{"id":366,"date":"2005-02-08T09:53:58","date_gmt":"2005-02-08T16:53:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/balafon.net\/?p=366"},"modified":"2005-02-08T09:56:07","modified_gmt":"2005-02-08T16:56:07","slug":"not-a-tame-lion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/?p=366","title":{"rendered":"Not a Tame Lion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The perennial &#8220;Narnia: Literal or Allegory&#8221; thread has <a href=\"http:\/\/groups.google.ca\/groups?hl=en&#038;lr=&#038;threadm=1107827710.334244.203240%40z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com&#038;rnum=3&#038;prev=\/groups%3Fq%3DNarnia%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DG%26scoring%3Dd\">re-surfaced<\/a> on rec.arts.sf.written.  People are going to great lengths to expose the hitherto-unknown revelation that Narnia is dangerous and subversive Christian propaganda, because (gasp) Aslan is <i>a symbol<\/i> of Christ, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Cooler heads among the rasf denizens are getting tired of repeating over and over again: &#8220;There&#8217;s nothing symbolic or allegorical (or hidden) about it.  Aslan <i>is<\/i> Christ, just manifested in a different world.&#8221;  The books are clearly propaganda, but they are explicitly not allegorical.  As one poster said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[This] is why the Narnia books aren&#8217;t allegories &mdash; they are <i>The Further Adventures of Jesus Christ and Friends!<\/i>  No hidden messsages here, it&#8217;s all right out in the open.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I think the former crowd are peeved to realize that the delightful stories they read as children are Christian.<\/p>\n<p>And some Christians are afraid of Narnia, because:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Aslan <i>is<\/i> Christ, and as Lewis would have it a true Christ, but not a plaster saint; he&#8217;s a merry, vigorous, disruptive, exciting presence. He&#8217;s the Christ who associated with publicans and sinners, and had fun. He&#8217;s the Christ who got angry and took a whip to chase moneylenders out of the holy temple in Jerusalem.  He&#8217;s the Christ whom it&#8217;s claimed thousands of people went to see, and, most likely, not quite to hear. He&#8217;s the Christ who cares about people individually and has the strength &#8211; or the power &#8211; to heal their ills.  He&#8217;s not a <i>tame<\/i> Christ, not a Sunday School Christ.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The perennial &#8220;Narnia: Literal or Allegory&#8221; thread has re-surfaced on rec.arts.sf.written. People are going to great lengths to expose the hitherto-unknown revelation that Narnia is dangerous and subversive Christian propaganda, because (gasp) Aslan is a symbol of Christ, etc. Cooler heads among the rasf denizens are getting tired of repeating over and over again: &#8220;There&#8217;s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/balafon.net\/?p=366\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Not a Tame Lion&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}