Friday, April 4, 2025

Part I

---

Take the Text as It Is: And No, Meryl Streep Should Not Be the Voice of Aslan in the New Narnia Movie

On January the 16th of this year, Netflix announced that Greta Gerwig will be releasing the first installment in the new Narnia series. It is going to debut, we are told exclusively in IMAX theaters, and then it will be available on Netflix and for general distribution. The big announcement here had to do with Greta Gerwig as the director, and it is going to be a big story, no doubt. One of the first things that emerged from all of this is of course the big question: What’s Narnia going to look like? The first film is going to be of the sixth book, and that makes sense. The sixth book is The Magician’s Nephew, but it’s first in the sequence of the unfolding story, the Chronicles of Narnia.

Greta Gerwig is pretty well known, and the big question is what will she do with this? And that reminds us that when you write a book, you have a book. The book and a movie are not the same thing. The movie can be based on the book, but the movie is a very different artifact. It is a different product, and of course this is a different time. So back in 2023, there were headlines about the anticipation of a remake of Narnia, and the feminists were leaning in about their concerns about the story, and people who had a more secular worldview were leaning in about their concerns about the depiction. This comes up, by the way, when you’re looking not only at things related to the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, but also things, products related to The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. And similarly, the big questions are how Christian is any of this going to be?

Of course, there are debates over how Christian either one of them are in the first place as books, but they’re dearly loved by Christians, and the meta-narrative of the biblical story is clearly the background for both of those series. I don’t think by the way they’re equal. So I’ll just go ahead and I’m going to offend half of my listenership here, but I think The Lord of the Rings is a far superior work of literature, and of course, it’s far more comprehensive. I also think that in the whole, it turns out to be more compatible with Christian Orthodoxy than the Narnia series, but the Narnia series has been cherished by people for a long time, by Christians for a long time. It has been an entry for a lot of say teenage Christians, young Christians, middle school, high school age Christians into the world of literature in a way that they can recognize again what we call the meta-narrative, the basic storyline here.

And of course, a lot of that has to do with Aslan, and there is some extent to which in the Narnia series, Aslan is clearly presented as a Christ figure, and that was acknowledged by C.S. Lewis himself, the author. He also went on to argue that the Narnia Chronicles would not be seen as an allegory precisely in the same way that say Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan is an allegory of the Christian life, clearly is an allegory. Lewis said that he did not intend for the Chronicles of Narnia to be an allegory in that sense, but I’ll just have to say as a theologian and as a reader, it functions allegorically in many ways. That’s a part of the issue about Aslan. I’ll just say that having a Christ figure in literature is an inherently dangerous project. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t read the Chronicles of Narnia, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m simply saying that to have a Christ figure in literature who isn’t Christ and which isn’t tied to the space, time, history, Gospel accounts, I think is inherently dangerous. It’s risky. Let’s put it that way. It’s risky. 

That risk becomes very, very clear in the headline news coming out most recently, that there is speculation that Greta Gerwig is going to ask the actress Meryl Streep to voice the part of Aslan. So already that’s led to controversy on both sides of the Atlantic. The Telegraph in London ran a major article just citing the controversy about actress Meryl Streep, obviously a very talented actress, Academy Award-winning actress, voicing Aslan. Here’s the thing. This tells you number one, this is a very important cultural product. So in other words, major newspapers take as a matter of consequence what would happen if you had a woman’s voice voicing Aslan in the Chronicles of Narnia.

I think that’s interesting that C.S. Lewis and this work continue to have that kind of influence even in a post-modern and post-Christian age in so many ways. I think it’s also clear that there are people that hate this account. They don’t like the Christian, the explicitly Christian structure, the Chronicles of Narnia. The same thing is true by the way in parallel, there are a lot of people who do not like the Christian structure and implications of The Lord of the Rings. And frankly, there are feminists and others who are coming out and saying, “We have to be represented here too.” And remember, this is the way Hollywood works. This is the way the cultural creative community works. This is the way identity politics works. Everyone says we have to have representation. So how soon will it be until you have a gender-fluid character in these tales?

