The Back of the Wardrobe

Recently, I watched The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe for the first time.  Lewis' book, supposedly for children, is so much more for adults too---and for once, the movie-makers did an excellent job with the novel. 

It occurred to me as I read My Stroke of Insight that Taylor's experience with the "death" of her critical left brain and entering into the life of her right brain was just like the youngest child's experience in The Lion....  She fell through the back of the wardrobe and experienced the Land of Narnia, with "fantasy" creatures who talked to her, but as she re-entered the "normal" world, no one could believe or understand her experience.  It was not within their realm of experience, so she was considered as myth-making, fantasizing.  But her experience was real, as the other children finally came to discover.

No one for whom the left-brain world is the only existence will ever believe in the truth and reality of Taylor's right-brain only existence.  But her attachment to that world and that reality can never be un-done, even as she re-entered the "real" world of left-brain engagement.  She knows what she has experienced, and she clings to its truth with every fiber of her existence.

So too all the early Christian martyrs who went to their death proclaiming the truth of Jesus Christ.  Once having experienced the truth of the spiritual life He gave to them, they could never again deny that life and truth.  It has been said that the man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with an argument. 

As the experience of Peter the Apostle tells us, truth comes by revelation/ experience, not by explanation.  And Jesus said to him:  Blessed art thou, Simon, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.

On the road to Damascus, Saul, the most learned and intellectual and educated Jew, had the same experience as did Peter, the unlearned and uneducated fisherman.  He met Jesus by revelation, not by explanation.  Later, after the experience, came the explanation, enlightened by the Spirit of Truth and revelation.

Once we have "fallen through the back of the wardrobe" or, like Taylor, encountered the world of spirit, it is possible to re-enter the world of flesh and somehow find the words to describe our experience; it is possible to study and to read the experience of others---even in Scripture---and to find our own story in theirs.  It is possible for the left brain to begin to "make sense" of our experience.

But it is not always possible for those who have not experienced the right-brain, the spirit-world, the "resurrection," to grasp the "fantasy world" of which we speak.  They have no point of reference for the mystical creatures or words.  The left-brain categories are the only ones they know, so what we describe is nonsense to them, as it was originally to Saul of Tarsus.  For him, Jesus could not have been the Jewish Messiah---he knew too much about the Scriptures for that to be true:  until he had a face-to-face encounter with the living Christ.

God has no grandchildren; we cannot pass on our experience to others.  We can pass on our stories, but they seem as fantasies to our children and others.  Fortunately, however, in every generation in the Old Testament, the living God, Yahweh, encountered the children Himself:  I am Yahweh, the God of your fathers Abraham, Isaac, Jacob---the One they told you about, the God of the ancient stories.  Now, it is between you and Me.  Will I be also your God?

Our stories are important, as were the spiritual stories of Taylor and of the youngest child in the Lion....
Once we encounter the Living God, we know then that THIS was the same God we heard about from times of old---the one the Scriptures have spoken about and our fathers told us about.  And we worship the One Who is from old.

Until that time, we can only pray that we too can fall through the back of the wardrobe and encounter the Land of Narnia and at last have a face-to-face encounter with the Risen Christ, the Son of the Living God.  All of our prayers, rituals, and the Scriptures, or stories and sermons we have heard are meant to lead us to that moment.  All of nature and the arts is designed to lead us to that moment; they have hidden within themselves hints of eternal and everlasting joy!