Rediscovering a Gripping Gospel Through The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
By Dr. Marc T. Newman
MovieMinistry.com
December 9, 2005

(AgapePress) - The Church of the Cinema does at least one thing better than most evangelicals: it remembers how to bring to life a passionate drama. While disputes over doctrine are important, some churches have become so preoccupied with in-house debates that they have forgotten that Christianity begins with a story. Before we can care about the Deity of Christ, we must first come to believe the narrative of His incarnation, life, death, and resurrection. His story is true, and it should grip the soul. But sometimes, in our desire to get to the graduate-level theological detail, we rush over the story -- and our tale of the Gospel has all the allure of a badly-written history text.

C.S. Lewis recognized this tendency within his own denomination, so he crafted a story designed to slip past the "watchful dragons" of church-enforced "sanctimony" and restore the Gospel's innate passion, potency, and sense of adventure. Lewis wanted children (and adults with the eyes to see) to meet Jesus in fiction so that when they encountered Him in fact they would not merely acknowledge Him, but love Him. The rest