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Devin Brown writes on Lent in Narnia

Devin Brown is a name that you should recognize as the author of the Inside Narnia series of books: Inside Narnia, Inside Prince Caspian and Inside The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.  In light of the fact that Lent began a few days ago with Ash Wednesday, Devin Brown wrote an essay on Lent in Narnia: Would C.S. Lewis have renounced Turkish Delight from Ash Wednesday to Easter?

He wanted to share the article with all of you.  Here’s the start of the article:

In his short essay “Some Thoughts,” C. S. Lewis examines the paradoxical fact that the Christian calendar is as full of feasts as it is fasts, as full of fasts as it is feasts.

How did the Christian faith come to have this unique “two-edged” character, a stance which is both world-affirming and world-denying? Lewis explains that on one hand “because God created the Natural—invented it out of His love and artistry—it demands our reverence.” But at the same time, “because Nature, and especially human nature is fallen it must be corrected and the evil within it must be mortified.”

But make no mistake, Lewis writes, its essence is good, and correction is “something quite different” from repudiation or Stoic superiority. And hence, Lewis argues, all true Christian asceticism will have “respect for the thing rejected” at its center. “Feasts are good,” Lewis concludes, “though today we fast.”

Read the rest at Christianity Today

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