Every once in a while, a guest comes along who does more than share expertise. He reminds you what expertise looks like when it has been purified by love.
That was my experience talking with Michael Ward.
I invited him onto Created in the Image of God because he is one of the leading scholars of C.S. Lewis and because his work on Planet Narnia has become, by now, too significant to ignore. But I did not expect to be as struck as I was by the quality of the man’s mind—not merely its range, but its patience, its discipline, its delight, its refusal to be casual where depth was possible.
There are people who accumulate information, and there are people who pursue meaning. Michael Ward is very clearly of the second kind.
What stayed with me after our conversation was not only the brilliance of his central claim—that Lewis built the Narnia chronicles on a hidden imaginative structure tied to the seven heavens—but the way Ward himself came to that realization. Not by cleverness alone. Not by trying to force a theory onto the text. And certainly not by playing the modern game of novelty for novelty’s sake. He came to it through years of immersion, reverence, literary attentiveness, and the kind of diligence that only makes sense if one really believes reality yields more of itself to those willing to keep looking.
That, to me, is a deeply spiritual thing.
We are told in the faith chapter that the one who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. I have often reflected on that phrase, because it places something profoundly important at the heart of the religious life: not passivity, not mere assent, but seeking. Diligently. Not anxiously, not performatively, but with a real expectancy that the universe is not closed, that meaning is not exhausted, that what appears flat at first may reveal depth to those who stay with it.
That is the posture I saw in Michael Ward.
He described growing up in the south of England, in a medieval village, in a devout Anglican home, with parents who read the Narnia books aloud to him and his brothers. Even that scene has a kind of Lewisian charm to it: the old village, the old church, the old stories, the child being drawn not only into narrative but into the realization that stories may have more than one level. His parents told him just enough to make him aware that Aslan was “a bit like Jesus” and that there was biblical depth beneath the fairy tale surface. Not enough to flatten the mystery. Just enough to awaken it.
That detail mattered to me.
Because that is often how the deepest things begin. Not with a full explanation, but with a hint. Not with mastery, but with invitation. A hand extended. A door opened just a little. A child noticing that there is more in the room than he first understood.
In a way, that is also what I have always loved about the cover of my first book, The People of the Sign. There is the clouded light. There is the small hand of the child. There is the father’s hand guiding. I have long understood that image not simply as protection, but as pedagogy. Guidance without coercion. Nearness without the abolition of mystery. A journey in which the child is not given the whole map, but is given enough light, enough touch, enough trust to keep walking.
And perhaps that is what all real discovery looks like, whether in theology, literature, or life.
Michael Ward did not simply admire Lewis from afar. He studied him. He lived, for a time, in Lewis’s former home. He slept in Lewis’s old bedroom. He used Lewis’s study as his own. He immersed himself not only in the popular Lewis but in the full range of Lewis’s literary, theological, and medieval imagination. Then, midway through his PhD work, he stumbled upon what became the key insight of Planet Narnia: that the Narnia chronicles were not a charming but chaotic jumble of myths, fairy tale elements, Christian symbolism, Father Christmas, talking animals, witches, and children, all somehow thrown together by instinct. They were ordered. Hiddenly ordered.
That is what impressed me so much.
Not simply that he found a pattern, but that he found it because he had cared long enough and looked closely enough not to settle for the assumption of randomness.
That is a lesson far bigger than literary criticism.
We live in an age that is impatient with hidden order. If something cannot be quickly explained, monetized, diagrammed, weaponized, or reduced to a slogan, many people lose interest. We have developed enormous capacities for analysis while simultaneously weakening our powers of contemplation. We know how to scan; we do not always know how to behold. We know how to classify; we do not always know how to wonder. We know how to pull things apart; we are less practiced in asking what living whole they belonged to before we dissected them.
Ward’s work stands against that tendency.
And Lewis, through Ward’s eyes, stands against another modern habit as well: the disenchantment of the cosmos.
One of the richest parts of our conversation concerned the distinction between astronomy and astrology—not astrology in the cheap magazine-horoscope sense, but in the older sense of regarding the heavens as meaningful, as bound up with human life not merely quantitatively but qualitatively. Lewis, Michael explained, had no desire to reject the scientific advances of modern astronomy. He was not trying to turn the clock back before Copernicus. But he did think something had been lost when the heavens became only objects of measurement and ceased to be read as signs.
That hit me with force.
Because Psalm 19 has always stirred me: The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day pours forth speech, and night unto night shows knowledge. Not literal speech. Not language you hear with the outer ear. But still speech. Still knowledge. Still declaration.
What Michael Ward helped recover for me is that our ancestors may not have known all the mechanics we know, but they were not therefore fools. They were asking additional questions, not merely inferior ones. Not only what is it? and how far away is it? but what does it mean? Why does it move us? What relation exists between the world above us and the world within us? Who made this? For whom? To what end?
Science has given us many precious answers. But it has also, in the hands of a reductive materialism, tempted us to ask fewer ultimate questions.
Lewis resisted that reduction. And Ward, by taking Lewis seriously on his own terms, resisted it too.
