Jack & the Beanstalk/Christianity

To live Christianity, in ones heart, ie., existentially, it is more like a fairy tale than a system of beliefs. Not that the theology isn’t important, it is, exploring that theology alone or in conjunction with modern science is enormously edifying, intellectually.

However, to follow Our Lord, mystically, is more like walking through the “wardrobe door,” than luxuriating in philosophical doctrine. Each day is an adventure; everything we need to participate in the “dance” is contained in the nursery tales of our childhood.

I am not alone is this perspective. Two rather credible sources back me up, namely, C. S. Lewis and G. K Chesterton, two Christians whose apologetics have influenced millions.

I read once that C. S. Lewis was less than enamored with religion, when, as a child, his role models expressed their religion with constrained piety, great decorum, lowered voices and forced sentiment, all very English! Emilie Griffin, a Lewis scholar, gives this description, and also says that it took Lewis years to overcome the effects of such a muted experience of religion.

In contrast, Lewis thoroughly enjoyed the Norse mythic tales of “Balder,” These stories seemed passionate, exciting, effortlessly capturing his imagination. Griffin says that in later years, Lewis came to the opinion that these “tales” were all pointing to the one true myth, Christianity.

“Later (he) resolved to write stories that would do for others what the story of Balder did for him: strip away false and mandatory piety and leave the story of God’s sacrificial love in a wild and persuasive new guise, galloping with real momentum through fields of imagination.” (Griffin) C. S. Lewis wrote the following:

“But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons? I thought one could.”

Potency is the salient word here. Christianity is potent. It is a love story with a Bridegroom and a Kingdom. He bids us on, past “those watchful dragons,” past the “wardrobe door,” into the enchantment of the Kingdom.

Finally, there’s Chesterton:

“My first and last philosophy, that which I believe in with unbroken certainty, I learnt in the nursery… The things I believed most then, the things I believe most now, are the things called fairy tales…. I knew the magic beanstalk before I had tasted beans; I was sure of the Man in the Moon before I was certain of the moon… There is the chivalrous lesson of "Jack the Giant Killer"; that giants should be killed because they are gigantic. It is a manly mutiny against pride as such. There is the lesson of "Cinderella," which is the same as that of the Magnificat. There is the great lesson of "Beauty and the Beast"; that a thing must be loved BEFORE it is loveable. There is the terrible allegory of the "Sleeping Beauty," which tells how the human creature was blessed with all birthday gifts, yet cursed with death; and how death also may perhaps be softened to a sleep…” (G.K. Chesterton, The Ethics of Elfland, Othodoxy)

Faith is an existential risk, it is a gamble, one that is only open to the humble, but, once one lays down his chips, the “wardrobe door” squeaks open, life "gallops" into the Tale.

“ I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a child, will never enter it "(Mark 10-15)