A commenter to one of Unfogged’s posts on Gopnik, Lewis and Narnia makes a common error about Christianity:
I dunno about the Lion/Lamb business. It’s one thing to say that Christ was the Lion because he had the strength to sacrifice himself and was vindicated in the end. That’s one kind of strength. It’s another kind of strength that the lion of the jungle uses to kick ass all over the place. I took it that what Gopnik was objecting to was the absence of meekness and self-denial, which is pretty central to Christ’s message.
The problem here is that neither meekness nor self-denial is central – pretty or otherwise – to Jesus Christ’s message. I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE, NO MAN COMES TO THE FATHER BUT BY ME is the totality of his message, everything else is secondary.
Jesus Christ is not the Lion because of what he did, that is his aspect as the sacrificial Lamb. He is the Lion because he is the Alpha and the Omega, the Son of God, the rightful King who will return to claim his usurped throne. “kick[ing] ass all over the place” is a fair description of what John tells us is going to happen in his Revelation, after all.
Man is called to be meek before God, to be humble in the knowledge that we are nothing without Him, we can achieve nothing except through Him and we shall perish without His grace. God hates arrogance because pride is the main reason we refuse to acknowledge Him or our proper place in His Creation, and why we rebel against Him.
Like Aslan, Jesus Christ did not need to suffer and die. He chose to do so in order to pay the blood price necessary to redeem a traitor, Edmund in the case of Aslan, Man in the case of Jesus Christ.
As for Gopnik, his PARIS TO THE MOON has a spot in my most-favored bookcase, as it captures the American living abroad experience rather well. Having spent years living in Japan and Italy after growing up in the Midwest, I felt a real sense of the expatriate experience in reading that book that is missing in better-known works of travel porn such as UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN.
One need not agree with a writer on everything – or anything, for that matter – to like and appreciate his writing.