Al Grafsky

@AlGrafsky

Biochemist working for Agilent Technologies. Married with one child

San Diego, California

Joined September 2013

75 Following

217 Followers

500 Posts

AlGrafsky retweeted

Jeremy Wayne Tate

@JeremyTate41

15 days ago

A young boy named Laurence was so troubled by the thought that he loved Aslan more than he loved Jesus that his mother wrote to C.S. Lewis about it. The legendary British author replied that Laurence “can’t really love Aslan more than Jesus,” because the lion was not a symbol of Christ: to Lewis, Aslan was Christ. That answer makes more sense once you know how Narnia began: many people assume Lewis sat down to teach children about Christianity and built a story around the lesson, an idea he dismissed as “pure moonshine.” Narnia started instead with pictures he had carried in his head for years, like a faun with an umbrella walking through a snowy wood. Then, as he tried to turn them into a story, “suddenly Aslan came bounding into it,” and even Lewis couldn’t fully explain it: “I don’t know where the Lion came from or why He came.” Once the lion was there, Lewis began to see who he really was. If Christ entered a world like Narnia, he asked himself, what would He become? In a land of talking animals, he reasoned, the answer had to be an animal too. He chose a lion because it is the king of the beasts, because the Bible itself calls Christ the Lion of Judah, and because, he admitted, he had been having strange dreams about lions when he began writing. With that in mind, the most famous scene in the books takes on a new meaning: when Aslan dies on the Stone Table in place of a traitor and returns at sunrise, Lewis wasn’t hiding the Easter story inside a fairy tale, he was picturing it happening a second time, in another world. And at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lewis has Aslan say it himself, in words meant as much for the reader as for the children: "I am in your world too. But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there."

JeremyTate41's tweet photo. A young boy named Laurence was so troubled by the thought that he loved Aslan more than he loved Jesus that his mother wrote to C.S. Lewis about it. The legendary British author replied that Laurence “can’t really love Aslan more than Jesus,” because the lion was not a symbol of Christ: to Lewis, Aslan was Christ.

That answer makes more sense once you know how Narnia began: many people assume Lewis sat down to teach children about Christianity and built a story around the lesson, an idea he dismissed as “pure moonshine.” Narnia started instead with pictures he had carried in his head for years, like a faun with an umbrella walking through a snowy wood. Then, as he tried to turn them into a story, “suddenly Aslan came bounding into it,” and even Lewis couldn’t fully explain it: “I don’t know where the Lion came from or why He came.”

Once the lion was there, Lewis began to see who he really was. If Christ entered a world like Narnia, he asked himself, what would He become? In a land of talking animals, he reasoned, the answer had to be an animal too. He chose a lion because it is the king of the beasts, because the Bible itself calls Christ the Lion of Judah, and because, he admitted, he had been having strange dreams about lions when he began writing.

With that in mind, the most famous scene in the books takes on a new meaning: when Aslan dies on the Stone Table in place of a traitor and returns at sunrise, Lewis wasn’t hiding the Easter story inside a fairy tale, he was picturing it happening a second time, in another world. And at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lewis has Aslan say it himself, in words meant as much for the reader as for the children:

"I am in your world too. But there I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. This was the very reason why you were brought to Narnia, that by knowing me here for a little, you may know me better there."

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AlGrafsky retweeted

Jeremy Wayne Tate

@JeremyTate41

over 3 years ago

J.R.R Tolkien in a letter to his son… “Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. . . . There you will find romance, glory, honour, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth”