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Narnia's Jilted Lover

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This morning’s Wall Street Journal features a review of a new book by a fan-turned foe-turned (conflicted) fan of C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia.

The volume, The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia, by Laura Miller, recounts how the author was enchanted by the “Northernness” of Lewis’ stories only to feel defrauded when she learned of the Christian themes therein. You can read an excerpt here.

The reviewer, Meghan Cox Gurdon, quotes Miller as noting that the Narnia books showed her “how I could tumble through a hole in the world I knew and into another, better one, a world fresher, more brightly colored, more exhilarating, more fully felt than my own.”

Indeed. Here’s hoping the skeptic will find, like the children of which she once read, the True Narnia, of which the one she learned to love is just a copy.

Only when we see how lost we are, we can find our way again. Only when we bury what’s dead can we experience life again. Only when we lose our religion can we be amazed by grace again.

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About Russell Moore

Russell Moore is Editor in Chief of Christianity Today and is the author of the forthcoming book Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America (Penguin Random House).

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