The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation

Episode 119c - Recovering Aslan: Faith When the World Forgets

• Paul

Share episode

Send us a text

What if you returned to a place you loved and found its heart deleted? We step into Prince Caspian to explore how a culture forgets its stories, how power polices memory, and why the ache for wonder is really a longing for the true king. From the ruins of Cair Paravel to the whispers that awaken a young prince, we follow the thread of worship, memory, and courage—and ask what it means for our own disenchanted age.

We dig into the Bible’s rhythm of nearness and neglect—Exodus fire, promised‑land faithfulness, and the long slide into exile—and map it onto the Telmarine strategy of erasing Aslan’s name. Along the way, we talk about the most dangerous counterfeit: a “flat” Christianity reduced to social optics that inoculates seekers against the real thing. The remedy is older and simpler than it sounds: Scripture as our counter‑memory, worship that expects presence, and communities that become living signs of another kingdom. Caspian’s conversion, shaped by forbidden stories and faithful mentors, offers a model for awakening; Lucy’s clear sight shows the cost and beauty of trusting when consensus prefers a safer path.

When Aslan returns, everything changes scale—trees wake, rivers dance, and crowns are set under a higher authority. That vision reframes leadership, politics, and hope itself, echoing Romans 8’s promise that creation will be set free from decay. If you’re a doubter, a seeker, or someone who feels the silence of God, this conversation is a horn in the woods: remember what is true, walk the ancient paths, and let your life make the rumour credible. If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs courage, and leave a review so more listeners can find their way back to the story.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

SPEAKER_00:

