This is so predictable that it is funny. You just knew that there would be so many articles attacking the new Narnia movie. The too violent meme doesn’t work here like it did for the TPOTC, so this time it is -wait here it comes – too Christian.
‘Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion‘
Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to? Poor child Edmund, to blame for everything, must bear the full weight of a guilt only Christians know how to inflict, with a twisted knife to the heart.
That nosey and busy body Messiah dying for our sins without asking anybody first. How dare he! Shouldn’t he have waited for a petition first. How dare he create us without asking us first. Though I do admit there is a paradoxical problem in doing just that.
Even funnier she than goes on to compare C.S. Lewis to Norman Vincent Peale and the health and wealth gospel types.
This appears to be CS Lewis’s view, too. In the battle at the end of the film, visually a great epic treat, the child crusaders are crowned kings and queens for no particular reason. Intellectually, the poor do not inherit Lewis’s earth.
Does any of this matter? Not really. Most children will never notice. But adults who wince at the worst elements of Christian belief may need a sickbag handy for the most religiose scenes.
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Polly Toynbee prides herself on being too smart for Christianity, but a while back, she fell for one of those idiotic email scams. You know the kind. The wife of the ex-Treasury minister of Timbuktu has just fled the country and promises to share their Swiss bank account with you if you just send them a couple of hundred to help tide them over. Polly sees right though Jesus, but was fooled by Mme. Kese Mobutu’s urgent email. If I was suckered in by a chintzy Internet scam, I’d personally be too embarrassed to tell anyone about it, but Polly wasn’t. She wrote a column about it – and blamed it on Bush!
Yeah, Polly’s really one of those brilliant sceptics, alright. C.S. Lewis vs. Polly Toynbee is like Lance Armstrong racing against a 4 year old on a tricycle.
Thank you for that, Donna. It’s almost too good to be true, but I love the idea that Ms Toynbee, who spends much of her time educating us lesser mortals in exactly how we’re going wrong and why we’ll never be as good as superior beings such as herself, falling for a scam that, if true, would involve one in being an accessory to crime and corruption on an epic scale.
“I’m greedy, venal, and stupid, willing to break the laws of God and man and offend human dignity by profiteering from the sufferings of people defrauded by their rulers – but it’s all someone else’s fault!”
Yes, I can see why she’d self-identify with Edmund and wince at being held to account for choices to do wrong deliberately made.
sad, sad.
Well, Fuinseoig, I googled “Polly Toynbee Internet Scam” (since I remembered quite a few conservative bloggers had great fun with it at the time), and it turns out I was inaccurate about the particulars of the email Toynbee received. Honestly, it looks as though she was acting out of charity, not greed – but that doesn’t mean she’s not a bonehead. From Suzanne Field’s column at “Townhall”:
Nevertheless, the Chutzpah Award for the year that just died (2004) must go to Polly Toynbee of London’s daily Guardian for an enlightened rationalization and demonization that boiled over like volcanic lava. Toynbee fell for the infamous Nigerian scam and had to find somebody to be mad at, and it couldn’t be herself.
She received a letter purporting to be from a 14-year-old Nigerian girl who needed money to pay to complete her education. Toynbee was touched. She sent the child a check for 200 pounds ($356) and immediately felt warm and fuzzy for her act of charity.
Warm and fuzzy soon evaporated. A perfect copy of her signature was soon attached to a form asking her bank to transfer a thousand pounds ($1,783) to an account in a bank in Japan. A suspicious clerk at her bank stopped the transfer just in time. The Nigerian bank scam is familiar to millions, and many of the greedy and gullible have been taken in by the familiar gross e-mails that clog computer terminals with offers of breast enhancement, penis enlargement and videos promising pornographic pleasure.
