“For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”
2 Peter 1:16
“For the next few days [Lucy] was very miserable. She could have made it up with the others quite easily at any moment if she could have brought herself to say that the whole thing was only a story made up for fun. But Lucy was a very truthful girl and she knew that she was really in the right; and she could not bring herself to say this. The others who thought she was telling a lie, and a silly lie too, made her very unhappy. The two elder ones did this without meaning to do it, but Edmund could be spiteful, and on this occasion he was spiteful. He sneered and jeered at Lucy and kept on asking her if she’d found any other new countries in other cupboards all over the house.”
C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe
Articles in this Series
See the first article for the list.
Truth and Spite
There are two lessons I want to draw from Lewis’ brief description here. The first lesson is that an uncompromising devotion to truth, and indeed the Truth (Jn. 14:6), must characterise Christians. The second lesson concerns rotten fruit and a “pour lemon juice” mentality exemplified by Edmund. I will focus primarily on the first point, particularly relating it to apologetics and cultural interaction. Let me preface this article by reiterating what I have stated in previous articles. Lewis, through simple stories, communicates practical truths. Stories incarnate virtue. This incarnation is not only important for children to understand but for adults too. Even if what I discuss here is simple, and it is, that does not mean it is simplistic.
Firstly, Lewis describes Lucy as a “very truthful girl”. Already, we see something that our culture frowns upon. Our culture does not appreciate describing people in objective categories. A Stuff article from 2009 describes a then 54-year-old man, an “overweight bloke, with a moustache, who drove a 4WD and was into heavy drinking”, who decided that he was a “woman trapped in a man’s body”. He then changed his identity to Rebeka and began to wear female clothes.1 Notice the separation of psychology and biology. One can fit into the category of “man” biologically, but this category is not so objective that it extends also to psychology. The category is flexible and subjective, subordinated to your feelings or thoughts. Another example of the cultural frowning upon objective categories is a lecturer in forensic psychology who I remember declaring that we should not call people “pedophiles” but instead say they have a “pedophilic disorder”. To categorise them as “pedophiles” would be stigmatising. We would not want to hurt their feelings, of course. But the Biblical view is that people are objectively and categorically one way or the other. You are either truthful or a liar. You are either a man or a woman. You are either dead in sin (Eph. 2:1) or alive in Christ (Eph. 2:4). You are either unrighteous or justified (1 Cor. 6:9-11). We would do well to talk in objective categories.
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