“Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, ‘When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.'”
Exodus 1:15-16
“You are the child,” said Mr. Tumnus. “I had orders from the White Witch that if ever I saw a Son of Adam or a Daughter of Eve in the wood, I was to catch them and hand them over to her. And you are the first I ever met. And I’ve pretended to be your friend and asked you to tea, and all the time I’ve been meaning to wait till you were asleep and then go and tell her.”
C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe
Articles in this Series
See the first article for the list.
The War Against Children
I do not believe Lewis’ mention of the White Witch’s command against any “Son of Adam” or “Daughter of Eve” was arbitrarily chosen. Namely, when the White Witch commanded Tumnus to catch any child of Adam or Eve and give them to her, it was not merely because of her general malice. She, like her real-world analogue Satan, has a specific agenda against children. In addressing this agenda, this article will be split into two parts. The first part addresses why this agenda is the case. The second part discusses specific cultural manifestations of this agenda. However, before all this, a few preliminary comments on supernaturalism must be made.
Supernaturalism simply refers to belief in the supernatural. The supernatural is stuff outside the natural, things that cannot be accounted for through empirical evidence or scientific experiments. The supernatural includes God, demons, Satan, angels, and so on. Though these supernatural entities exert influence on the natural world, they themselves are not part of it. God is spirit (Jn. 4:24), angels are called “ministering spirits” (Heb. 1:14), and demons and Satan, on account of being fallen angels (Rev. 12:7-8), are spirits too.
One crucial note on supernaturalism is that we must not live as functional naturalists and thereby engage in, to riff off Lewis, the sin of metaphysical snobbery. As I have said elsewhere: “[W]e ought to realise that our reality is one swathed in a resplendent supernaturalism and that the song of the Lion that once rang out in the nothingness to create ex nihilo resounds still in His providence today (Ac. 17:28; Heb. 11:3).1 We are not to think that the cosmic battle described by Paul (Eph. 6:10-20) is one relegated to a bygone era, but we are to acknowledge the demonic elements that pervade our existence, considering with a sombre joy the task that lies before us and the panoply that are we to put on (Eph. 6:13-20), gazing forward to the eschatological hope of the Lamb’s supper (Rev. 19:6-10) where we will discard our war-worn armour, for we will have fine linen instead (Rev. 19:8).”2
With those preliminary remarks given, I will now address the Satanic agenda against children. The first question is why this agenda is the case. I said earlier that it was not merely because of the White Witch’s “general malice” that she enlisted Tumnus to capture children. Broadly speaking, humanity is made in God’s image (Gen. 1:27), and hence Satan, who is the father of lies (Jn. 8:44) and who hates God and all that He has made, desires to destroy humanity. Satan’s hatred of humanity is ultimately because he hates God, and humanity reflects the image of God. Hence, he does everything he can to obliterate humanity because even depraved humanity reflects the attributes of the God whom he hates.
However, we can specifically see that it is through children that God’s covenantal, redemptive promises are made. These children include Isaac, who was promised to Abraham while he was in old age (Gen. 15), Jacob, whom God loved according to His sovereign redemptive purposes (Gen. 25-27, Rom. 9:10-13), Moses, who was spared death and raised in the Egyptian court (Ex. 2:1-10), and countless other examples. The ultimate example, of course, is Christ, in whom the promises made to the patriarchs and to God’s people thereafter were fulfilled (Lk. 1:46-55, etc.). Furthermore, when God raises up great men who would lead His people and advance His redemptive purposes, He chooses them from the womb, like with Jeremiah’s consecration (Jer. 1:5) or John the Baptist who leapt in his mother’s womb (Lk. 1:41). Finally, even now, after Christ, it is primarily through children that the kingdom is advanced (Ac. 2:39, etc.). One does not need to be a paedobaptist to acknowledge this.
This importance of children is why Satan aims specifically at them. Of course, this Satanic war against children does not preclude the reality that he tempts and seeks to destroy adults. But there is a particular impressionability and vulnerability that would surely render them more susceptible to Satanic attack. To apply the aforementioned, I do not merely think it was flesh and blood operating (Eph. 6:12) when Pharaoh tried to kill all the Israelite boys (Ex. 1:15-16) or when Herod attempted to murder all the boys in Bethlehem (Matt. 2:16-18). Supernaturalism precludes that. Of course, we must not find the devil in every nook and cranny, for that would drive us to insanity and unhealthily conspiratorial thinking. But we would do well to recognise his luridly malevolent face where and when it does blatantly appear.