Well, welcome to the Christ-centered cosmic civilization as we continue on our series on Narnia, the 75th anniversary of the land of Narnia. And we're gonna next think about the book Prince Caspian. And the subtitle I'm working with for this is how we have faith or remember, keep the memory alive of the true and living God when he's forgotten or seems absent. Imagine returning to a beloved land only to find it changed beyond recognition. The old stories are forgotten, the true king is in hiding, the people live under oppression, the name of Aslan is little more than a rumour. That's how the book begins, and the what they uh had had was this wonderful kingdom uh based around Kerr Paravel and the high king the four monarchs ruling in a land uh full of goodness and truth and prosperity and civilization, and then they've been gone for a year in in terms of earth, and then they uh they're back in Narnia, but hundreds of years have passed, and it all the old ways that all the things they know to be true centered on Aslan himself, all of that is forgotten, and that's the world of Prince Caspian. It's the second published book in the Chronicles of Narnia, and the theme is this story of recovering the old ways, the old truths, remembering it, and it takes us into a huge thing that's in the Bible, um, and it comes up in the Psalms and the prophets, and the idea is like there was a time when the Lord God was close, or rather, his people were close to him, because if we draw near to him, he draws near to us, and the idea is like at the time recall the time of the Exodus. Look what wonders there were. The the the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son, as the angel of the Lord before his incarnation, travelled with his people, revealed to them as uh or indicate his presence indicated by this towering pillar of cloud and fire, right at the centre of the camp, and he would move this pillar of cloud and fire would move out, and then they would decamp and follow, and miraculous food was provided, manna from heaven, water from the rock, enemies defeated, amazing things. And then same similarly, when they went into the promised land unto Joshua, amazing things happened, and it was obvious that this the reality of the heavenly kingdom was manifesting in so many ways, and the depth and heights of uh reality was obvious. Uh, angels uh were among them, so and all of that. And then it's like in these later centuries when there are evil kings in Israel, and uh it's as if those things aren't there, people have forgotten it, and there's this message remember, remember what it was like, don't forget. Um Psalm 95. Today, if you hear his voice, don't harden your heart, but remember, come alive to him, it's real, even if now, as you look around yourself, and maybe it's a culture, a society, um a lot hundreds of years of history where there has been nothing of that. Yet, remember, remember, remember, it's real, it's real. Don't forget, trust that it's real. Um, that's the kind of theme here. So, in this episode, let's explore the well three themes. This idea of uh the restoration of what really is uh a true worship, um, and then we'll look at how Lucy knows uh the truth about Aslan, um but other even when he seems absent. And then this way that the return of Aslan and the return of faith in him produces uh a renewal of creation. So these things, it's it's getting us to experience that's why Prince Caspian as a as a book is particularly powerful for us in our age because we live at such a time, really, for many of us do, particularly in the Western world, where we've lived under the tyranny of a false false kings, false leaders who don't believe. And in fact, have these these false governments, the kingdoms of men, have worked to silence uh and uh remove uh and to to take away the memory of reality, the cosmic civilization of Christ. So we feel this, and that that even right at the beginning of the novel, when the the children arrive and they're on this island, and that the palace uh of Kerparavel is um completely overgrown, and yet they find in that cellar they they break down the door and get down into the cellar, and there are these treasures there that have been long forgotten, and all of this resonates with us. So because they return to Narnia, uh, but it's under this rule of the um the Telmarines, and uh they have the the Telmarines have suppressed the old story, silenced the name of Aslan, but um there's this Prince Caspian, and he's the rightful er, and although he is a Telmarine, he kind of becomes he's converted, isn't he? In the story, he becomes awakened to old Narnia. He was raised in this world of unbelief, but he, because he's had these people whispering to him, it's like um it's forbidden to talk of Aslan and the old Narnia, just as in many parts of the world, even now, it's forbidden to talk of Christ and the heavenly kingdom, and so people whisper of it and pass notes and uh speak of it in code. In many ways, many of us in Britain that do that, and in our workplaces. I I was just hearing today about somebody who was in a business meeting, and someone for who follows a different God just said, It is time now for me to pray to my God, and they just did that quite openly, and there was no objection to that. Nobody had any problem with this quite overt assertion of a of a religious worldview in a business meeting, and yet they knew that if they did that, even less much less than that, if they did either even any of that with respect to Christ and the kingdom of heaven, uh, they'd be in trouble. And if they're in medicine or education or so, they they lose their job for things like that because we we live under this kind of a deluded tyranny. Where it when we're not we're not allowed to speak of these things. So Prince Caspian has been raised in that, but yet these um the his nurse and then his tutor uh whisper to him of these things, and he longs for the old tales, he dreams of the talking beasts, the dryads, and uh this a true king. Uh but he is, of course, he doesn't yet know who he is, that he is uh born to rule. So he eventually flees, his uncle Miraz, and uh then he blows this magical horn of Queen Susan, and that is what