That’s one of the reasons why, by the way, as a conservative and as a Christian, okay, so I’m going to say this, as a Christian and as a conservative, and that conservative extends to my engagement with literature, I would argue that if I had written either of these, I wrote neither of them, I would not allow any such depiction. I would say “You have to take the text as it is. If you want to know the story, you got to read it. This is not a commercial product.” Because the moment you make it a commercial product in the fast-moving landscape of cultural creativity driven by so many ideologies, clearly hostile to so much of the message of The Lord of the Rings or of the Chronicles of Narnia, I would just say, why would you turn over to the world the stories that you had so carefully crafted?

And the response is there is one answer, and that is money, big, big money. And the estates, the literary executors, those who have the legal authority, they are no doubt saying that they’re doing their best to perpetuate these chronicles, these stories, these series that have had so much impact. But the reality is every single time you do this, you are bringing in big risk. The Telegraph recognizes the risk “Leaving aside the main for a minute, that is Meryl Streep perhaps as the voice, the gender of the lion. The key sticking point is the Christian symbolism at work in Lewis’s Narnia.” This is The Telegraph again, “It is a series steeped in ideas of sin, temptation, punishment, sacrifice, and salvation. Religious symbolism is both part of the book’s imaginative strength and the source of much debate and controversy.” That’s one of the reasons I would say to Hollywood, “Hands off.”

Now again, it can be done with greater and lesser sensitivity, accuracy. I think the Peter Jackson series of The Lord of the Rings is a serious attempt to be faithful to the story and Tolkien fans can quibble with this or that. But it was I think a legitimate effort to bring those stories to the screen. I think that becomes more difficult now than even say 20 years ago at that time. And I think this article coming from the other side of the Atlantic just tells us, yeah, it’s going to be very difficult to do anything like this without ending up with something like a female voice for Aslan. But I think the bigger tell here is the fact that The Telegraph, and I say this with appreciation, The Telegraph gets to the point. It’s not just Aslan. It’s not just a casting decision about Aslan or the voice of Aslan.

It is the fact that the Chronicles of Narnia, it represents “a series steeped in ideas of sin, temptation, punishment, sacrifice and salvation.” And that produces controversy, I think that’s a mild way to put it. The Telegraph tells us that there’s been public debate, especially postings on internet websites. One user asked the question, “Why can’t they just keep our beloved characters the same?” Well, the answer is that there’s an obvious way they could keep them the same. They could keep them the same or at least attempt to keep them the same. But if you keep them the same, you can’t say this is a better movie. In other words, given the standards by which Hollywood operates, you got to have a new way to tell the story. And this is where Christians understand, okay, you say you have a new way of telling the story, it just might more likely be a different story.

Another person said that Aslan needs a powerful masculine voice. Well, that’s definitely the way that it’s written and that is the issue. And thus the article in The Telegraph says, “And getting to the nub of the issue, a third worried that there’s a third poster, ‘Is it going to be a female lion with no mane? Are they just going to make people forget that Aslan is a metaphor for Jesus?'” Well, that is the most direct way to put it, but that also raises the issue of a metaphor for Jesus. And again, as a Christian theologian, I just want to say I’m quite nervous about that. I’m not looking for metaphors for Jesus. I want to preach Christ and him crucified, raised from the dead. I’m not saying that I would not read nor commend. I read as a teenager the Chronicles of Narnia. I read The Lord of the Rings.

Honestly, I was drawn more deeply into The Lord of the Rings than in the Chronicles of Narnia. I had enough theology in me to be concerned about some of the things. I believe parents and children can profitably read and talk about these issues. And I really appreciate C.S. Lewis for a lot of his arguments about literature and western civilization and culture. I think his work The Abolition of Man is one of the most influential works supporting that worldview from the 20th century. But I’ve probably gotten into a lot of trouble here, but I just want to tell you, I think this is a very big story and I think it raises for Christians all kinds of issues we really need to consider. And just to get to the bottom line, the world’s going to try to mess up our stories, but the ultimate story the world’s going to try to mess up is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And that’s where we have to be so careful about what’s going on here. We can’t tie the Christian truth claim to anything other than Holy Scripture. Where do we find the story of Jesus? We find the story of Jesus, we find the truth about Jesus, we find the gospel of Jesus Christ in the Bible. So I’m trying to speak carefully here. I have great appreciation for Lewis and I am not going after the books. I’m going after what happens after the books or in the hands of someone else with a different agenda and already with these issues being raised and with the possibility of Meryl Streep as the voice of Aslan. There’s a sense in which you can just cringe and say something like “This was inevitable.”