I found myself reflecting during the interview on how often children understand this better than adults. My son, when he was two, used to ask “why” over and over again, not as a game but as a vocation. Whatever answer you gave him, he wanted to know what lay behind it. Why? Why that? Why that? Children are trying, in their own wild and often fantastical way, to discern not just mechanism but meaning. They are not content with surfaces for long. It takes education—sometimes miseducation—to train that instinct out of them.
And perhaps that is why Lewis continues to matter.
He did not write down to children. He did not assume that fantasy was an escape from truth. He assumed, rightly I think, that story can carry truth where abstraction cannot, and that symbols can preserve depth where propositions alone may flatten it. Michael Ward’s discovery of the hidden planetary architecture of Narnia only intensifies that point. It shows that Lewis was not being careless but lavish. Not random but musical. Not esoteric for esotericism’s sake, but artful in the old sense: crafting a world whose deepest harmonies are felt before they are named.
That too has theological implications.
For Christians, and indeed for anyone open to revelation, the idea that reality might be layered should not be surprising. Scripture itself works this way. So does memory. So does history. So does suffering. So does grace. We are forever discovering that events we thought were singular had antecedents, resonances, archetypes, and echoes. The visible thing is rarely only the visible thing.
Or to put it another way: the journey never ends.
That is one reason I found Michael Ward’s own search so moving. He had already studied Lewis formally. He had already been immersed in the material. He already knew more than most people ever will. And still there was more to uncover. Still there was another level. Still there was a hidden coherence waiting to be seen.
That is a beautiful thing to remember when one is tempted toward either cynicism or exhaustion.
The serious searcher is not embarrassed by the possibility of more meaning. He is strengthened by it.
And this, I think, is one of the larger gifts of the interview for me. It reminded me why we need to recover the older conviction that the heavens—all of them—are still pouring forth knowledge, night after night. Not because we must abandon reason, but because reason itself becomes impoverished when cut off from symbol, wonder, and praise. Not because we should become superstitious, but because we should become attentive again. Not because every ancient cosmology was literally correct, but because literal correctness is not the only category under which truth arrives.
Sometimes truth arrives as pattern.
Sometimes as music.
Sometimes as sign.
Sometimes as hidden structure.
Sometimes as a lion in a wardrobe, a winter under enchantment, and a deeper magic from before the dawn of time.
And sometimes truth arrives through the example of a scholar whose curiosity remained humble enough to keep seeking.
That, above all, is what I learned from Michael Ward.
I also want to say a practical word to my readers. I have fallen a bit behind in the writing rhythm I intended to keep, and over the next few weeks I need first to publish the remaining essays in my “7 Deadly Virtues” series. Those are still coming, and they matter to the architecture of what I am building here.
But this conversation with Michael opened a larger door for me.
So after I complete the remaining “7 Deadly Virtues” pieces, I plan to begin something more ambitious for premium subscribers: a five-part spiritual novella / mini-series, to be published serially on Saturdays over five weeks, beginning in November, before Thanksgiving, and concluding before Christmas—something of an Advent journey in its own right.
It will be inspired by this conversation with Michael Ward, by C.S. Lewis, by the hidden architecture of story, and by the deeper mystery hinted at in the words, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” It will not be a recap of the interview, but a layered work of reflection, theology, symbolism, and search—an exploration of meaning, hiddenness, revelation, and the long guidance of the Father’s hand.
For now, though, this week’s lesson is simple enough and deep enough: keep seeking. The light is often clouded, but it is not absent. The child’s hand is still small, but it is still being guided. And those who believe that God is, and that He rewards those who diligently seek Him, may yet find that the universe contains more music than modernity taught us to hear.
Here is a polished Sneak Peek announcement in the same general voice, but tightened for use at the end of the Substack piece or as a standalone show promo:
Sneak Peek: What’s Coming Next on Created in the Image of God
Because these conversations are never really isolated, but part of a larger search for truth, meaning, and the recovery of our shared humanity, I want to give you a quick look at what’s coming next on Created in the Image of God.
On Sunday, September 6 at 7:00 a.m. US Central time, I’ll be joined by Jared Byas—writer, speaker, and co-founder of The Bible for Normal People. We’ll explore how faith and scripture can be approached with curiosity, making room for honest questions without relying on rigid answers or easy certainties. From doubt and belonging to the possibility of a deeper, more thoughtful, and more connected life with God, this promises to be a timely and searching conversation.
Then on Tuesday, September 8 at 8:00 p.m. Central time, I’ll be speaking with Amy Peeler—New Testament scholar, pastor, and author. We’ll look at scripture through questions of gender, holiness, and the family of God, and consider what it means for men and women alike to understand themselves as God’s children. From the book of Hebrews and biblical interpretation to identity, belonging, and life in the family of God, it should be a rich and important discussion.
If this week’s conversation with Michael Ward stirred something in you—about hidden meaning, the life of the imagination, the language of the heavens, or the deeper patterns woven into story—I think these next two conversations will carry that search forward in fruitful ways.
I hope you’ll join me.