Toynbee’s brush with financial disaster taught her a lesson that has eluded everyone else. She learned that the villain in the fraud is not a Nigerian scammer, but … George W. Bush. “We reap from the Third World what we sow,” she told her readers. “If some Nigerians learned lessons in capitalism from global oil companies that helped corrupt and despoil that land, it is hardly surprising they absorbed some of the Texan oil values that now rule the White House.”
We don’t need the intellectual Dostoyevsky to help us with this one. Damon Runyon nailed the likes of Polly Toynbee: “Life is tough, and it’s really tough when you’re stupid.”
I apologise to Ms Toynbee for assuming she had fallen for the “Help me move my ill-gotten millions into your account and you can have a slice of the loot” scam. She was trying to be charitable, a laudable endeavour.
(But it’s still funny).
As I read this angry, bitter, conflated, egotistical, arrogant screed by Ms. Toynbee, I found myself in turn becoming angry, bitter, etc. and perilously close to wishing her to become the victim of some righteous calamity – or, failing that, to simply shut up. Then it occurred to me that this reaction was not the appropriate response but rather that prayer is. How often do you come across the ramblings of a soul more in need of the gift of faith than that of Ms. Toynbee? As such, I’ll pray for her conversion. Anyone care to join me?
Man, that was hateful. Anti-christians used to be more subtle. Imagine if she wrote the same article about a Muslim book or movie.
How dare Christians benefit from the joy of having an all-loving, all-powerful Savior!
What Ms. Toynbee overlooks, but states in the last paragraph is that she has a god also: herself. She describes how this pervades her grim worldview in the second to last paragraph. Reading that, a Christian can truly be thankful for the gift of faith–which is a freely given, unearned gift from God.
What the practicing Christian knows is that our fallen nature easily succombs to pride, and until we make a concerted effort to grow in humility it is difficult for true spiritual growth to occur. (Upon praying for such growth and realizing our weakness, our faith and relationship with Christ grow in a tangible way.)
Every human being has a god, maybe even a few–and it appears that the best god Ms. Toynbee can find is Ms. Toynbee. (On the other hand, I admire her for realizing the implications–and power–of true Christian belief.)
I’ll join you, Gretchen.
Polly Toynbee is an idiot. She’s right about one thing, however: most British children who see this will not have received enough coherent Christian catechesis to perceive the allegory. It’s some years now since the number of Catholics attending Sunday Mass in England has outstripped attendance at Anglican services, and England in general has become far more pagan than Christian.
I’m not a particular Lewis fan (it’s an Irish thing, you wouldn’t understand), and I rather agree with Tolkien’s view that he was an excellent man but a bad writer, but I’ll take Lewis over Polly Toffeenose any day.
ADULTS? ADULTS need a SICKBAG?
I think God may need a sickbag when He vomits them from His mouth (unless of course they repent).
I’m don’t believe that God would vomit them out, though. He spews out the lukewarm. Toynbee may be many things, but lukewarm about Christianity isn’t one of them.
I do believe, though, that the Toynbees and other hard-hearted ones, are the reason for this age’s lengthy existence. Our loving Creator wants all of us to be with Him forever. I’m coming to love Him enough, that I’m with Gretchen. I try to remember all the hard-hearted ones in my prayers, (all too often, including myself) for His sake.
In joyful anticipation of Christ’s Nativity,
Robin
First, I’m also praying for Ms. Toynbee.
Second, it’s not an allegory. It’s a parable set in an alternate world, with a different Incarnation but the same Person. If you called it “The Further Adventures of God”, that would be closer.
Finally, most English kids won’t get the point.
Neither did I, the first time I read it. That’s the general idea — that first you enjoy the story, and then the meaning of what you’ve read gradually comes to you.
If it weren’t the general idea, Lewis would have done like medieval allegory writers did, and given us a scene explaining exactly what things stood for. (Actually, you could argue that the end of the Last Battle is that scene, except that some people don’t get it then, either.)
