Caging Jesus

In C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, there is a scene in which the children ask one of the animals about the lion, Aslan, who is the Christ-figure in these stories. They warily ask, “Is he dangerous?” To which Mrs. Beaver responds, “Yes, he is dangerous, but he is good!”

I am afraid we have caged Aslan. We know he is good, but we also know he is also dangerous -- he asks us to turn away from what we are doing and follow him. We know how dangerous that is – Jesus asks us to loose our selves, to be transformed into new creatures, and to understand that the world and its empires will come to hate us. How much easier it is to put Jesus in a cage! In the cage, we can visit him each Sunday, adore him, praise him, and get away before he puts a paw on us, before he, like Aslan, asks us to climb onto his back and enter an entirely new existence.

How tame our faith has become. The only excitement we seem to get is fighting with other Christians and disparaging people of other faiths. The result of this is that we are seen as being narrow, mean-spirited, judgmental exclusivists who are more comfortable with the sword than the cross. If I am not mistaken, that is not the Jesus we meet in our Holy Scriptures.

The image of caging Jesus has remained with me. It’s a troubling image. A magnificent lion is caged up. He yearns to be free and run with us (even up through a waterfall that flashes multi-colored, radiant lights in which we emerge into a new land as Lewis’ depicts in the last book of his Narnia series).

But to keep Jesus in a cage is also very dangerous in another way -- it is dangerous to our souls. But who of us will let him out? We are so comfortable admiring him from a distance.