... And again, the complete column is available here, on Speculative Faith.

One of the most important pieces of advice Lewis gave to readers of literature is that they must receive a work of literature instead of using it. Lewis wrote, “A work of…art can be either ‘received’ or ‘used’. When we ‘receive’ it we exert our senses and imagination and various other powers according to a pattern invented by the artist. When we ‘use’ it we treat it as assistance for our own activities” (emphasis added). According to this line of thought, “The first demand any work of art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.”

This is not to deny that we should make sense of what we read. It is instead a caution to let stories set their own agenda of concerns according to the order created by the author, not to impose our own agenda on them according to our own timetable as we progress through a story. Lewis’ rule of thumb was to let stories “tell you their own moral” and not “put one in.” The relevance of this to the Narnian stories is that the religious aspects of the stories usually do not appear until approximately halfway through the books. Many Christian readers are impatient with that and force the opening chapters into something that Lewis did not intend.

The second warning that Lewis gave is not to reduce works of literature to a set of ideas. He claimed that “one of the prime achievements in every good fiction has nothing to do with truth or philosophy…at all.” To regard a story as “primarily a vehicle for…philosophy is an outrage to the thing the poet has made for us.” Works of literature “are complex and carefully made objects. Attention to the very objects they are is our first step.” This, too, should steer us away from how many Christian readers deal with The Chronicles of Narnia.

— from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Imagination of C.S. Lewis by Leland Ryken, Tabletalk Magazine, January 2008

Well, here’s the part where I take my turn writing a column about the whole Phillip Pullman / His Dark Materials / my-books-are-about-killing-God muddle that’s been going on recently.

In fact, here’s also the part where I take my turn, finally, writing a column about anything.

(To those who keep up with these sorts of things, I offer my sincerest and most humble and personal apologies for what as of today amounts to several weeks of absence from Speculative Faith column contributions. My days are supposed to be Wednesdays; today is Thursday, of course. Yet late is better than never — either one day, or about 1.5 months.)


The Mohler-nator speaks

My focus here is partly inspired after I read the Dec. 4-posted
blog column by Dr. Albert Mohler, author-speaker-pundit-radio-host, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and eminent theologian-on-the-field extraordinaire.

In the piece, Mohler runs down, for the first time to me anyway, the general plotlines of atheistic author Phillip Pullman’s The Golden Compass, recently released as a film, and the rest of that British writer’s books.

Following the Harry Potter series’ closure and the near-simultaneous seeming dearth of controversy over that, not even J.K. Rowling’s “outing” of Prof. Dumbledore got some Christians nearly as riled as they are now about the Dark Materials movie and books. J.K. Rowling may not be at all as “Christian” as her over-eager Christian defenders have been out to contend, but she wasn’t out to convert people to Satanism either, as other religious hyper-activists strongly maintained.

In this case, though, all those intensely fierce and frantic email forwards floating out there about how evil Philip Pullman is out to brainwash children toward Atheism with his books are, in fact, absolutely true. He’s said before — I’m already weary of the quote being frequently cited — about how all his stuff is ultimately about “killing God.”

(Read the column's remainder at Speculative Faith ...)

Recommended The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis

What's happening with C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters?

It's in development with Fox and Walden Media. Fox has owned the property for decades. They bought it in the 50s. There was management at Fox that wanted it and bought it, and they've owned it for decades.

So what's the current status?

We're signing deals right now. We're finishing the Fox option deal, we're finishing my deal with Walden. Doug Gresham's deal is done.

Does the movie have a green light?

Not yet. We've been talking to Randall Wallace about writing and directing. We need to have more discussions with Fox and Walden about that, and make sure that Randy's still available. Everybody wants to make this movie; I think it's going to happen, I just don't know what the timetable is right now.

We're very excited about that. With the right script, dealing with temptation and that whole upside down world, it could be a very, very interesting movie. And it's going to be dark. This isn't a light, happy, Narnia piece.

The C.S. Lewis name alone should be enough to draw people into the theaters.

We've been telling people that for years, and they wouldn't believe it. And now that Narnia has happened, they're a lot more open to it. (Laughs.)

My reaction to this is not as excited as I might have expected to have, say, five years ago. For instance, Frank Peretti's recent thriller novels, such as House and Monster, are fairly much only assembled prototype lower-budget movie screenplays in advance — a far cry from the two Darkness epics with which his career began.

Also, along with Screwtape, Ralph Winter wants to produce a film version of The Purpose-Driven Life. How exactly can one do that from a nonfiction “inspiration” book? Easily, by crafting a story about someone who goes through the program; an hour-and-a-half-long commercial would result, but Purpose and its merchandise and program spinoffs has already become such a parody of itself that one could hardly fail to expect a movie commercial version.

But the fact that Winter wants to give that book the same attention he gives a classic like Screwtape Letters — which, unlike PDL, actually has something original and thoroughly Biblical to say — leads to some reluctant skepticism on my part.

However, as I wrote on Feb. 9 in a resultant forum thread, I believe a film version of The Screwtape Letters, with its elements of fiction along with Deep And Sardonic Theological Magic, could be fantastic.

The film would be called The Screwtape Letters, to be sure, and quote the actual letters frequently, perhaps with Screwtape's voice-over as we watch Wormwood (CG demons, of course!) attempt to tempt the central human. He would have a name, along with Wormwood having a voice, neither one of which exist in the book).

The new storyline would be focused on this man becoming a Christian and going about his standard, day-to-day early-40s British activities without much fuss — while the demons correspond behind the scenes and we see just exactly how much effort they put into trying to deceive a Christian.

Can it be done without changing what we know of the man — let's call him William — from the Letters themselves? Absolutely. It's all there: his first impressions of the church, arguments with his mother, falling-in with the sort of family and especially the young lady whose nature makes Screwtape want to throw up (and then, in his anger, assume the form of a very large centipede). All of this would make a great story.

Artistic license is fully possible without ruining the book. After all, it's not like they can change William's name or job (we didn't know what either was from the Letters) or toss in a noncanonical romance (it was in the book) or make up a bunch of violence and conflict (World War II was in the book).

We could even have deviations into the bigger picture, in which Screwtape performs his own job, perhaps further down in Hell's lowerarchy. What does he do all day? besides write letters? We can find out. Perhaps involved with the war. Perhaps he's even helping Hitler's regime in Germany. But the fact that even while doing all of these “big” things, he takes such interest in a “junior tempter” like Wormwood and the latter's “minor” project, would show viewers that every human life is a focus of tremendous spiritual unheavel.

Now about Ralph Winter, I'm a tad underwhelmed. He seems to be the go-to guy so far for faith-based movies that don't have much depth to them -- at least so far.

I haven't yet seen Thr3e for example, which he produced, and I love the novel, but it's not a very deep and specifically Christian story. Meanwhile House, by Ted Dekker and Frank Peretti, was a slipshod construction, bringing all of the two authors' various quirks in one product but with very few of the benefits — and Winter is reflexively producing the “story,” such as it is. (The movie announcement was in the back of the book and his endorsement was on the front.)

However, with Douglas Gresham involved, things will surely go well. And because it's The Screwtape Letters, how could one make a shallow film? One would need to work as hard as possible to pull that off, much more labor than it would take to simply stay true to the in-depth original. ...

Yes, Gresham is involved, and in a recent interview he said something which I thought very nice, and which is even now gracing my signature image at NarniaWeb:

Widescreen fiction: a speculative story with realistic characters, epic elements and engaging plot that includes strong, Christ-honoring themes of good versus evil and growth in faith.