brings them back to Narnia, and we don't that only comes apparent as the story goes on. Um but this this Narnia then that they come to is darker, quieter, doubtful, and uh that's what's so powerful about it. So that's our first theme, that it's a world, the world of Narnia that begins, Prince Caspian, is actually a world that very much resonates with us in the modern world, that we live in a a dark and dreary world in which the magic, well, it's been it's a disenchanted world, and it's not that it really is, but the narrative that has been indoctrinated, it's in it there's an indoctrination process that begins from the cradle right the way through to the grave, uh, of forcing us to view the world in a dreadfully flat, depressing way. And that anytime we hear the rumors, even that there's more to reality than this, it is it is crushed. It is crushed or laughed at, and yet there's this feeling that people hear of it and they sense it that there's something more. This next thing let's explore is this idea of restoring true worship because it's uh here's someone said this Prince Caspian is a story about worship. The Telmarines have erased the memory of Aslan, they have silenced the songs, cut down the trees, and driven the talking beasts into hiding. And this is what false power does. It suppresses truth, it rewrites history, and it seeks to control by erasing memory. That's powerful. This idea of rewriting history, it's done all the time now, and that those that do it uh bel uh tend to go, oh no, we want to we want to give a true history. We want we the way that it was is a false history, we want to give a true history, but the history that they write, they're they're kind of um so often, I mean there are some times where that's true, we want to have a the a bigger, fuller uh view of of the past, but so often what is done is a version of history is created that excludes from it the kingdom of Christ. It's funny. I have these encyclopedias that were written for children, um, I think they were written in like the 1930s maybe or 50s, I don't know. They're like nearly a hundred years old. Children encyclopedias, but in them, they're not a Christian, they're not produced as a Christian product. It was a kind of secular product, really. But when I read them, they're full of Christian stories, and and the kings and queens of the past and issues of the past um are just openly full of Christian truths and ideas and symbolism and things uh as a good thing, and Christian activity in the past is kind of just acknowledged as good and heroic and wonderful and noble, and yet now similar things either have no reference to those events at all, or actually deliberately uh portray them as terrible things, as oppressive things, as cynical things. So we understand that this idea of suppressing the truth and rewriting history, not rewriting history in order to get a fuller, better view, but rewriting history in order to flatten it and make it uh rule out what really happened, the wonders and magic and mystery and glory of Christ that is all the way through history. So Caspian, yeah, he longs for the old ways and he listens to these other stories, better history, told by his nurse, and later by Dr. Cornelius, and he discovers that the world is bigger than the Telmarines lies. And that that theme then it's a kind of longing for a restoration, really, of true worship of Aslan. Aslan's at the center of it all, and he's it's not just a magical world in general, but it's an Aslan-centered world. That he's what makes the because if it as we'll discover as as we keep going through the series, the reason that there are talking beasts and dryads and all these wonderful creatures and wonders is Aslan, and so this longing for Aslan, really, that's the longing. It's not it's not just longing for the all these uh creatures, it all becomes focused upon the longing for Aslan and for that true worship. Caspian's journey, so it's not just a political journey, it's a kind of spiritual journey, looking for it's not that he is out to get power for himself, he it he what Caspian this the journey of Caspian is a journey to recover, recover this big true uh world, uh to bring back the kingdom uh of the heavens, really, this heavenly kingdom. So he's not just reclaiming a throne, he's restoring the memory of Aslan, and and that that's the point, that's our calling. So as we read about Caspian, and he meets secretly in the woods, and he meets these talking creatures, and they are symbolic of these kind of small encounters, a small sample initially, of the heavenly kingdom, the Aslan kingdom, the Aslan reality. And and in a way, I sort of think we it's great if we can be that, so that as people are uh look uh hear the rumors of a of this Christ-centered cosmic civilization, we must be those who are walking with Christ, and that something of his miraculous magic and wonder and glory is is in us so that when we talk of him, we are like like talking beasts. We are what so that then people would say, I'd heard rumors that that were that there were people who do know the God and do wonders, and then I've met someone who's like that. I've met the reality of children of God, I've met people who live, have the life of God within them. That the rumors are true, there really is a totally different dimension, or as it is in Acts 17, that there is another king called Jesus, and therefore we turn the world upside down. So we we must be those that resist the false powers that silence truth, and that this constant, like it's in Psalm 1, isn't it? Jesus in Psalm 1 is resisting all these voices of the mockers and the wicked, uh, who are always all these voices are constantly trying to silence the word of God. But in Psalm 1, the blessed man who is Christ, of course, meditates on the word of God day and night. And so must we, if we are going to be part of a resistance, if we are gonna be like the the talking animals and the the wonderful beasts and things, and and uh to be there resisting, uh we must we we have to be those who live in the word of God because it's by the Bible that we know of this world. Like when we read the the world of the Bible is a world in which there are angels, and