Plato, Lewis, and Paul

I’m going to post on the most popular discussions on the blog for this unit: Plato and his allegory of the Cave. This allegory resonates deeply with me because of what I believe in. Even though I agree with living in the world we have and acting the way we act, I feel that Christianity is based on the idea of Truth beyond the physical world. I love C.S. Lewis, and even though I brought him up in class I want to quote him again. In The Last Battle, after the destruction Narnia as they knew it, the main characters are standing around talking about the new place they are seeing. One of them, a professor, brings in Plato almost exactly, saying that the Narnia they had come from “ was not the real Narnia. That had a beginning and an end. 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.” Later the narrator says “the new one was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more.” This idea can be seen in the Great Divorce as well. The narrator talks about getting to Heaven and realizing that the people he came with are transparent and less real than the world there. And to him the whole world is more real and solid than anything he’s ever seen before. But it’s not just Lewis. This idea can be seen in Paul’s writings, too. He talks about putting on the armor of God because of fighting “the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6.12). The heavenly realms are not part of this physical world in which we live, they are something deeper than that. Lastly Paul says in Romans that people “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised” (Romans 1.15). It seems to me that Christianity is founded on the idea of Truth beyond the obvious. The question becomes, how do we find a balance between looking for the Truth and living in the world we have?