Echoes in Eternity

Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl Movie Trailer from Gorilla Poet Productions on Vimeo.

"Our call to war, to love the captive soul,
But to rage against the captor..."

- from the hymn "O Church Arise"

On the recommendation of N.D. Wilson, my wife, nearly six-year-old daughter, and I went to see the new film "How to Train Your Dragon." It is great! The graphics are absurdly good, the story engaging and enjoyable, and it has a great message as well [be warned, I could include a couple little spoilers below]. As Wilson said in his review, the main message of the story stunned him. And as I looked back at his post, I noticed something that I hadn't quite caught during the movie.

Why did [the dragons] do these evil things? Well, because they served The Dragon. The big one. The huge, ancient, evil one. And the story progresses not with one small boy (Hiccup) successfully communicating to his father (Stoick) that dragons were misunderstood, but with that boy crushing The Dragon’s head and . . . losing his foot in the process. {emphasis added}

The Christian parallels to Genesis 3:15 are unmistakable. Furthermore, as Christians we should recognize that just as these dragons were not inherently evil themselves but served a master who was, the unbelieving lost in this world are not inherently bad or lost, but rather are enslaved to a master who has blinded them to the love of God. It's our job to free them from their chains and to open their eyes. Ephesians 6:12

N.D. Wilson, son of Doug Wilson and author of the brilliant Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl and the exciting 100 Cupboards trilogy which I am currently reading with my daughter, recently posted a review of the recently-released "How to Train Your Dragon" film on the Credenda/Agenda journal which makes me even more interested in seeing it with my daughter.

Evil exists so that He might be demeaned and insulted, so that the depth of His love and sacrifice could be expressed as much as is possible in the small frame of history.

- N.D. Wilson in Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl

As Dinesh D'Souza says, the problem of evil is a much bigger one for atheists than Christians. Atheists have to explain how natural evolution could produce humans who waste time and energy on torturing other people instead of killing them outright. Such inefficiency is highly problematic from a "survival of the fittest" view. It makes no sense that humanity is the one species that seems capable of intentional evil. Sure, all animals are capable of killing and mistreating other animals, but they only do so out of their need to survive.

I find great comfort in the Christian explanation for evil, which N.D. Wilson summarized so beautifully above. It gives even something as terrible as pure evil a meaning, and an ultimate conclusion. It's not something we need to flinch at and explain away. That's probably part of the reason why I enjoy (if that quite is the word) reading and learning about the terrors in world history (like the Gulag and Rwandan genocide) as well as occasionally favor films with dark themes; I prefer to see the question of evil wrestled with rather than ignored. And it's something I want my kids to wrestle with as well, which is why I'm not in favor of shying away from dark realities when I read to my five-year-old daughter. As Russell Moore says, "kids know—they instinctively know—that they’re living in a universe in which something’s gone awry. It’s not our job—as parents, or as Sunday school teachers—to disengage that. It’s our job to come in an to provide an answer to that. Yeah, you’re living in an enchanted world. Yeah, you’re living in a haunted world. You’re living in a world haunted by demonic powers. That’s exactly right—what you deeply fear is indeed the case… Your worrying about the monster under the bed isn’t unreasonable; there’s a monster under the fabric of the cosmos. Instead, we give them a story that provides the only comfort that really is lasting comfort; it’s a comfort that the enemies have been defeated."

If you're interested in a thorough fleshing out of the reason for evil, John Piper's written some good stuff on the topic, particularly this. And N.T. Wright's Evil and the Justice of God has some good things to say (though not without some problem areas). I'd also recommend an excellent recent sermon from my own church. All of these are great resources for dealing with the question: "how can God be good and allow evil to exist?"

And NO, this was not some veiled, subtle attempt at explaining Obama. :)

I've watched the Discovery Channel. I've enjoyed the Discovery Channel. But in that world, if I want to reproduce with you (or tear you limb from limb), I just need to be bigger and stronger than you are. You look pretty small and a little sickly. Shall I feed you to my young? Why not? Cannibalism might not be condoned in your culture, but it has a long and storied tradition in mine. Are you saying your culture is superior, that it is somehow right while mine is wrong? You're being a racist, but luckily you're still small, and even racists taste good in casserole. - N.D. Wilson in Notes from a Tilt-A-Whirl

How much do I care for these ants? I think I care. I'll stop to watch their wars. I'll buy my children documentaries - insect tributes. I won't crush them when I can help it.

But, if given the chance, would I be willing to become one of them? Would I be willing for them to drag me to the place of execution, taunt me, mock me, ridicule the gift I offered, a gift entirely beyond their comprehension? Would I be willing for the earwig, executed beside me, to add his insults to those of the ants? Would I be willing to die?

Hell no. Never. I have more self-regard than God does. I have less love for the characters beneath me. - N.D. Wilson in Notes from the Tilt-A-Whirl

I just finished this book and it is amazing! Not many books are so engaging and so illuminating. Pick it up today if you get a chance! Or... win it.