actually, in the Bible, as as we say on this podcast, in the Bible, there are all these wonderful fay creatures. Um there are giants and dragons to be defeated, and there are angels and incredible heavenly creatures as well as fay creatures. All that's true, but that's in a way that's secondary to just this wonder of church. Like church is the body of Christ, and it's the the life of God is manifested among us, and so on. And when we worship, he makes his presence felt, and all of this, but it's we know all this, or our minds uh are able to resist only in so we cannot simply reject the tyrannical suppression of truth and the rewriting of history and all of that uh in it on its own. We have to have the true history, the true account of reality, and that comes from the Bible. So if we are going to be a resistance, and if we are going to restore the worship of the true king, that can only happen if we are listening to the true king, if we are listening to the true history of the world, and if we are like having our vision of reality constantly shaped and reshaped and expanded and enlivened by the scriptures and the spirit speaking to us through the um scriptures. So, in our own lives, of course, the false powers may not look like telmarine armies, and it may not be quite as obvious as that, although sometimes it is. But the these power, these false powers who rewrite history and and crush us and indoctrinate us with and make us want to forget Christ, or at least forget him as a meaningful reality, as a living Christ. What do these forces look like? Not telmarine armies, but they look like consumerism, materialism, cynicism. Uh, or I think the most dangerous form of it is the presentation of Christianity as just a kind of social thing. I think that's the that's the thing that sickens me most. Like the the the atheist agnostic kind of flat world uh is all around us and it and is is in in state imposed in many ways, but I don't find that as as as sickening as the presentation of Christianity as a social thing, and the goal of it is social community action and social stuff all the time, and that there is no God, really, it's just a social thing, and this idea of encountering Christ and the power of the Spirit with our Father in the heavens, and all of this, there's none of that, there's none of that, it's just this social vision of Christianity. All of that, all of that is is the way the Telmarine armies look, and the call is the same. Remember, restore true worship. So these tyrannical kingdoms and unbelief, they're not only in the non-church world, but um in the in my own experience, the very worst forms of this kingdom of forgetting and flatness are found in those who've created a form of Christianity that is um is essentially materialistic and just run by worldly wisdom. And uh it's a ghastly, ghastly thing, and it's the parti it's particularly bad because it says, Oh, this this form of Christianity is the only one there's ever been. That's what's the so when people are saying, but I've heard that there's this thing, I heard that there is a king called Jesus, and oh yes, says all says this false, evil religion that the of Christian like of the false Christianity. Oh yes, Jesus Christ, Christianity, here it is, we have that. Come and see, and then the people see, and it's nothing, it's it's lifeless, it's dead, it's soul destroying, it's just this social, empty, powerless, garbage, you know, horrible thing. And so that that more than anything will make people go, ah, the rumors are false. Because I've been to investigate, I went to see this thing called Christianity, I went to see this thing, these people who claim to be the ones who've who know who Jesus is, kind of thing. I I heard that he might be real, and it turns out he isn't. So the most dangerous form of the Telmarines that that keep suppress the memory of real Christianity, the worst form of it for me is this deathly dead false prophets kind, the false prophets of Christianity, because they give they they they make people think they've encountered Christianity when all they've encountered is this worthless, dead, flat, empty husk of a thing. Um, many, many years ago, literally, oh well, forty years ago basically, I heard um Mary Peckham, who was in the Hebridean revival, speak at the International Revival Convention, heard her speak twice about the her memory of the revival in the Hebrides and what she experienced of the pre like the living God sh uh like arriving in a in a church building, and how people who were, you know, godless people just found themselves, they had to come and gather at the building and were completely impacted by the reality of God's presence. People falling to the ground, staying up all night in prayer, calling out to this living God, and they they saw this reality. It's like they've encountered the talking beasts, but more than that, they've encountered Aslan. It's like that. Now she she spoke of this. This is 40 years ago, and I remember it almost as if it was only yesterday. And the text she spoke from on the first time was uh from Jeremiah 6, verse 16. Jeremiah 6, verse 16. This is what the Lord says stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls. And she she was urging on us even then. Let us find our way back to these ancient paths, stand at the crossroads, there's different roads available to us. The roads that lead that are the Telmarine way, the post-Enlightenment way, where all of this is dismissed as superstition, made up. It's uh I think it's the King Mirrors who says, This is for babies, leave it, you're grown up now, leave all this nonsense about Aslan and a world that's magical and wonderful, forget all that, and just live with this flat, empty world where it's just human power, human politics, human social force. That and it's like, no, let us not, we're at a crossroads. Look, don't go down that modern road, it because it's rather says the Lord in Jeremiah 6.16 as for the ancient paths, there's an ancient way, and that ancient path leads to Narnia. Well, he doesn't say that in Jeremiah 6.16, but that's the that's the analogy, isn't it? The ancient path where the good way is that we can walk in, and there's rest for our