Part II

---

You Spoke About the Problem of Women’s Disinterest in Marriage, But What About the Shortage of Godly Young Men? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

Well, all right, now let’s turn to questions. And again, I’m always thankful for not only the fact you send in questions, but the quality of the questions, the candor of the questions that you send in.

And sometimes when I’m looking at them, I think I need to kind of put several of these together and just paraphrase the question myself. And so I had a lot of response to the conversation on the briefing about so many women giving up on marriage and young women in particular and some of the very interesting gender dynamics we have going on right now. More conservative young men, more liberal women, and so many women not marrying, so many young men as indicating they want to be married but are not. They want to be fathers but are not. What’s the mismatch here, especially among Christians, especially in churches? One thing I received overwhelmingly in response is that both men and women writing in and saying, “Well, here’s a part of the problem. There are so many young men who really aren’t ready for marriage.” Okay, well I acknowledge that up front. Again, that’s been a major point of emphasis that I want to come back to again and again.

And that ties to another question I was sent, I want to tie that to this as well. I mean the fact is that it is our responsibility, first of all, as parents, it is our responsibility as Christians, as churches, as congregations to help boys grow into manhood and on time and healthy and holy, which is never an easy process. As I say, every civilization’s had trouble helping boys into the transition into manhood. That’s just always true. It is always been a massive investment of civilizational energy, of parental energy and concern and struggle and all the rest. There’s great joy in it of course, but at the same time it’s never been easy. The second thing that people send into me, and I was particularly struck by how many young women sent this in saying all the young men or so many of the young men, I don’t want to say all but so many of the Christian young men, they have still had a real problem with pornography.

And so let’s just name it for what it is. I mean that’s an insidious problem and especially in the digital age, it becomes all the more insidious and all the more present. It’s one of the reasons why I think among Christian men, we need all the more candor in talking about this and accountability structures and all the rest. But I think it could even be just good for a lot of men, especially young men, to hear my voice say this, just to articulate it out loud and say there are a lot of young women who are saying they’re quite concerned about the imaginations of young men and again, the corruptive and corrupting power of pornography. And I don’t know what they’re basing their knowledge of the use on, but I can just tell you anyone who works with young men knows this is a huge problem.

And I just thought, okay, it’d be healthy if we just say that out loud. And at the same time, I think it really is possible for young men to grow into holiness, young men to grow into maturity, young men to grow into obedience to Christ and to grow up. We need to help young men grow up on time. But that is again half of the situation. But when you’re talking about marriage, you’re talking about men and women, you’re talking about young men and young women, and you are talking about some of the challenges you need to each, the big story right now is how many young women say they’re not interested in marriage. But in the Christian Church, I’m glad to say that’s not really very common in the Christian Church simply because of the shape of the gospel, the power of the gospel and the teaching of Scripture.

I think young men and young women both know that they’re going to be moving toward marriage. And I think honestly, you look at a Christian congregation, you’re going to see countercultural pictures before you. Not only you’re going to see young couples who are married more or less on time, but you’re going to see young couples who are married and have children and all of that growing into faithfulness. So there’s lots of responses I got including some questions, young women, “What do I do in midst of all of this?” Young men, “What do I do?” And I have to come back again and again to the context of a faithful local church, a faithful local church, the body of Christ under the authority of Scripture, by the power of the Gospel, preaching God’s truth into lives and raising up as the clear product of Gospel Christianity, faithful young men and young women living out the creation order mandate and getting married and having children, all of this very much to the glory of God.

