Author: Glen

Some­time last year I read The Cult of Per­son­al­i­ty (since reti­tled to The Cult of Per­son­al­i­ty Test­ing). I picked it up on a whim at an off­beat book­store in Half Moon Bay between two church ser­vices.

I loved it and found it utter­ly per­sua­sive. I’ve had a long-sim­mer­ing aver­sion to per­son­al­i­ty test­ing (root­ed in a bad expe­ri­ence in sem­i­nary, observ­ing friends get shaft­ed by the Assem­blies of God per­son­al­i­ty screen­ing sys­tem for mis­sion­ar­ies, some bit­ing pas­sages about psy­chol­o­gy by Richard Feyn­mann, and being a crit­i­cal thinker). Some­thing about them always felt wrong (and I could even put parts of my unease into fair­ly per­sua­sive words), but I nev­er had the facts I need­ed to under­stand exact­ly where the prob­lem lay. This book changed all that.

I men­tion it because I just read an arti­cle by Mal­colm Glad­well called Per­son­al­i­ty Plus that cov­ers the same ground. It’s a great intro to the con­cepts cov­ered in the book.

So if you’re in the habit of refer­ring to peo­ple by their Myers-Brig­gs type, or if you like to use the terms san­guine and cho­ler­ic in casu­al con­ver­sa­tion, or if you’ve ever made a deci­sion based on the results of a per­son­al­i­ty test, READ THIS BOOK (or at least Glad­well’s arti­cle).

My church went to see The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe this Sat­ur­day and we brought guests–3 to 4 times as many out­side our church went to see it with us as did church mem­bers.

It was mag­nif­i­cent. From a fan’s per­spec­tive, it was as faith­ful to the book as you can expect a movie to be. From a tech­ni­cal per­spec­tive, it should say some­thing that I found a beaver in chain mail utter­ly con­vinc­ing.

They even made Turk­ish Delight look appeal­ing, which is tru­ly nasty can­dy. If that was the most tempt­ing snack avail­able to Brits dur­ing the war I’m amazed they were able to hold out against the Luft­waffe. I mean, real­ly. Turk­ish Delight? The stuff tastes like con­gealed fat.

I was des­tined to love the movie as long as it was even close to the book. I was more inter­est­ed in the reac­tions of my neigh­bors: he an athe­is­tic Jew­ish post­doc­tor­al biol­o­gy researcher at Stan­ford and she a not-real­ly-prac­tic­ing Hin­du who works as a busi­ness con­sul­tant.

They loved it, too.

As we were talk­ing about it after­wards, he com­ment­ed “The reviews I’ve read are right–it’s def­i­nite­ly got Chris­t­ian imagery but you have to look for it.”

While I think he down­played the obvi­ous­ness of the Chris­t­ian mes­sage (it’s always win­ter with­out CHRISTmas–hello?), I think he was on to some­thing.

The movie did dilute some key dia­log, but even if the dia­log had been unal­tered his point would still have mer­it. The sto­ry does­n’t so much tell the Chris­t­ian mes­sage as it pre­pares one for it. It cre­ates cat­e­gories and under­stand­ings in your mind which serve as place­hold­ers for the gospel. It’s like an extend­ed para­ble that high­lights a few truths:

• This world is more fan­tas­tic than we dare believe.
• Evil is seduc­tive.
• Evil need not pre­vail, either in our lives or in our world.
• Evil must be fought.
• We can’t win the fight against evil alone.
• The one we need help from is our right­ful King.
• Our right­ful King is not tame but he is good.

And giv­en Phillp Pull­man’s claim that the sto­ry was love­less I couldn’t help but mar­vel as the for­mer­ly fear-strick­en Edmund—Edmund, who knew well the hor­ri­ble extent of the Witch’s power—hurled him­self at her to pre­vent the slaugh­ter of Peter and incurred a life-threat­en­ing wound as a result. And I could talk of the love of the moth­er for her chil­dren, of the chil­dren for their father, of the chil­dren for each oth­er, of the chil­dren for Aslan, of Aslan for his peo­ple, of the pro­fes­sor for his hap­less­ly unlove­able house­keep­er, and of the chil­dren (espe­cial­ly Lucy) for Mr. Tum­nus.

No love indeed. Pull­man just has it in for Lewis.

Any­way, it’s an out­stand­ing movie. I’ve been to pre­cious few movies which caused the audi­ence to burst into applause at the end. This was one.