souls. The Lord's calling us back to something that's been forgotten, it's been overgrown and ruined, and it can be come back to life. Christ can return to be among us, visit us, and uh it all can come back to life, kind of thing. Because these the sad thing is in Jeremiah 6, verses 16 through to 21, is the Lord says this ask for the ancient paths and and walk in them. But it says, But you said we will not walk in it. And then it's like the trumpets sounded in verse 17 of Jeremiah 6. Listen to the sound of the trumpet, but you said we will not listen. Now that's powerful because in the story, of course, the horn is sounded, and the pevances come from earth and are summoned back to Narnia and help to restore everything. So there, a horn is sounded that recalls them, recalls to react. But here in Jeremiah 6, 17, the sound of the trumpet, but we will not listen. And so if you read on in Jeremiah 6, you'll see the Lord is um judges them and brings heart bad things upon them. So that's the that's the challenge for us. Are we gonna be part of this uh restoration? Let's let's just tie some a few other things up. One of the uh another theme is this thing that when Lucy, because Lucy has a this encounter with Aslan, and he tells her what to do, and she knows he's she knows Aslan's returned, he's real, he's there. She's met him and he's told her what to do, and but the others don't believe her, and they continue. If you remember in the story, they carry on going in the wrong direction, and it ends in trouble, and they have to come back and listen to her, and then things go right. And again, this that's such a powerful part of the book that Lucy knows he's he's returned, knows he's real, and uh that that is again this idea that are we like that, you know. Are you someone who's met the the Lord Jesus? You know him to be real, and you speak of him, and or we hear people speak of him, that they've obviously met him and are experiencing his reality. What do we do? Are we drawn to Them, do we try does it does it stare up at us and we go, Yes, I trust him? I want I'm pushing towards that, or do we say, nah, nah, I'm not sure. I'm cynical. I I prefer safer options. I don't want my life disrupted by that sort of thing. Uh, and it's do we trust when Christ seems absent? How do we live? How do we respond when he seems absent, but others know he's real? How do we respond to that testimony about him? And uh also the way that Lucy has to hold on to the reality of Aslan when no one believes her. Can we do that? And I I find that that that kind of loneliness of knowing him to be real, and when those around us reject that or don't don't believe us, and there's there's something deeper, and they of course Aslan really is there. Um I just wonder as we come to the end, because we've used up the time, but it's this in the story, um Aslan does return, and everybody sees him, and his presence brings renewal, but it's not again, as we've noticed in the earlier uh the first book, it he brings renewal that is cosmic. Trees awaken, rivers dance, the land itself rejoices. This way in which we're not talking about ideas that are it's not just ideas that are in our head, people think that's what Christianity is, and that's why I talked about how ghastly it is with the the false prophets who just sell a kind of social political form of inverted, commas Christianity. Oh, it's ghastly because that is just human ideas, human power, human stuff, and but that isn't it? When Christ comes, it's not just ideas in our head, it's a reality outside us that affects the world. It's not just political restoration, it's cosmic renewal, and and the world's even like that's not that of course happens in a colossal way when Jesus physically returns at the end of the age. But even now, there's the it's something that isn't just in our heads or in our hearts, but it affects the entire world around us. The whole it it's um like the the trees and the stars and the birds and the animals, they know him, and it's about him, he affects all things. Um creation responds to the presence of its true king. Uh uh, and then even when Caspian is crowned as the rightful ruler, it's under Aslan's authority. His kingship is derivative, not absolute in himself. He reigns because he submits to Aslan, and what a phenomenally different society it is, when the power, the political power, and the social power and everything is consciously flowing from Christ the king, and the rulers submit to him, and know that the power doesn't flow up from the people but flows down from Christ. Phenomenally different experience of society. That pattern of Christian leadership, true kingship, is of course not about domination but service under Christ, but it's this very real way in which our leaders have no authority. Because they believe their authority comes from just human beings, they haven't got any, really, and it's so easy for us to mock them, mock these these human leaders because they have no real authority and power. But when the power comes down from Christ, how different it is. So the renewal of Narnia, it does remind us of that promise of Romans 8, the creation itself is going to be set free from its bondage to decay. That's an eschatological vision. But I think, in a way, we can eat we even long for tasting the samples of that now. The land itself sings when the lion returns. So there's the story, Prince Caspian. We must tie it up, and it's just this, it speaks to this period this novel especially speaks to us at our time and age and place and context when faith in Christ can feel lonely because we know his reality, but those around us don't. And we may even feel that Christ is absent from us and we long for him to return and make his presence felt. The world seems to have forgotten the old stories of his reality, and we need a restoration, not just on a human level, but it's on a higher level and real worship, real uh uh we we need that that there's like a real world that's been forgotten, and we and that must be awakened and rediscovered. Um someone said this the Prince Caspian is a story for doubters, for seekers, for those who feel the silence of God, and it whispers he is not absent, he is waiting to be seen.