We are living in a sin saturated society and the responsibility is for Christians to be in the world, but not of the world. But the world is going to inflict as much damage as it can, and we as Christians, we just need to push back even harder than the world is pushing.

Part III

---

My Son Shows More Interest in Video Games Rather Than Work. What Do I Do? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

Okay. I also had a father write in and he writes about parenting teen boys. He says, “I have one that has interest in movies and video games and even some interest in politics, but not much an interest in school or working or being serious about what he wants to do with his life.” It goes on. The one thing I thought of Dad and looking at this, number one, I’m thankful you’re there. I’m thankful you have this concern. And I think left to their own and just given the power of all kinds of things around us and the natural lethargy of the adolescent male, I think this is a picture of what requires intervention.

And I saw where you said in honesty that this particular son of your concern doesn’t have a lot of interest in a job or et cetera, et cetera. I would get him interested in a job. I would make that a mandatory interest. I would lean into that. I told the story often, and I say this in honor to my dad. My dad showed up to pick me up from school, my 14th birthday, which I did not understand. That’s not a normal thing. He picked me up, took me to the state labor office and got me a work permit and put me to a job. I mean, it’s like a job bagging groceries on my 14th birthday. In other words, “This is the first legal day. You can do this. You’re going to do this.” I have to tell you, it reordered my life and I think in a very, very productive way.

And I want to say that to honor my dad, and by the way, my dad did not ask me if I wanted to do this. He just said basically, “This is what you’re going to do.” And I did it. And amazingly enough, I grew to love it. I found out as a boy I liked work. I liked the context of being at work where you have things to do. You can see the product of your labor. I liked being among other workers in that camaraderie and I’d like the paycheck. I can still remember the first one. It also made me a fiscal conservative. Why is the government taking all this money out of my paycheck? It was only $21 to begin with. It was less than that after the government took a bite. 

I want to say this in a warmhearted way. I think, dad, you’ve got the right concern. It’s just that I would encourage you to reduce the options. And I think most adolescent boys, most young men need dad to reduce options. I think that’s a part of being a dad in this world in this situation. God bless you for your question. Thank you. 

Part IV

---

How is the Martyrdom of the Apostles an Apologetic for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ? — Dr. Mohler Responds to a Letter from a 15-Year-Old Listener of The Briefing

Okay. Another dad wrote in. This one on behalf of a 15-year-old daughter, and this is a great biblical picture. He and his daughter were talking about spiritual things, biblical teachings. And one of the things they raise is one of the proofs often attached to the apostolic preaching of the gospel, such as in the Book of Acts, is that the disciples were willing to die for their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so one of the kind of very famous apologetic questions is, would anyone die for a lie? And I would say, by the way, the answer to that is no one I think would sensibly die for what he knows to be a lie.

So I think there are lots of people who have died for a lie. I think that’s one of the stories of world communism for example, or Nazism in World War II. But I don’t think that most men or women would die willingly for a lie. The disciples, the apostles died willingly for the cause of the gospel. But then the dad speaking about his daughter’s question, asked the question, but then the father referencing the conversation with his daughter said, “We have seen martyrs associated with kinds of religion throughout history, and we noted the proliferation of suicide bombers in association with Islamic extremism. Here’s the question. How can the martyrdom of the disciples therefore be used as accurate proof for the existence of and the resurrection of Jesus?” Well, it not properly rightly said that we base our faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ on the martyrdom of the apostles.

It is a limited statement, but it’s a useful statement. It’s a limited statement to say they clearly believed they had seen the risen Christ and they were willing to die for the cause of the Gospel. But you notice the question here also deals with Islamic extremism and suicide bombers. I’ll say there’s a huge difference here by the way. It doesn’t say that the disciples or the apostles were willing to kill for the Gospel. They were willing to die for the Gospel. Those are two very different things, and they’re based in two very different theologies. So I think you got a smart 15-year-old daughter there asking, “What kind of proof is this?” And it is the proof that the apostles believed that they had seen the resurrected Christ and that they were witnesses of him, eyewitnesses, the Scripture says, and they were willing to die for what they knew to be the truth.

