The Golden Ass

Modern Christians know their way around Narnia but can't transition to the real world. This is because we both mistake indicators for the real thing (our world is flat), and because the only mechanism we know of to connect Narnia to the real world belongs solely to the internal logic of Narnia itself. There is no interrelation or interlocking. Hal Lindsey, Left Behind, and the millenarian movement, as attempts to force such correlations, are examples of symptoms of this break between heaven and earth. End-time speculations even feed some of our leading political agenda or are reshaped into environmental concerns. Why icons and Cathedrals are helpful as indicators and aids to the imagination. The mystery of the ascension, of Jesus the mediator in heaven "still wearing those dear tokens of his passion on his dazzling body" (along with the resurrection), is why there is an interrelating to talk about in the first place. In this light, the Second Coming isn't necessarily so literal but is the appearance of the truth out of a beautifully embodied mystery (like what happens in a wedding!) - Paraphrase/summary of NT Wright in Surprised by Hope. (Posted on Facebook recently HERE.)