Friday, December 16, 2011
Growing Up
Desiring God ps carrying a column "Live Like A Narnian". Says Joe Rigney:
This group could not take joy in a thing for its own right, they had to analyze it. This group was always "outgrowing" stuff - alcohol, tobacco, laughter. It really is an apt description to say they were thrashing about trying to look like an adult instead of just being comfortable in their own skin as an adult.
This very much fit with my concern that we seem to be always saved, but rarely move forward from there.
I truly, honest prefer evangelical protestant theology to Catholic theology, but do seem to enjoy the company of Catholics.
What does that say about us? What does it say that a very protestant website had to publish such a warning?
But our tendency is to fall into one of two traps. Either we accept the idea of discipleship through Narnia and rush to the moral or allegorical meaning of the stories prematurely, short-circuiting the actual breathing of Narnian air, or we dispense with the notion that the stories can be a component of Christian discipleship at all. “It’s just a story,” we think. And a children’s story at that.I found this fascenating. Having just been in the Holy Land with a group of people of diverse religious backgrounds, I think the child/adolescent/adult background really does kind of describe the Protestant/Catholic divide. If I may be so bold, the Protestants, especially Evangelicals, exhibited a bit of that stuck in adolescence stuff.
[...]
In response to those who regard adult lovers of fairy tales as childish and suffering from arrested development, Lewis turns the tables and reminds us that the obsession with being “grown-up” is the mark of adolescence, not adulthood. “When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up” (On Stories). Growing up doesn’t mean replacing old loves as much as it means adding new ones. Thus, a love of Aslan and Narnia ought not be limited to children, as though it were beneath adults. In fact, adults ought to be able to find more to love in the stories.
This group could not take joy in a thing for its own right, they had to analyze it. This group was always "outgrowing" stuff - alcohol, tobacco, laughter. It really is an apt description to say they were thrashing about trying to look like an adult instead of just being comfortable in their own skin as an adult.
This very much fit with my concern that we seem to be always saved, but rarely move forward from there.
I truly, honest prefer evangelical protestant theology to Catholic theology, but do seem to enjoy the company of Catholics.
What does that say about us? What does it say that a very protestant website had to publish such a warning?
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