This is an interesting topic. I'm sorry I've only just gotten to it so late in the game. Oh well...
Child, you said that you felt excluded when you read the Chronicles of Narnia. How old were you then? Old enough to see that they were decidedly Christian?
When I read them I didn't understand Christ, Jesus' sacrifice, creation, etc. Those things were all empty myths to me, stories told to take up time in Sunday school class. To me, this Sunday school Jesus was a pale thing compared to Aslan. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was the first real book I read after reading primers, but my mother had read them to me many times as a baby and later as a small child. I loved Aslan just as Lucy loved him and revered him just as Jill did. He was my Jesus. I felt like he suffered and died at the hands of the White Witch not just for Edmund, but for me also. This speaks worlds for Lewis' incredible ability to convey wonder, trust and even love.
Most small children will not understand complex worlds like Middle Earth, but Narnia is like a gentle mother. It doesn't need sound mythology or sensible diction, the wonder shines through the cool green glades, the deep voices of the centaurs, and the gold of Aslan's mane.
Initially, I read the Space Trilogy as Sci-fi/Fantasy, but after reading it again it seems more like prophesy to my mind. I don't think it's allegory at all, it's "what-if" perspective. If other beings lived outside our orbit, why should they call Jesus "Jesus"? Why not Maleldil? Why should they be a fallen people too? Could not the human race be alone in its error? It really is the union of theology and science fiction, only renovated.
The truths that Lewis conveys in his trilogy reminded me of the conversation between Tolkien, Lewis and Dyson in Humphrey Carpenter's Tolkien biography. Tolkien asks why Lewis demands so much of the Christian "myth" when he asks so little of pagan myths. The "myth" of the Genesis temptation is played over again on Perelandra as truth. What then is the difference between truth and myth? Ransom asks himself if all myths on Earth might not be truth elsewhere in the universe.
[ September 16, 2002: Message edited by: The Silver-shod Muse ]
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"'You," he said, "tell her all. What good came to you? Do you rejoice that Maleldil became a man? Tell her of your joys, and of what profit you had when you made Maleldil and death acquainted.'" -Perelandra, by C.S. Lewis
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