The shadows exist in the painting, the dark corners of grief and trial and wickedness all exist so that He might step inside them, so we could see how low He can stoop. In this story, the Author became flesh and wandered the stage... offering His own life. In this story, the Author heaped all that He loathed, all that displeased Him, all the wrongness of the world, onto Himself. Evil exists so that He might be demeaned and insulted, so that the depth of His love and sacrifice could be expressed as much as is possible in the small frame of history. - N.D. Wilson in Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy is when men are afraid of the light. - Plato

As a father who loves to read to my five-year-old daughter and can't wait to do so with my nearly two-year-old son (once he figures out the whole sitting-still-for-more-than-6.8-seconds thing), one obvious question that I need to answer on occasion (both for myself and for curious friends) is "what type of literature can they handle?" And I not just referring to literary vocabulary. Clearly, one can't read Crime and Punishment to a three-year-old because the words alone would lose him like Hansel and Gretel in the forest. But what about the content of that same Dostoevsky book? Even if a child can understand the words, are the "thematic elements" (as the movie rating industry might call them) too "adult" for him? I know plenty of parents who would answer with a resounding "yes."

But is the answer that clear-cut? Recently, I've been reading to my daughter the first in the 100 Cupboards trilogy by N.D. Wilson (Pastor Doug Wilson's son). We're not far enough into it yet to get an idea of where exactly the story is going to take us (my guess is some Narnia-like land), but I am willing to bet that, like the books of Aslan, this trilogy will have some dark moments in it. Isn't it interesting that the classic "children's" literature is ripe with dark plot lines (Dickens, anyone?), while much of today's kid lit is bereft of anything remotely bordering on truly sinister or foreboding?

For my part, I can't wait to read The Lord of the Rings to my kids and, when the time comes, watch the Peter Jackson film versions of the Tolkien trilogy with them (movies are a slightly different animal, as they can overwhelm a child's imaginative capacities). Kids need to know that the world is dark at an early age rather than pretend everything is just Santa Clauses and Popsicles til junior high. N.D. Wilson expands on this point here, saying that the difference between children's and adult literature should be that the truth is just deeper, that adult lit just adds "more dragonflies."

Sure, there are many authors out there who see a children’s book as an opportunity to wise some kids up to the heady ways of the adult world (issues, after all, are important, and future important people should grapple with them at a young age). These adult types want kids to face the Truth, and the Truth is hard. The world is hard and not necessarily interesting... Kid, you’ve seen the world now; I’ve shown it to you in this fine piece of award-winning fiction. Now you know that insurance companies are out to get you, and your sick grandmother and only you can save the wetlands. Or not. Have fun in high school.

On the other hand, the bestseller lists are crowded with kids’ books featuring dragons and vampires and dwarves and many, many comic variations on Tolkien’s creatures and characters. (To say nothing of all the happy, happy endings.) And if you push against this type of fiction for children, you’ll get some very grandmotherly defenses.

A few examples from my own pushings:

It’s important to preserve this time of innocence.

We need to water young imaginations.

What’s wrong with dreaming?

Some kids need to escape (especially when they’re getting beat up at school).

(And variations . . .)

I agree with all of this, but there’s an undercurrent to it that I dislike. The assumption is that kids don’t need/can’t handle the truth. They need some time to be happy before they discover how much the world sucks and/or how boring it really is. Lie to the kids now, and they will look back on it fondly later. (Santa anyone?)

I don’t want to lie to kids. Ever. I don’t want to lull them to sleep before the real world wakes them up with a head slap and a wet-willy in the ear sometime during adolescence. I like the hard-nosed commitment to Truth and The Real that I see in some of my issues-driven colleagues. And I like the joy and the happiness and the thrill that is woven into the work of many others.

The two belong together.

I write kids’ books because I can tell the Truth, and the Truth is that The Real is throbbingly fantastic... I want them to get a world vision that can grow and mature and age with them until, like all exoskeletons, it must be cast aside—not as false, but as a shallow introduction to things even deeper and stranger and more wonderful (and involving more dragonflies).

It is because I try to write this way that I use so much darkness. Evil is more than a prop. True sacrifice is not a sleight of hand. Laughter in the face of adversity is the first step to profound joy in triumph.
...
C.S. Lewis wrote truth for the young, and he wrote truth for the old. The weave is finer in That Hideous Strength than in Narnia, but the truth and the ingredients are the same in both. That apple pie hasn’t lost its savor, and it continues to feed me even when I’m not reading, when I’m walking beneath a row of maples or climbing a hill or slaving on a project . . . when I’m writing.

The Bible routinely is the victim of people deciding to "kidify" it. Rather than tell the whole story of David and Bathsheba (leaving aside details they wouldn't understand), many children's Bible storybooks settle for "David was bad, God was mad" or don't tell the story at all rather than spend the time explaining why a just God would kill a child because of the sin of his father. Avoid those messy stories, and you may get a son or daughter who grows to find Brian McLaren quite appealing. Avoid the Truth of life, and your child will get one big "wet-willy" sooner than later. Be willing to tackle the dragon of life straight on and slay it with honesty rather than escapism.

Read hard children's books to your kids, and read them to yourself as well. As C.S. Lewis once said,

No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty... The only imaginative works we ought to grow out of are those which it would have been better not to have read at all.