I’m saddened that so many kids have been spoiled by so much public Narnia discussion (not to mention the idiotic forewords to today’s editions! Never read a foreword until you’re done with the book, unless it’s by Tolkien!) If kids never again have the experience of figuring out for themselves what’s going on, we’ll have done them, and the books, a great disservice.
It goes without saying that I think church discussion groups are a bit much. But if people must have them, I really hope they’ll be segregated into “knows Aslan’s secret identity” and “hasn’t figured it out yet”, and that adults won’t push or hint to the latter.
Maureen,
My mother allowed me to read TLTW&TW when I was young even though she ws a practicing pagan and I understood it for the most part. The parts about Christ didnt come to me till later in life but all the rest I figured out. Ill never forget after reading The Majicians Nephew and the TLTW&TW and crying when it mentioned the lamp post. It was a witness to what happened in the first book. I saw this very clearly. It had witnessed the evil done in the first book and had laid seed and sprouted other witnesses. Well to both the evil spoken of by Aslan and the prophecy givin.
It’s so sad that athiests have to be (using Taranto’s phrase) such jerks. I mean, can’t Christians enjoy ANYTHING in public, or should we be relegated back to the catacombs?
I feel sorry for this woman who definitely needs our prayers.
I’m still debating taking my 7 and 4 year olds to see the movie right now. Not sure how the battle scenes will affect them. I’ll have to think about it and perhaps get an opinion from someone who’s seen it (and who also has children).
“Never read a foreword until you’re done with the book” — Sage Advice!
Re: praying for Polly. There is a prayer of St. Francis Xavier in the 1962 Roman Missal that is quite nice. Here it is:
O God, everlasting creator of all things, remember that the souls of unbelievers were made by Thee and formed in Thine own likeness. Remember that Jesus, Thy Son, endured a most bitter death for their salvation. Permit not,I beseech Thee, O Lord, that Thy Son should be despised any longer by unbelievers, but do Thou graciously accept the prayers of holy men and of the Church, the Spouse of Thy most holy Son, and be mindful of Thy mercy.
Forget their idolatry and unbelief and grant that they too may some day know Him Thou hast sent, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is our Life and Resurrection, by whom we have been saved and delivered, to whom be glory for endless ages. Amen.
If it’s a war Aslan wants, it’s a war he shall get.–Jadis
I’m sure most of you have seen this “review” of Narnia by Polly Toynbee, but let’s revisit it.
(H/T to the Curt Jester, T, and Laodicea):
First off, let’s take a second to notice the two authenticated miracles this revi…
Robin L (in TX):
yeah, you’re right. God may not need the sick bag, but I know I sure will. Seeing all the sin in the world is bad enough, but then seeing people like this trying to disprove the Truth just makes me sick.
Oh! How dare we feel guilt at the thought that an innocent Someone died for us that we might go to heaven!
Thank you for that prayer, expat. It’s a new one for me and quite appropriate.
First off I’d say I don’t feel guilty for Christ’s sacrifice. I feel loved and unworthy and I cry out of joy of that love. When I sin, I think of how I am seperating myself from God and how He longs for me.
As I was told by a spiritual director, it probably isn’t a good anology that kids are being told that every time they sin, they’re hammering a nail into Christ.
The sacrifice is something difficult to comprehend and I suppose that’s the simpliest way to explain it to a child, but I do think that the sacrifice of Aslan for the child (can’t remember his name) may help the child to grasp something above them.
Even as adults, we have difficulty grasping the understanding of the cruxification and I think that only the Catholic Church gives us a glimpse of its full meaning.
The thing I find sad is how many children in England are not exposed to Christianity enough to grasp such images that are, I agree with Tolkien, a bit over the top.
I have to say that another good film to see by Walden Media is “I am David.” Ebert reviewed it so poorly and with so little understanding, he had to have been doing two other things at once figuring it wasn’t important and having already set in his own mind that it would be bad. Sometimes I think he’s sold out because he tends to give a lot of corny Disney movies all thumbs up.
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