Ten years in the past, I printed an article titled “Nikabrik’s Candidate.” In it, I regarded on the gravitation of the conservative motion towards presidential candidate Donald Trump, and in contrast it to what I noticed as an analogous scenario in C. S. Lewis’s Prince Caspian. The dwarf Nikabrik has determined that Aslan is rarely coming to avoid wasting Narnia, and so he turns as an alternative to the White Witch for assist—with disastrous outcomes.
All these years later, within the context of a second Trump presidency, I’m considering once more about Lewis and the way his phrases would possibly mirror our age. This time, my ideas have gone to 2 totally different works of his: a special Narnia novel, The Magician’s Nephew, and an essay, “First and Second Issues.”
Most Lewis readers, I consider, might be aware of the easy however profound formulation that offers that essay its title: “You possibly can’t get second issues by placing them first; you will get second issues solely by placing first issues first.” It was a formulation that saved reappearing all through each his printed work and his personal letters, suggesting that it was basic to his considering. In reality, he went as far as to name it “a common regulation.”
In 2016, regardless of warnings from many fellow believers, the overwhelming majority of conservative evangelical Christians in the USA determined to disregard that common regulation. They determined to place political affect—the weapons with which to struggle—over the rules they had been combating for. In so doing, the motion ended up jettisoning each worth it held pricey.
Am I overstating the case? Contemplate the next.
The evangelicals I grew up with and labored with for many of my profession often ranked the sanctity of human life on the high of their precedence listing. Right this moment, I’m seeing lots of them cheer for an administration that actually shoots first and asks questions later (if it will get round to it). An administration that rushes poorly skilled, trigger-happy brokers out into the streets and tries to downplay the following shootings. An administration that bombs boats and kills folks on mere suspicion of drug working, with out checking for proof. An administration that slashed humanitarian assist with the eventual and predictable outcome that hundreds of youngsters died, whereas joking about it.
Oh, and the abortion charge that so lots of them believed he would drive down? That’s gone up.
The preservation of the household was additionally essential to the evangelicals I knew. Right this moment they assist an administration that routinely inflicts trauma on immigrant and refugee households. Beneath this administration, youngsters are despatched to jail, given spoiled meals and soiled water, typically denied satisfactory medical care, and generally separated from their dad and mom.
I might give so many extra examples. The motion I knew spoke out for the worth and dignity of individuals with Down syndrome; the place had been they when the administration slashed the funding these folks want to remain alive and effectively? The leaders I knew liked to cite Ronald Reagan’s tribute to the refugee who referred to as out “Hey, freedom man!” to an American sailor. Now they pledge their everlasting assist to a president who ships refugees off to violent international locations the place they haven’t any connections and few assets, and who flat-out refuses to absorb any of the persecuted Christians the evangelical motion has lengthy championed.
We will safely say that the conservative Christian listing of priorities has modified. This was my worry once I wrote that piece ten years in the past: that relatively than enlisting a champion to struggle for Christian values, evangelicals can be seduced by that champion’s values, resembling they’re. Their silence within the face of his urge for food for loss of life as an alternative of life, for separation as an alternative of unity, for rejection as an alternative of acceptance, has fulfilled that reluctant prophecy.
“However we had no alternative,” is the widespread response when any of that is introduced up. “He was the one doable choice. He was the one one who would defend us!”
And that brings me again to Lewis and The Magician’s Nephew.
On this second ebook of the Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis locations Digory, one in every of his younger protagonists, in an insupportable place. The lion Aslan has requested that Digory carry him an apple from a far-off backyard—an apple that, Digory discovers, might save the lifetime of his dying mom if he took it to her as an alternative.
If anybody might really say, “I had no alternative,” it’s this determined youngster. How might he not forsake the promise he made to Aslan, to avoid wasting the life that’s most valuable to him? How might any loving son not give his mom the apple? Can we dare to say that the lifetime of his mom was a “second factor” that he shouldn’t have put above all the pieces else?
Lewis stated simply that—and as he himself had as soon as been a toddler devastated by his mom’s early loss of life, we will’t say he didn’t perceive the gravity of the scenario he created right here. But he exhibits us that on this crucible, the “first issues” at stake are the virtues Digory’s mom taught him.
She has instilled in him the worth of “holding guarantees—and never stealing—and all that form of factor,” as Digory painfully recollects. He can not sacrifice his integrity, not even for her sake, as a result of she “wouldn’t prefer it.” And likewise as a result of the Witch who tempts him to steal the fruit reveals herself as “false and hole” when she suggests he abandon a pal to maintain the theft secret, reminding us how one betrayal of our rules rapidly brings one other, after which one other.
Solely as a result of Digory chooses first issues over second issues, nevertheless essential these second issues are to him, is he in a position to make the suitable alternative when it appears that evidently he has no alternative. Had he not finished so, Aslan tells him later, there would have once more been disastrous outcomes, for Digory and for his mom—as there might be for the Witch, who stole an apple for herself. “All get what they need,” Aslan explains. “They don’t all the time prefer it.”
As evangelical Christians are confronted by the rising tide of taking pictures victims, torture victims, victims of hunger, and orphaned youngsters created by an administration they supported within the title of life, religion, and household, they need to take these phrases to coronary heart.
