Reaching children with The Chronicles of Narnia

By Aussiegirl



Looks like a good family movie bet for the Christmas season. As stated here, the very best way to teach children is through classic literature, which also includes classic fairy tales that reveal moral and universal truths in stories that enchant children. That's something you are not going to find in today's kid-lit, with its emphasis on politically correct culture and contemporary morals, or lack of same. The collections of the Brothers Grimm and all the classic tales were the constant companions of my childhood. I remember reading and re-reading favorite ones until the book literally came apart.

It doesn't surprise me in the least that children are responding to the spiritual message in the movie. Children are naturally spiritual, they have a built-in need to seek moral and spiritual truth in the universe. Personally, I have always thought that it is an urge which is biologically put there by our Creator to give us the impetus to seek him. There is an interesting body of research which shows that when certain parts of the brain are stimulated they create the sensations of religious experience, which many non-religious people have taken as proof that religious feeling is merely an artifact of the brain. But my own thought has always been that just as we are equipped biologically to cope with our physical environment and have brains to understand the universe and even take a look at our own brains (brains looking at brains -- how's THAT
for a Zen koan?) -- we also come equipped by nature (God) to have a physical and biological means through areas of our brains to experience religious feeling and communion with our creator.

As Meister Eckhart so beautifully said: "The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me."

News-Record.com

"We have read all the Narnia books with our oldest children, and we're doing it again with our youngest," said Margaret Hanes, a Greensboro mother of three. "You'd be amazed how quickly they pick up on the spirituality in the books without any help from an adult. It makes it easier and a lot more fun to talk to them about God and Jesus than giving them a lecture on what they should believe. It helps them understand that on their own, through a story they enjoy."

Newsom, who lives in Liberty and works in Greensboro at Jefferson Pilot Financial, also has written his own children's book, "Polycarp: The Crown of Fire," which uses fairy-tale elements to teach children about Christian history. He is reading the Narnia books to his 5-year-old daughter who, he said, already understands and loves the tales.

"One of the themes of my book is that one of the best ways to instill these lessons is to turn the home into a storytelling culture," said Newsom. "Filling the home with great literature and fairy tales -- the great stories of the world -- can help our children understand what it means to be a good Christian and a good person. The best children's stories are fun to read but they also incarnate truth."