Narnia & Christ in Me: Recent Thoughts

Reading in a book called Letters to Children by CS Lewis today and came across the following: writing to a little girl named Phyllida, who had been complaining about silly adventure stories with no point, Lewis said "If they are silly, then having a point won't save them. But if they are good in themselves, and if by a "point" you mean some truth about the real world which one can take out of the story, I'm not sure that I agree. At least, I think that looking for a "point" in that sense may prevent one sometimes from getting the real effect of the story in itself---like listening too hard for the words in singing which isn't meant to be listened to that way...I'm not sure at all about this, mind you..." which I thought was a brilliant description of why, sometimes, we prefer fiction to sermons. It's like art--- through it (whether literature, music, or visual) we understand things. But we can't separate those things from the art and make them into messages. This is coming from someone (me) who loves more than anything to find messages in art and literature. But why is the effect of a song different from its words considered on their own, and can fiction sometimes help us see God in ways theology might not? The interesting thing is that there are clearly Christian messages in Lewis' Narnia books. But I fell in love these books in fourth grade without a clue that there was anything symbolic about them. I just knew they were magical. At the end of the same letter, Lewis answers another of Phyllida's comments: "P.S. Of course you're right about the Narnian books being better than the tracts; at least, in the way a picture is better than a map." This comment reminded me too much of one that my friend Tony made the other day, protesting that the book we read for book club, Blue Like Jazz was, when it came down to it, just a "tract" (an evangelical pamphlet). However, I think I liked it for exactly the reason that it, like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, is not a tract but rather a presentation of the spiritual lived out in the earthy experiences of life. Perhaps Donald Miller was trying to propagate and convince readers of Christian truth, whereas Lewis was just presenting it artistically. Is there a difference between the two? As a believer, it seems there is a role for tract-like, almost technical teaching. It builds up the church. And yet lately, as I was discussing with a friend, I'm not often attracted to Christian teaching books/sermons like I used to be, something that has caused me a little worry about myself. But I tentatively concluded that I'm merely moving away from an "overspiritualizing" of everything and towards an understanding that if God is anything, he is incarnational, meaning he is present and here in the every day, that he is in us and among us---that is the whole point of Christmas. So instead of trying so hard to make him come here and be in everything I do, I'm realizing that he already did come and he already is here. "In him we live and move and have our being."