“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.
Returning to the context of the actual story, Lucy had returned from Narnia. Even though the other three of her siblings thought it was a hoax or a “silly lie”, she stuck to her guns. She had been in Narnia, seen the lamppost, met and ate with Mr. Tumnus, and felt the snow on her hair and the cold on her skin. She knew that it was not a lie. Lucy demonstrates an admirable devotion to the truth. She could have thrown away the truth upon the disbelief of her three siblings. In her distress, she could have easily justified saying something like, “Yeah, sorry, guys. That was just a dumb joke.” But she was a “very truthful girl” prioritising the truth over what others thought of her.
Of course, Lucy’s truthfulness is a Biblical virtue. “God is not man, that he should lie” (Num. 23:19), Christ described Himself as “the truth” (Jn. 14:6), and the Holy Spirit is called the “Spirit of truth” (Jn. 15:26). By contrast Satan is a “liar and the father of lies” (Jn. 8:44). The first sin was caused by a lie when Satan said “‘You will not surely die” (Gen. 3:4), which was an outright contradiction of what God had said. So, truth is crucial; the Scriptures describe the Triune God by it and Satan by the subverting of it. One of the Ten Commandments prohibits “bear[ing] false witness against your neighbor” (Ex. 20:16). Paul says, “having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor” (Eph. 4:25). The Proverbs tell us that “Truthful lips endure forever, / but a lying tongue is but for a moment” (Prov. 12:19). Peter declares that “we did not follow cleverly devised myths” (2 Pet. 1:16) and Paul says that “if Christ has not been raised [or if it is not true that Christ has been raised], then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor. 15:14, bracketed note mine). I could go on.
Our culture despises truth. Relativism declares that there is no truth.2 “What is true for you is true for you, and what is true for me is true for me”, declares the typical university student. To disagree with something like abortion because it is truly murder is labelled intolerant. Intolerance has been rebranded to mean any disagreement whatsoever rather than actual disrespect.3 Pluralism, which teaches that all religions grasp at and lead to the same truth, reigns. It is only one’s sincerity of belief, not content of belief, that matters. All of this dishonours the one who claimed to be “the truth” (Jn. 14:6) and who declared that we ought to worship God in “spirit and truth” (Jn. 4:24). The solution is a deeply intellectual and profoundly heartfelt devotion to truth, not in the abstract, but in the incarnated. Truth in the abstract, Platonic sense does no good. We are not obligated to follow or love it. But incarnate truth, truth fleshly centered in a rigid Christian worldview, a Christocentric truth, is what we require. I do not have space to expand this further.4
One final point I want to discuss is Edmund’s spite. Edmund “kept on asking [Lucy] if she’d found any other new countries in other cupboards all over the house”. While Susan and Peter “made her very unhappy”, they “did this this without meaning to do it”. They would have probably thought she was up to childish games, but they might have lightly entertained the idea, like a mother smiling at her boy who declares, “Mum, look, I’m a pirate!”. But Edmund was positively “spiteful”. He rubbed salt in the wound. He poured a gallon of lemon juice into the cut. Lewis describes Edmund in the objective category of being “spiteful”. We see here Lewis establishing that Edmund is a shady character. We will see later that Edmund, even upon entering Narnia, does not truthfully say that Lucy is correct when he comes back. He interacts with the White Witch and displays incredible selfishness towards his siblings. When Christ said, “you will recognize them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:20), that statement could easily be applied to Edmund. Based on his rotten fruit and spiteful actions, we are not surprised when he turns out later to be bad. It is only when he interacts with Aslan that he is changed.
The theological import here is that while we are not saved by our works (Eph. 2:8-9), the natural result of our salvation is that we perform good works (Eph. 2:10). Recently, I talked to two Mormon missionaries about the Reformation idea of justification by faith alone, and the instant response of one was “Well, what if you say you are saved and then murder someone?”, or something along those lines. This objection serves usefully to illustrate the first sentence of this paragraph. Namely, someone who is saved will perform good works, and murder is not a good work. So, if someone murders another, there is a strong indication that he is not a believer. I say “strong indication” and not absolute indication because David, a “man after [God’s] heart” (Ac. 13:22), murdered Uriah and committed adultery with Bathsheba (2 Sam. 12). David presumably was saved. Yet, the proper nuance is that if someone who is saved commits grievous backsliding, there is no indication at the present moment that he is saved. Note that David’s psalm lamenting his sin pleas with profound anguish, “Cast me not away from your presence, / and take not your Holy Spirit from me” (Ps. 51:11). If you had asked David about his assurance of salvation while he was writing the psalm, I doubt that he would have had a positive response.
In this article, I have drawn out two points. The first concerns Lucy’s truth, and the second concerns Edmund’s spite. Christians are to be a people of truth following the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, all of whom reveal themselves in terms of truth. We are to be a people of objective categories, opposing the cultural degradation of truth. We are also to recognise that we are not saved by works but works indicate that we are saved. There is much more to be explored in this area, but space limits us. In short, Edmund’s rotten fruit indicates a pattern of unrighteousness that will manifest itself later in the book. But that is for later articles to discuss.
Footnotes
- See https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/221369/A-woman-trapped-in-a-mans-body.
- This statement engages in self-referential absurdity. By reference to itself, it refutes itself. It states that it is true that there is no truth, which thereby contradicts itself. It is absurd.
- See The Beauty of Intolerance: Setting a Generation Free to Know Truth and Love by Josh and Sean McDowell for an exploration of this point.
- What I briefly described here is one of the tenets of presuppositionalism, a school of apologetics mostly containing Reformed folks. It is a rather diverse school, but one of the main characteristics is the reality that there is no neutrality or no analysing truth in the abstract. Without the Christian worldview, one cannot consistently say that anything is true. Within the Christian worldview, we have truth, and this truth is eminently manifested in the incarnate truth.