12.08.2005 | "pervy pipe-puffing Oxford prig "

Jack Lewis, call home...they're talking about you. This is the alliterative notion spun in a piece in today's Washington Post about the cultural tsunami about to be unleashed by Narnia.

In fairness, the full quote from the article is this, which sums up the pending conflict:

A timeless fantasy about talking beavers, friendly fauns and a mystical lion named Aslan? Or insidious militaristic propaganda cunningly used to inoculate innocents with rigid Christian dogma penned by a pervy pipe-puffing Oxford prig who actually didn't very much like little children and might have slept with a woman old enough to be his mother? When he wasn't drinking. In pubs. With J.R.R. Tolkien.

Well, by today's dumbed-down standards, any behavior that isn't Sunday-school perfect can be subject to condemnation by our moral betters. And here I don't mean William Booth, the author of this piece. I mean the typical "let's get dressed up and be on our best behavior when we go to church" crowd, the ones who are more upset by someone cursing or "making a scene" than the notion that most of us live lives far, far removed from His Gospel.

The essence of what I know of C.S. Lewis' life is that he was a sinner come to Christ. And that he had the touch when it came to explaining all this. For us. For children. And, may God bless him, he got to drink in pubs with the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien.

Would that I have had such an opportunity. If anyone out there thinks that tossing back a pint or two with the other Inklings was, somehow, a bad thing...perhaps you'd better be seeing your eye doctor about that beam in your eye.

I've read Narnia, several times, and it never fails to charm. It's message is pretty clear; always was. It's a Gospel message. And that's not a bad thing for us in this sinful world. Not. Bad. At. All.

| technorati tag | Christianity|