The ‘Great Story’ looms in our future
I entered the New Year savoring the lingering aroma of eternity.
Of course, that scent may have been triggered by something I ate, or by the fact that I’ll be 71 this month. When you’re as old as I am, things eternal automatically grab your attention.
Sometimes, eternity beckons with the urgency of a 71-year-old’s bladder.
Recently, my best friend since the ninth grade died. As I said in this space at that time, I wasn’t prepared for his passing. It caught me by surprise. At my age, surprise is not normally a good thing.
Countless memories of my friend assailed me over the holidays, and I grieved. But I’m comforted by the fact that he was a follower of Jesus Christ. He’s in a much better place. I firmly believe that.
I have a favorite piece of writing about heaven that’s actually found outside the canon of Holy Writ.
Christian apologist, novelist and academic, C.S. Lewis, penned the treatise in the middle of the last century as a means for communicating what he believed to be our eternal hope. He wrote it as the final paragraph of the last chapter of the concluding book of his seven-book series, “The Chronicles of Narnia.”
It’s the defining statement of his magnum opus.
Narnia is an enchanted land of talking animals and deep mystery. In Lewis’ allegory, it’s representative of our world. Lewis’ inventive mind has fashioned a parallel to our fallen existence.
It’s not the “Real Narnia,” Lewis tells us, it’s a shadow of what’s on the horizon but not yet seen. Sound familiar? The “Real Narnia” would seem to us, heaven.
Lewis writes to the reader at the close of Book Seven, “The Last Battle”: “And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: Now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
What we’ve experienced of life to this point is prologue. Our future is the “Great Story.” Lewis insists that that experience — an endless succession of brilliant chapters followed by even more sparkling prose — is beyond our capacity to understand.
And, just prior to that, the Author of all Truth will roll up human history like a scroll, inaugurating his “Great Story.”
I’m not at all embarrassed by the fact that anticipation and hope are wonderful Christian blessings. Atheist Richard Dawkins, sadly, has no such buttressing. In fact, he labels these gifts delusions. I prefer to call them undeserved treasures from the hand of the Almighty.
It’s amazing to me that God takes note of our paltry thoughts and deeds.
Why should he? Does he have a plausible excuse for caring about us? Well, of course, my first thought is that he doesn’t need one. He’s God. But, yes, he does have an excuse. It’s called love.
Love generates amazing outcomes.
According to Dawkins, God doesn’t give one fig about us because God doesn’t exist. I could counter with a Dawkins-doesn’t-exist-either argument, but that would lead to purposeless nattering. Neither claim is provable.
That’s why faith is faith.
From my standpoint, there’s lots of space and matter out there that was called into being by something. The universe in which we dwell isn’t some giant un-planned, ever-expanding Amsterdam stroopwafel.
The Dawkins crowd has slurred God with the sobriquet, “Flying Spaghetti Monster.”
As Chesterton suggests: “When a man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes in anything.”
We’re on shaky ground when we embrace the unfounded canard, “God doesn’t exist.” Choose whomever you wish to worship: a fleeting thought; the Flying Spaghetti Monster; an iridescent rock; God Himself.
But, beware: the choice has consequences.
JIM CARNETT worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years and writes occasional commentary pieces for Times Community News.