That’s one of those arguments that I would say as a theologian has real but limited utility. In other words, we wouldn’t base our entire confidence on the gospel, on the willing martyrdom of the apostles, but rather on the preaching of the gospel and the revelation of Christ as found in Scripture. I hope that makes sense. But it’s a smart question from a 15-year-old, and I am glad to have every one of those.

Part V

---

Will I Know My Parents in Heaven? — Dr. Mohler Responds to a Letter from a 8-Year-Old Listener of The Briefing

Okay, there’s just a pattern here today. Lots of parents writing in for kids. Now we’re going to go to an 8-year-old boy who asked his mom, he asked if he would know his parents in heaven. And this mom says he was emotionally troubled about this. He needed reassurance. And I think this is a very sweet question. It’s a precious question, and I think it’s exactly that. And my heart goes out to this little boy, and I think that on the full authority of Scripture, in the full power of the gospel, in the teachings of Christ, you can faithfully hug him and tell him, you are going to know each other in glory as you are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and Christians.

And I just want to remind you that the very picture of heaven that is given to us as a new heaven and a new earth where all things are made right, every eye is dry and every tear is wiped away. It tells us there will not be propagation in heaven. You probably don’t need to get into with an 8-year-old. But in other words, there will be no giving and taking in marriage. There would be no, in other words, there aren’t going to be babies in heaven. Reproduction is not going to be a part of what is in heaven. But I would be horrified to think that I won’t know my wife in heaven. I don’t think it’s that at all. I think it’s the perfection of all things and the completion of all things. And one of the things we need to think about as Christians about the biblical presentation of heaven is that it is like life we know it as a new heaven and a new earth. There’s an intelligibility to this.

In other words, we’re given a picture that we are meant to understand in which all things are made perfect and that means nothing good in this life disappears. It not only does it disappear, it’s perfected. And I look forward to that and I think we should. And I think to God’s glory, there is every biblical reason to say that a part of what it means for the great host to be gathered there among the redeemed in heaven is that every good thing we know on earth will have been perfected, not eradicated, but perfected in what we know in heaven.

Part VI

---

What are Your Thoughts on Activist Judges Blocking Trump’s Orders on Immigration? — Dr. Mohler Responds to Letters from Listeners of The Briefing

Okay. A very interesting question coming in from a listener. “What are your thoughts about activist judges blocking, slowing, hindering President Trump’s ability to deport illegal persons from our country?” The two issues here, one of them is the issue of immigration. And I think every nation has the right and responsibility to determine its own citizenship and its own borders and to define itself that way. And obviously there is for every country the question of what is the legitimate rightful pattern of immigration that should be a matter of national policy? I think a rather conservative policy along those lines that serves our national interests, I think, and our role as a nation among the nations, a leadership nation among the nations, that’s very clear.

But any nation that ignores the responsibility to police its own borders and basically allows illegal forms of immigration into the country, I think that’s a huge problem. I think President Trump is responding to what the American people, know is a very huge problem. The second question is the power of the courts. And here’s the big deal. You have federal district court judges making decisions that they’re claiming should have nationwide application.

And I do not believe that’s going to stand. I think that one of the issues that’s going to come out of this is that you are going to have to have eventually the Supreme Court of the United States determine on what kinds of rulings, federal district courts, which after all are, let’s just say it again, district courts set policy or precedent with a nationwide implication. And this is a mess, frankly, that’s going to have to be clarified. And I think this is one of the reasons why the Trump administration is saying, “Let’s just get this before the appellate courts as fast as possible, and on some of these questions, let’s get these questions before the Supreme Court as quickly as possible. We need this situation cleared up.” And federal district court judges have a very important role to play in the federal judiciary, but there is a distinction between the district courts and the appellate courts, which are regional circuits and the Supreme Court of the United States, which is national.

And by the way, this is a question that isn’t new, but it certainly is newly hot, needs to be answered. All right, there are just several questions I think are really important. I hope we can get to next time. Thank you again for the questions you send in. You can send in a question simply at mail@albertmohler.com.