Facing the Supernatural Part 2: A World Reconciled to the Supernatural

(read after Part 1)

If God sent undeniably fantastic events and figures upon the world, what would we do? After we had reconciled ourselves to a new world completely different from that we’d imagined, would our lives be better or worse? In Narnia (spoiler warnings, but these books have been out for fifty years, so I don’t feel sorry for you) after Aslan was back and the dryads and nyads were dancing about with the fauns, badgers, giants, mice, bears, and chipmunks, there was a celebration. Flowers bloomed. Telmarines joined the festival, freer than they had ever been for seeing the world as it truly was. I imagine that, even if it were in a catastrophic form of judgment that God reasserted the reality of things outside our world able to pierce through, there would be a revival of saving faith. There would be joy and wonder and courage. Even if the awakening is slower and more gradual, even if it is happening to the unsaved as much as to the believer and a mass of the world reembraces paganism in a revolt against naturalism, GK Chesterton points out that the last things the pagans did is convert to Christianity. That was their climax. CS Lewis hints at that, but I think he sees paganism as something to be fulfilled, or seen without human’s taint. The revelry at the end of Prince Caspian is a pagan one redeemed because it is governed by, and centered around Aslan.

To God be all glory.