So in the past few posts, we've covered what Lewis's basic theology was with Creation. But the more important topic to focus on is what we should do with creation. This, I think, is what Lewis's main point was throughout his Narnia books.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
RESPONDING TO CREATION
This creation invokes
response. While it may seem like a nice
idea that the world was created merely for our pleasure, Lewis understood that
there is an appropriate response through our actions and relationships with
others.
“The Magician’s Nephew demands that the reader see the physical
world as a created world. It demands
that the reader respond to the creation, and to the creator.”[1] The created world holds a purpose through
right relationships with one another and with God. This is explained by “the biblical
understanding of God as Creator [which] is primarily concerned not with his
creative act of bringing the world into being, but rather with his ongoing
involvement in and with his creation.”[2]
Not only is there a reaction to the vastness
of creation, but also that the grand Creator wants a relationship with the created
beings. Lewis supposed that “the
relation between Creator and creature is, of course, unique, and cannot be
paralleled by any relations between one creature and another.”[3] It is a special relationship that is
communicated to the reader by Lewis’s depiction of Aslan with his created
beings.
For the created beings, there are
basically two responses to creation: use it or abuse it. In his book, The World According to Narnia, Jonathan Rogers explains these two
responses in the form of the characters Digory, the adventurer, and Uncle
Andrew, the magician.
