In the chapter “What Lucy Found There” we find out that Narnia is, in some ways, not as different from our world as we would like to believe. The White Witch is there, a cruel tyrant who considers herself to be the Empress of all things in the absence of the True King. She has taken the magical world and turned it into a cold and cruel place swearing that this is how it has always been, or at least this is how it always will be. It is a place without joy and without hope.
It is always winter, but never Christmas.
Every child knows immediately the depth of terror that this statement causes. For my son it was the most egregious wrong that the White Witch could have done. When I read that statement to him his eyes widened in shock. He had absolutely no words of his own to express his outrage. He could only repeat the exact words I had just read to him. “Always winter, but never Christmas?!”
Winter is a cold and dark time that forces us indoors, that keeps us from enjoying creation. We long for the feast days during winter. We crave a remembrance of the sun’s warm glow on us, the joy and companionship, the unexpected adventures and delights of a lush and green world where the worst things we need worry about was sunburn or mosquitoes. In Narnia there are those who remember other days. The long lived remember a far better past. The long lived remember truly “good old days” of what we humans would call Eden. I love Tumnus’ idyllic description of a time when everything was peace and flowing wine, and magical creatures dancing together for no particular reason, just simply for the joy of it.
Narnia is quite like our world in this regard. It was created perfect, and then despoiled, turned cold and mostly lifeless or at least joyless, the magic gone out of the place almost entirely. Our day to day lives more often than not enforces this as the “real”, how things are, how things have always been and how things will always be. The White Witch and the cold, oppressive reign she reinforces is threatened by even a mention of the world as it used to be, or the mention of a single name. There is a finality, a fatalistic entropy to the reign of the White Witch.
She has forced the world not to forget, for there are those who are still loyal, but to remain silent. She must have control and do what she can to keep the next generation in complete ignorance and hopelessness. The White Witch’s last resort to those who will not bow in fear is destruction. Any rebellion to her established order results in death.
So many in our world are in desperate need of hope, especially as the cold grasp grows tighter. Humans have spent so much time on this planet throwing the baby of the previous age out with the bathwater. In our relentless pursuit of cold, hard facts we have created a cold, hard world and cold, hard lives and find ourselves to our shock lacking warmth and softness. We have forgotten where that warmth and softness comes from. We have chosen to follow false paradigms. We have chosen, even as Christians, to give lip service to the Truth while living for the “real”. “This is how the ‘real’ world works,” we comfort ourselves as we give our lives for money, secure position, a bigger house, a promotion, a new car, the fleeting feeling of success.
We read the scriptures and for a brief moment feel the psychological dissonance but give in to the impulse to be distracted from it rather than wrestle. We bathe in the brief warmth of the idea of a different world and, as if we could ever be fully satisfied with a just a brief moment of Spring or Summer, we squash it quickly making ourselves to be every bit a liar as Edmund when he claims his slipping into another world was just a game he played with Lucy. It was pretend although it was really real. I am aware that I am falling prey to a mixing of metaphors here, but it’s a Gordian Knot I can’t seem to slice through let alone untie.
Each world has two beings that vie for dominance and vie for our submission. One is a cold, proud, and stern master who demands our submission before we even can understand who the two beings actually are. Like the White Witch he constantly batters us reminding us that he is ruler, that we must submit, that we must kneel, that we are subjects and slaves bound to his will. The other is the polar opposite: a warm, humble, and a kind master who motivates His subjects with love rather than cruelty. Throughout the LWW I can’t find a single place where Aslan declares that he is the rightful king of Narnia. He certainly never demands his rights or the submission of those around him.
One of my favorite passages in the book, though it rarely makes it into the movies, is when the White Witch stands before Aslan to claim Edmund’s life.
‘“Have you forgotten the Deep Magic?” asked the Witch.’
Here, if memory serves, the writers of the movie scripts put in something along the lines of Aslan replying defiantly and testily that she should not presume to quote the Deep Magic to him. The book version, the one I believe is far closer to the character and spirit of Jesus, is ‘“Let us say I have forgotten it,” answered Aslan gravely. “Tell us of this Deep Magic.”’
She goes shrill and outraged that she would need to tell him. This tactic reveals her motives and herself. The Witch declared that the Emperor put into law that every traitor is hers to kill.
‘“Oh,” said Mr. Beaver. “So that’s how you came to imagine yourself a queen – because you were the Emperor’s hangman. I see.”’
Aslan tells Mr. Beaver with a low growl to be quiet.
Aslan, like Jesus, does not need to declare himself king. It is known by all. The Witch fights for scraps of respect and submission from others ever reminding them of her place above them. Aslan needs no assurance of his position, he does not need to demand anything. It is his warmth and love and justice that earn those things.
The world of the “real” is dark. It is full of terrors and cold that saps the spirit and love right out of us. It makes us want to stay indoors and close ourselves off from the open interaction that naturally comes when the sun is bright and warm upon the earth. We stop believing in the magic we could sense and were immersed in during our younger years. It is so easy to come to a place where we believe all that is left to us is the day to day, long, repetitive slog to old age and death.
When Aslan comes the snow melts. When Jesus comes and abides in us, not just visits once a week but abides in us, everything changes…if we let it. We can still stay in our homes, wrap up in blankets, and not believe what has happened to change the world. Really the world has been redeemed, angling back to its former state over time toward Eden, if we let it in.
If we believe what He says is true, if we believe that what He has done really happened, if we are actual disciples and do as He has commanded… then spring comes into our lives.
Suddenly the air is filled with magic, we move out of the things we once called our houses and now see as prisons, and are free to dance, feast, and sing. When we believe truly that the God of the Bible is actually there, and loving us (though still a fierce judge as well), working everything to our good, has freed us from the slavery to sin, and makes His home with us and enables us to spread this spring of the soul to others; when we truly believe that He is all-sufficient for every need and desire then it all comes right within us and the magic is made apparent and real.
Jesus calls us to belief.
The Pevensie children heard of Aslan. They didn’t have any practical experience of him. The more they sought him the nearer he came. The nearer he came the more the winter of the Witch was melted away giving life and warmth. By the time they came to him their experience of the world completely altered and they knew for a fact that he was good. They already loved him.
We need to walk away from the cold grasp of the White Witch. We must walk toward Jesus, rejecting at every line what the World tells us that is in conflict with what the Bible tells us…that there is no hope, that money and prestige is meaning, that God is far away, that nothing will change your situation, that you yourself are enough to earn your salvation or His approval.
“And when he shakes his mane, we will have spring again.”
Finding Narnia 
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