Chapter One of the Great Story

This evening I finished reading the Chronicles of Narnia to my children for the second time.  I love the way that the final book, The Last Battle, ends as the characters in the book saw the Narnia they knew die and then entered into another world.  When they were a bit confused because found themselves somehow in Narnia again, Digory explained, “It was only a shadow or a copy of the real Narnia which has always been here and always will be here: just as our own world, England and all, is only a shadow or copy of something in Aslan’s real world…. It’s all in Plato, all in Plato” (pg. 195).  He was referring of course to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave in which the philosopher imagined people staring at shadows in a cave and believing those to be the real things themselves.  Similarly, our world and our experiences in it are but a shadow of the real life with God that we can one day gain.  This was perhaps the meaning of Paul when he wrote, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known” (1 Corinthians 13:12).  What we see and experience now is only a blurred image of what life with God really entails. 

Other scriptures allude to the fact that we can’t fully understand the glory of God and the life in His kingdom He has prepared for us.  For example after the Nephites spent a glorious day with the Savior, Mormon recorded, “And no tongue can speak, neither can there be written by any man, neither can the hearts of men conceive so great and marvelous things as we both saw and heard Jesus speak; and no one can conceive of the joy which filled our souls at the time we heard him pray for us unto the Father” (3 Nephi 17:17).  Similarly, when the Lord prayed Mormon described it, “Nevertheless, so great and marvelous were the words which he prayed that they cannot be written, neither can they be uttered by man” (3 Nephi 19:34).  The experience was so sacred and powerful—perhaps so like the true eternal life with God—that it could not be written.  Paul suggested that the future blessings of the Lord would also be incomprehensible to mortals: “But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).  In our dispensation the Lord used similar language near the beginning of the revelation on the kingdoms of glory: “For by my Spirit will I enlighten them, and by my power will I make known unto them the secrets of my will—yea, even those things which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor yet entered into the heart of man” (Doctrine and Covenants 76:10).   Joseph Smith described how our relationships here would still exist in the next life, but that “it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy” (Doctrine and Covenants 130:2).  There is a glory to the celestial kingdom that we simply cannot understand here—all we see of it is a shadow.   

               The final passage of the book gives this description of the life the characters would live now that they were in the “true” Narnia (i.e. in heaven with Aslan): “But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.  All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before” (pg. 210-211).  Surely that is how it will really be for those who become as the Savior is and one day return to be with Him.