My dear child,

Earlier today you were reading about the adventures of Queen Lucy, and you said to me: "I want to be as close to you as she was." But you caught yourself toward the end of your sentence, and something inside you said, "Do I really know what I am asking?"

I want you to know this reservation is no accident. Your hesitation to be as close as Lucy was to me is great wisdom. Like a child balking at the idea of learning differential calculus while it is still learning algebra, you are balking at the idea of a deeper friendship than you are ready for. I also want you to know that the check will not be on your heart for ever. After all, I want everyone to understand the size and strength of my love. And as you have the heart of a lion beating in your chest, you are one of those who will understand my love ever more deeply.

But I want you to consider what it means for me to grant that wish, and what will take place when I do. At first you will enjoy great happiness, like a man and his bride on their honeymoon; but in time, the excitement of newfound intimacy will fade, and the dullness of life will turn to pain. The closer you come to me, the greater the joy, but the greater the grief and disquiet. At times you will learn something new—or you will see something old through grown-up eyes—and you will find the revelation distressing and disturbing. Many of the lessons I teach you will break your heart many times over, and you will say, "O Aslan, please go away"; but you will learn some of the most troubling lessons in the times when I keep my silence and my distance, and you will say, "O Aslan, do speak to me again." You will bear your cross all the way to the grave, but you will feel its weight even more than when you started; and you will ask yourself how you can disavow yourself of the commitment and look for a more pleasant road, knowing that the latter ends in death. In time (and if you let it), our friendship will bring you something better than mere happiness; it will bring you joy, comfort and satisfaction like nothing else you have known. But much of the journey will be tedious and difficult. It cannot be anything else.

Firstly, it is not an intellectual exercise, as though you were enrolling in a class at university and learning enough to scrape by on the test. It is a commitment—one that demands everything you are and everything you have. You will be walking in my pawprints day after day, learning about me in the grand and small things alike. The curriculum will demand more of you than looking at a book and memorising a quotable sentence. Some of your greatest lessons will be the sorts of things with which you will toil and struggle for many years.

Secondly, this journey will not merely put information into your head. It will change your heart. And make no mistake: your heart will not enjoy it. You will better understand how far your world has fallen away from me, how dark the evil is, and how difficult the candle of goodness is to ignite, and your heart will detest that you had ever learned such things. As you start to draw closer to me, your heart will demand that you go back to the old ways, and it will protest all the more loudly because its cravings have been denied for so long.

Thirdly, my paws have not always walked in the halls of Kings. They have gone into places that many a sane ruler would never want to see. I entered the homes of the poor and needy and sick; are you ready to associate yourself with them? I stood before sinners and rebuked them to their face; are you willing to be so bold? I forsook all I had and became a servant; are you willing to stoop so low? In both our worlds I laid down my life; are you willing to lay down yours?

If you are, I will lead you on. But you must be committed to the journey as well as the destination. I cannot lead you if your feet are pointing ahead and your eyes are gazing backward. Although I long for you to fully understand the size and strength of my love, you must be certain that it will still be what you want—even if you do not like it.

With everlasting love,
Aslan


A/n: Even though I'm an atheist, I didn't write this letter (or any of these letters) to bust out Bible verses and Lewis-esque words in an intellectual display of Bible-fu. Quite the contrary. This letter is pretty much the story of my life before I lost my faith. Before then, I was a very committed Christian. I believed the whole Bible. I went to church every Sunday. I volunteered almost every week (and put in many hours whenever I did). I was embarking on writing music and novels for Jesus. In the nine years before I lost my faith, I wanted to learn more about God and draw closer to Him, felt elated at what I learned at first, became distraught at how dull my walk with God became, and ultimately looked at familiar Bible verses through grown-up eyes and found myself disturbed at what I learned.

For what it's worth, I lost my faith for a completely different reason. That's a story you can read about in Chapter 6 of my fanfic "Chains."