I imagine that the primary interest of Pharaoh, Herod, and other evil men was fear of losing political power. But I also imagine that the “god of this world” who “has blinded the minds of the unbelievers” (2 Cor. 4:4), who had observed centuries of God’s utilising children for His redemptive purposes, intended something more profoundly sinister. Note that if Pharaoh was fully successful, Moses would have been killed, and there would have been no exodus. Without an exodus, Israel would have been gradually crushed under the harsh Egyptian taskmasters. And God’s promises would be rendered void, for there would have been no continuation of the Abrahamic line. If Herod had slaughtered all the boys in Bethlehem, then there would have been no atonement, for Christ would not have been able to die on the cross.
Moving to the second part of this article, we can see this particular agenda manifested in different areas of culture. The obvious example is abortion, where the whole world, swaying in a Satanic rhythm (Eph. 2:1-3), conducts a cacophony of dismembered limbs and murdered souls. In the spirit of Old Testament Israel, we sacrifice children to our gods (2 Kg. 21:6), except these gods are not made of gold and silver but of aspirations and paychecks. It is idolatry that drives this murder, except that the idolatry appears differently, and in our times less physically, than in previous eras. The baby in his or her mother’s womb, knitted together by the hands of God Almighty (Ps. 139:13-16), is torn apart by idolatry.
Our culture has the nerve to not only legalise this, which, to our great shame, even some Christians advocate for, but to proclaim it. The popular organisation Shout Your Abortion on its main page declares, “F*** SCOTUS. We’re doing it anyway.” regarding abortions after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.3 One testimony among hundreds on its website says, “I didn’t have my abortion due to a rape, it wasn’t because my child wouldn’t have been healthy, nor was it because birth control failed. I has an abortion because I wanted one. There doesn’t need to be a rationalization for it, other than it’s what a pregnant person wants.”4 So, it is not even career that functions as an idol in some cases, but it is sheer, radically free, arbitrary choice. Women do not need a reason: “There doesn’t need to be a rationalization for it”. One hears the echoes of Ephesians 2.
Briefly, another cultural manifestation of this war against children is in the placement of sexually explicit materials in schools. For example, Gender Queer, written by Maia Kobabe (who goes by e/em/eir pronouns) described by one reviewer as a ” gorgeous and candid graphic memoir”5, has been challenged in various American school districts to be removed.6 That work contains sexually explicit content, pornographic images, and other perversities inflicted upon children. Another book, Jesus Land, written by Julia Scheeres, has also been challenged to be removed from school libraries. The author, in response to these challenges, replied that “Teenagers need these books, they need to learn, they need to believe there is freedom of expression.”7 The book not only contains many counts of profanity and blasphemy, but again sexually explicit expressions.
Let us assume, for the sake of ill-deserved charity, that these books are only found in high school libraries. Let us also assume that not all in the LGBTQ movement support such books. The problem here is that homosexuality and other sexual vices, which are the prime example Paul uses to demonstrate God removing His common grace from sinful humanity (Rom. 1:26-27), are being presented to impressionable minds in a revolting fashion. The writers, propagators, and supporters of these books “know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, [but] they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Rom. 1:28-32). For those in the LGBTQ movement who do not support such books, then let me plead with them to consider what stops their worldview from leading to the logical consequence of pushing these books on children. We ought to not take flippantly Christ’s promise that “whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea.” (Matt. 18:6).
Lewis may not have foreseen all of this cultural chaos, but he certainly recognised the reality that Satan is out to attack and capture our children. The resolution to this chaos is not the videos and podcasts of right-wing commentators, though they work for much societal good, but the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and its application to all of culture. The solution to Satanic darkness is not being strong in ourselves but being “strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might” (Eph. 6:1). We must rest in the power of the Lord, and this resting does not imply inactivity but a salt-and-light interaction with the culture (Matt. 5:13-16), fighting against sin and trusting in the power of the sovereign God and in Christ, to whom one day every knee will bow and every tongue confess that He is Lord (Phil. 2:9-11).
Footnotes
- This imagery comes from C. S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew.
- See https://sojournal.co.nz/christian-reflections-on-the-barbie-movie-part-one/. See this article and the second part: https://sojournal.co.nz/christian-reflections-on-the-barbie-movie-part-two/ for more comments on supernaturalism and other related topics.
- See https://shoutyourabortion.com.
- See https://shoutyourabortion.com/writing/i-shouldnt-ever-have-this-choice-taken-away-from-me/.
- See https://www.shelf-awareness.com/readers-issue.html?issue=828#m14503.
- See https://www.marshall.edu/library/bannedbooks/gender-queer/ for documentation of some of these appeals.
- See https://www.thestarpress.com/story/news/education/2021/10/11/julia-scheeres-book-jesus-land-targeted-school-culture-wars/6051533001/. I doubt the article is fair.