No offence intended?

I read these words by the wonderful N.T. Wright recently and they seemed appropriate to put out into the webosphere on this fine, sunny Christmas Eve:

"I was once preaching at a big Christmas service where a well-known historian, famous for his scepticism towards Christianity, had been persuaded to attend by his family. Afterwards, he approached me, all smiles.

'I've finally worked out,' he declared, 'why people like Christmas.'

'Really?' I asked. 'Do tell me.'

'A baby threatens no one,' he said, 'so the whole thing is a happy event which means nothing at all!'

I was dumbfounded. At the heart of the Christmas story in Matthew's gospel is a baby who poses such a threat to the most powerful man around that he kills a whole village full of other babies in order to try to get rid of him...Whatever else you say about Jesus, from birth onwards, people certainly found him a threat. He upset their power-games, and suffered the usual fate of people who do that." (Tom Wright, 2004, Matthew for Everyone Part 1, 13-14)

It's certainly true that we've managed to make the Christmas story quite innocuous. Nativity plays and carols about how "the little Lord Jesus no crying he makes" make it all very demure and comforting, when at the time it was anything but.

Which is not to say that Christmas should suddenly become a deeply unsettling time, and that peace on earth and goodwill to all men should not be encouraged. Any celebration that causes people to come together with their families, to be more loving, generous and charitable than usual, has to have at least some good in it. Yet it seems that, by missing the controversy of Christmas, we also miss the real joy, and the real power. Christmas, grasped fully, is the best news we can imagine. Christmas, grasped fully, makes every day of your life one of generosity and love.

"Only the noble of heart..."

I suppose we can take it as a given that, when beloved books are made into movies, people get offended. Some people are happy, and some are very much not.

My response to seeing the new 3D film version of C.S. Lewis' "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader" was not so extreme. I try to avoid giving the standard response of "the book's better". Some might even say that the film was better than the book - those who found the book a bit too imperialistic (the film definitely got rid of the "submission to Narnian authority" bit early on in the story) or fragmented (the film adds a new thread which unifies the narrative, and reorganises the stories to fit that framework better). Some who find the act of reading a bit dull, or find Lewis' distinctly British style of storytelling too ponderous, will probably prefer to have the picture on the wall leak out torrents of water right into their 3D glasses. It was certainly a highlight of the experience. And most people would have to be happy with how the film visualises the frontier into Aslan's country - less hokey than the 1990 BBC version but just as touching and serene.

So I can accept that, when adapting books to films, scenes come and go, and some people might think Eustace should have been fatter while others might think he was perfect as he was. This is all part of the adaptation process. But I noticed one subtle but key omission, and one subtle but key addition. The omission was: grace. The addition was: the gospel of good works and self-esteem.

Yes, the film kept Eustace's conversion experience, but it came much, much later in the story, and only after he had already made himself a hero by saving the ship from many perils, befriending Reepicheep and gaining his respect, and taking a sword for the team. His first act, after becoming a boy again, is not to become a better person (he's done that already, while stuck in a dragon's body) but to save the world. Tick.

The film also tells people to "be themselves" and to "see their own value". These are not, in and of themselves, bad things to tell anyone - they can be very valuable in their place. But they take the place of love and respect for Aslan, something that the original stories placed very highly. In the novel, and the BBC series, when Aslan growls at Lucy for wanting to be Susan, it isn't because she fails to see her own value (though she does), but because she has become envious and despises her sister for her beauty. In the movie, her sin - resentment of a sister; covetousness - becomes the subject of a self-help book. Apparently Lucy needs to learn to value herself, more than she needs to love her sister, and love and trust her creator (for it is distinctly as her creator that Aslan appears to her at that moment in the original story).

And finally the film tells us that "only the noble of heart" can enter Aslan's country and that "no-one deserves it more" than Reepicheep. Deserves it? Whoever said anything about deserving it? Yes Reep is noble, and Aslan values his nobility - perhaps a bit too much for 21st century hipster Christians' comfort - but no-one ever deserves to get into Aslan's country. No-one ever gets there by their own merits. Which, if you're Eustace, or Edmund, is an exceptionally good thing.