of stories that have influenced me in a very profound way. Narnia taught me about the magic of childhood, about imagination, about dreaming, but most importantly, Narnia taught me about Christ.
I remember being a child and watching the Jesus Film. It’s a beautiful film that stays as close as possible to the gospel of Luke and has been translated and shown all over the world in remote locations. I remember my heart breaking as I watched the crucifixion scene. My heart breaking for this man I already knew so well and loved so much.
But mirrored in my memory is the encounter of a different scene, this one from a BBC film adaption of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It to stays very close to the book of its source, And as I would watch the scene at the stone table my heart would break, and I felt the same love, for a Lion who to me more clearly represented Christ than most any depiction I’d encountered.
Aslan is strong, dangerous, mighty, gentle, loving, tender. He tells Jill Pole in The Silver Chair that he has “swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, and realms” and yet it clearly defines that he doesn’t say it to boast, but just as a reality of what is. It is told again and again that this lion is not safe.
But yet, we trust him, this lion who isn’t safe, this lion who is fully capable of turning and devouring us whole if he so wished. We find that he is the orchestrator of the story, that he knows all, yet will not tell us all we wish to know. That he demands obedience, but even when disobeyed offers complete grace. He tares Aravis’ back in The Horse and his Boy, so that she may know the pain she caused her servant girl, drop of blood for drop. He sits as a cat at Shasta’s back, guarding him and comforting him in his sleep, even though Shasta does not know him.
We see his might as he sings the stars into existence, and his broken heart as he asks Lucy and Susan to place their hands on his mane so he can feel their presence as he walks the trail that he knows will bring him to a stone table and a White Witch.
We laugh with him, we cry with him, we trust him and we are in awe of him.
Yes, the story of Aslan taught me more about Christ than almost anything else, it helped me, as a small child, learn about the character traits of someone who was omnipotent, but was intimate at the same time, someone who was beyond all, but was concerned with even little me.
The general populations understanding of Christ frustrates me. You see, most of the time in the secular world Christ is depicted as, well, having no teeth. Because he loves and forgives and has grace it seems like they feel he is somehow less than mighty, strong, even dangerous.
Dangerous? Do I think Christ is dangerous? You bet! He has swallowed up boys, girls, men, women, kings and realms! My Christ has teeth. My Christ is the Lion of Judah and He is VERY dangerous. But he is also completely good.
Why is it that people seem to think that those two things can’t coexist? Today the strong are many times considered “pushy” and the kind are “push-overs.”
And that is how I think we tend to see Christ, as a push over.
He’s not.
My Christ is fiery and wild, He reigns in justice and truth, when He returns His robes will be dipped in blood. Not because He is some sort of bully, but because He is fighting for His people, and any who stand in His way WILL be cut down.
But He’s also tender, strong and tender. He’s the one to cling to when you are afraid in the night. He is always at your back, offering protection and comfort in the storms of life.
And like Aslan, He isn’t afraid of risking everything, even His very life, to ransom His love.
So many descriptions of Aslan give me chills… because this fictional character is intimately familiar to me. He’s not really fictional anymore, it’s as if someone wrote a story and put in it a person that I know, and captured the persons image so perfectly that it was like they really were there in the plotline. I read somewhere once that C.S. Lewis hadn’t planned on Aslan, that he just kind of wrote himself into the story. I like to think He really did.
And at the same time as I saw Christ in Aslan, I saw myself too, on every page. I was Lucy, discovering a magic world in a wardrobe and a Lion who caught my wonder. I was Jill, always forgetting to follow the instructions I had received. I was Eustace, unable to scrape through the scales of my dragon nature to the child within. I was Edmund, lost and in need of a savior to ransom me.
There is a passage, in The Horse and his Boy, Shasta is journeying a road through a mist, and at this time he has no knowledge of Aslan. He is bemoaning all his hard luck and the difficulty of his life, and then he finds that their is a presence beside him, he is not alone. He tells the presence his troubles and receives a surprising response.
“I do not call you unfortunate,” said the Large Voice.
“Don’t you think it was bad luck to meet so many lions?” said Shasta.
“There was only one lion,” said the Voice.
“What on earth do you mean? I’ve just told you there were at least two the first night, and-”
“There was only one: but he was swift of foot.”
“How do you know?”
“I was the lion.” And as Shasta gaped with open mouth and said nothing, the Voice continued. “I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the Horses the new strength of fear for the last mile so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.” …
“Who are you?” asked Shasta.
“Myself,” said the voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again, “Myself”, loud and clear and gay: and then the third time “Myself”, whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all round you as if the leaves rustled with it.
Christ- God- Holy Spirit. He hides Himself in open skies and mighty mountains, rushing rivers and deep valleys, He’s present in storms, trials, and triumphs, and sometimes you find Him in children’s books. The One who is mighty, and never safe, but always good. Who directs our paths along ways we can’t even yet see.
Oh yes, My Jesus has Teeth!
~Joy Aletheia Stevens
Photo Credit: Narnia by juice (CC BY 2.0)
Photo Credit: Random_fotos (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Photo Credit: LadyDragonflyCC – >;< (CC BY 2.0)
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