Sneaking Past Watchful Dragons

That is the way the fiction writings of C.S. Lewis have been described. Lewis had a way of serving us with truth hidden in the disguise of children's literature. It has been said that many have read Lewis' writings and loved them, that is until they discovered that he was a Christian apologist. Then they would come away fighting mad for Lewis had pulled one over on them.

Lewis has served us in many ways but he is best remembered for his fiction books. His children's literature was a way to sneak past watchful dragons with the truth. How many have read (or watched) of the lion Aslan dying in the stead of another and then rising from the dead?

We should be thankful for children's literature that parallels the truth of the Gospel. This type of writing is a way of throwing an age appropriate story alongside the truth for children to better grasp it. But this way of teaching didn't arrive with C.S. Lewis or even John Bunyan, our Lord Himself spoke truth in the form of parables. Parables convey truth in the same way. The word parable comes from two basic words that mean to throw alongside (para=alongside bole=throw). In His parables Christ gave truth wrapped in the package of earthly stories. Lewis follows the best of examples. May the Lord use these writings to train up our children in the way they should go.

I wrote fairy tales because the Fairy Tale seemed the ideal Form for the stuff I had to say. Then of course the Man in me began to have his turn. I thought I saw how stories of this kind could steal past a certain inhibition which had paralysed much of my own religion in childhood. Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ? I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to. An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. And reverence itself did harm. The whole subject was associated with lowered voices; almost as if it were something medical. But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday School associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency? Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons?

~C.S. Lewis, "Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What's To Be Said" (1st pub. Nov 1956), Of Other Worlds (1966)