“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.”
Colossians 3:12-13
“Lucy looked very hard between the trees and could just see in the distance a patch of light that looked like daylight. ‘Yes,'”‘ she said, ‘I can see the wardrobe door.’
C. S. Lewis, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe
‘Then be off home as quick as you can,’ said the Faun, ‘and—c-can you ever forgive me for what I meant to do?’
‘Why, of course I can,’ said Lucy, shaking him heartily by the hand. ‘And I do hope you won’t get into dreadful trouble on my account.'”
Articles in this Series
See the first article for the list.
Of Fauns and Forgiveness
In this article, I will discuss Tumnus’ plea for forgiveness and Lucy’s response. The material covered in this article will be rather basic, but that is not to say that it is unprofitable. When it is said (and I have no idea who originally said this) that the Scriptures are shallow enough for a child to wade in and deep enough for an elephant (or another suitably large animal) to drown in, this saying surely applies to the seemingly basic parts of Christianity, including something like the forgiveness of sins. I will focus primarily here on asking forgiveness of other humans.
We should note something that was not included in the above quote. Previously, Tumnus was highly distressed and cried, “And she’ll have my tail cut off, and my horns sawn off, and my beard plucked out, and she’ll wave her wand over my beautiful cloven hoofs and turn them into horrid solid hoofs like a wretched horse’s. And if she is extra and specially angry she’ll turn me into stone and I shall be only a statue of a Faun in her horrible house…”.1 But notice how Tumnus does not now use this fact to manipulate Lucy. He simply says: “Then be off home as quick as you can”. He could have said, “Well, get out of here. Just leave me here to suffer cruel torture. I will probably never see the light of day again, but you go live your life. Have sweet dreams, Lucy. I really have the short end of the stick.” The lesson here is that we ought not to make excuses when asking for forgiveness, appealing to the negative consequences of our sin or even the drawbacks of not committing an intended sin (which was Tumnus’ predicament) to lessen the significance of our sin. In other words, we ought not to give excuses, even sophisticated ones, and especially not to God.
Moving to Tumnus’ plea for forgiveness, he asks Lucy: “[C]an you ever forgive me for what I meant to do?” Interestingly, he does not ask for instantaneous forgiveness but only whether Lucy could “ever forgive” him. One reason may be that he recognised the gravity of his sin (intending to deliver Lucy to the White Witch) and understood that Lucy may feel so betrayed that she could not instantly forgive him. Tumnus’ plea is humble; he did not seek to extort forgiveness. He recognises that no instant forgiveness is owed him. But, note that if Lucy had chosen to harbour animosity towards Tumnus, that would have been a sin. That would have been her sin.
Furthermore, Tumnus asks for forgiveness for his desire to capture Lucy. He had not performed the actual action. He had not bound up Lucy or started taking her to the White Witch. But Tumnus teaches us here that desires and emotions, even if not shown in tangible actions, are still sins. Christ declared that “everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement” (Matt. 5:22) and that “everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. 5:28). Jesus was not adding anything inherently novel but rather explicating the original intent of the Old Testament law. It is not merely enough to refrain from doing actions; desires and emotions too can be counted as sins. I do not think that all ungodly desires against another person should be confessed to that person, like, “I am sorry for secretly coveting your shoes.”. But we ought to discern when confession is necessary and to err on the side of caution.
One final thing about Tumnus’ plea is that it is simple and straightforward. A common theme of Biblical confessions is their simplicity. David cried after his adultery with Bathsheba, “Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight” (Ps. 51:4). The point was not that he had not sinned against anyone else. He had sinned against Bathsheba in lust and adultery, against Uriah by murdering him, against Joab by implicating him in Uriah’s murder, against Israel in general, and countless others (2 Sam. 11). David’s point was that all sin, though performed on a proximate level against other people, is ultimately against God. Of course, we ought to confess sin against others, but in the final analysis, we sin against God. The Pharisee in Christ’s parable waxed eloquent, comparing himself to others and listing his works, but the tax collector simply cried, “‘God be merciful to me, a sinner!'” (Luke 18:9-14). Christ, when restoring Peter after he had denied Him three times (Lk. 22:54-62), did not require a lengthy theological treatise on repentance but simply called Peter to feed His sheep (Jn. 21:15-17).
I want us now to examine Lucy’s response. She, like Tumnus, does not mince words or attempt manipulation. She simply says, “Why, of course I can”, and leaves it at that. She could have said, “Well, I will have to think about it. You did try to kidnap me, you know. That is an awful intention.” She left it at that. And I do not think Lucy’s action here was merely a child-like naivety, but a Christ-like, child-like simplicity (Matt. 18:1-4). She even says, “I do hope that you won’t get into dreadful trouble on my account”, whereas she could have said, “Well, you certainly deserve it.” Lucy’s response has a beautiful simplicity, which we would all do well to emulate.
I want to end by briefly discussing why Christians are to forgive. The answer is that our “forgiving one another” should be just “as God in Christ forgave [us]” (Eph. 4:32). Christ told a parable where a master pardoned a servant who owed him ten thousand talents. The same servant was owed a hundred denarii by a fellow servant, and when this fellow servant said that he could not pay, the forgiven servant choked him and threw him in jail. When the master heard this, he threw the forgiven servant in jail (Matt. 18:21-35). Christ ends by saying: “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” (Matt. 18:35). The amounts owed by the first servant to his master and the fellow servant to the first servant were chosen deliberately. A talent was equivalent to twenty years wages, so ten thousand would be equivalent to two hundred thousand years’ wages. Contrarily, a hundred denarii, albeit a large amount, was worth about twenty weeks’ wages.2 The central idea here is that we, who have sinned against God and cannot possibly repay Him ought to forgive others. These others may have sinned against us and even done so grievously, but nothing compares to the debt we originally owed God.
The main point I want to stress in this article is the brevity, humility, simplicity, and straightforwardness of Tumnus’ plea for forgiveness and Lucy’s forgiveness. Too often, we shroud either asking for forgiveness or granting forgiveness in a fabric of human pride or a desire to get back at people. There is an elegant simplicity in this Narnian forgiveness. Our reason for forgiveness should not merely be to resolve conflict, although we are to be peacemakers (Matt. 5:9). It should be because we are already forgiven much. God forgives a mountain of our sins, and we are too proud to forgive a dirt speck of another’s sin. This forgiveness should not be grudging, with us thinking, “Well, since I have been forgiven, I guess I really have to forgive this other person.”, thereby holding resentment still in our hearts. Christ says that we should “forgive [our] brother from [our] heart” (Matt. 18:35). That is the way the Narnians do it.
Footnotes
- From C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Obviously.
- These figures come from the ESV Global Study Bible, free on esv.org.