The Last Battle is the cruelest, and most heart rending of the Chronicles of Narnia, as perhaps is appropriate for the last book in the series. It is set in the last days of the world of Narnia. There is a false Aslan, the Narnian Anti-Christ, abroad in the western woods of Narnia with a false prophet, the ape Shift, to promote his claims. Under Shift’s guidance the Calormen have been infiltrating into Narnia and cutting down the trees, killing their dryads. Tash, the Calormen god has taken up residence in Narnia to be worshipped as Tashlan. The scenes where Tash makes an appearance must be the most terrifying in the whole Chronicles.
Tirian, the last king of Narnia, and the two children sent from our world, Eustace Shrubb and Jill Pole try to save Narnia, but nothing they do works. They try to expose the false Aslan as the befuddled and repentant donkey Puzzle wearing a lion skin, only to have Shift and the Calorman captain announce that there is a donkey pretending to be Aslan and so Aslan will not appear to the animals any more. They await reinforcements from Cair Paravel only to learn that Cair Paravel has fallen to a Calormen army. They rescue Dwarfs being led into slavery, but the Dwarfs decide that they will not be ruled either by Calormen or the King of Narnia. In the end, Tirian and the two children fight a desperate battle for Narnia with the few animals who will fight alongside them, knowing there is no hope of victory with each one thrown one by one into a stable where something terrible, perhaps Tash, is waiting. All throughout the beginning and middle of the Last Battle the reader’s hopes are raised again and again, only to be cruelly dashed. It seems that all is lost.
But then, Aslan makes his long delayed appearance. The stable turns out to be not the home of Tash, who is promptly banished to his own place, but the way to Aslan’s country where the Seven Friends of Narnia are waiting to greet Tirian. Aslan is there to set everything to rights, though this means that Narnia must be ended. Yet the end of Narnia is not really cause for grief, for as Tirian and the Friends discover by going further up and further in, that the real Narnia, of which the Narnia they knew was only a shadow, is eternal and everything that was good about the old Narnia, and England, will be preserved forever in the new Narnia.
As I write this, things are looking a little bleak for our country. The frontrunner in the upcoming presidential election is an unprincipled, amoral woman who would gladly sell out they country she aspires to lead for her own profit. This ought not to be at all surprising since she is the nominee of an unprincipled, amoral political party that places the pursuit of political power ahead of honor or decency and has come to have a vision for this country that is sharply at odds with the principles of freedom it was founded upon. Not that her opponent is better. He is a narcissistic con man who tells people what they want to hear and who has somehow become the presidential candidate of a political party that ideologically he has next to nothing in common with, insofar as he espouses any coherent political ideology at all. Neither of the two major candidates seem to have much use for the concept of liberty, particularly religious liberty. Even the Libertarian candidate doesn’t seem to really have much support for the idea of liberty in the abstract. He and his running mate are willing to fight for the freedom to smoke marijuana. They are less willing to fight for the freedom of a person to live a life according to the beliefs of their faith, unmolested by the state. We may be facing dark times in the next decade, whoever wins the election.
It would be easy to feel despair. There seems to be nothing we can do to keep the country from making a disastrous wrong turn. It is not even easy to see what the right turn might be. It is only natural to worry about the future. We shouldn’t worry, all the same. In the end, we are not the ones who will decide what comes next. Not even our leaders, whatever their pretensions, will have the last word. It is Aslan, or Jesus Christ as he is known in our world, who is our king and is the one guiding events according to his plan. Aslan is the one who has everything under control and he will make everything right in the end. It is not for us to question or doubt him. We are all between the paws of the true Aslan and we must take what adventures he sends us as true Narnians must and have faith that Aslan will guide us.
David's Commonplace Book 