Date: 2005-08-30 09:37 pm (UTC)
I was always most disturbed and saddened by this bit of it:
"Yes," said Eustace, "and whenever you've tried to get her to come and talk about Narnia or do anything about Narnia, she says, 'What wonderful memories you have! Fancy your still thinking about all those funny games we used to play when we were children.'"
How can Susan have forgotten what Narnia was really like, and what she really experienced there, so much as to dismiss it as a "funny game we used to play when we were children"? That always really boggled me.

Having been a youth group leader for over ten years, I watched far too many young people walk away from spiritual things for precisely the kind of vain and shallow reasons Lewis does describe -- not because they were genuinely struggling with the reliability of the Christian faith or had suffered some profound emotional and spiritual shock, but because they wanted to party and be "cool" and they felt that the church was cramping their style.

Maybe they don't even deliberately turn their backs on it, they just... drift away. They decide that something that might be classed with "nylons and lipstick and invitations" is worth choosing over church "just once" and look back on the experience and say "that wasn't so bad, really" and do it again... and pretty soon they've stopped attending altogether and have forgotten the feelings they had when they did attend and were touched by the Spirit.

Perhaps that's part of what happened to Susan.

If you don't have an account you can create one now.
No Subject Icon Selected
More info about formatting

Loading anti-spam test...

If you are unable to use this captcha for any reason, please contact us by email at support@dreamwidth.org

Profile

rj_anderson: (Default)
rj_anderson

August 2018

S M T W T F S
   1234
5678910 11
12131415161718
19202122232425
262728293031 

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jul. 18th, 2025 01:24 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios