Perelandra

I’ve been rereading C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy and just finished Perelandra. Weston’s (the Un-man’s) dialogue with the Lady was the centerpiece of the book for me. It challenged my heart and my devotion to Christ, and it also dovetails with my recent meditation in John Chapter Five in that the Un-man seeks to seduce the Lady to think and act independently of Maledil (God). In John Chapter Five Christ’s identity in the Father is central, in Perelandra the Lady’s identity in Maledil is central; though there is a decided contrast in maturity with Jesus in John Five and the Lady in Perelandra.

In Perelandra the Lady (the Eve figure) and the King (her husband, the Adam figure) have been forbidden by Maledil to live on the Fixed Island. The Un-man makes a prolonged attempt to entice the Lady by argument to disobey Maledil for the good of her race and for the good of Maledil. The argument is not simply didactic, it also includes narrative – the Un-man wants to show the Lady how great she can be if she will but disobey Maledil’s command. Here is a quotation from early in the dialogue, the Lady is speaking to the Un-man:

It is not from the making a story that I shrink back, O Stranger,” she answered, “but from this one story that you have put into my head. I can make myself stories about my children or the King. I can make it that the fish fly and the land beasts swim. But if I try to make the story about living on the Fixed Island I do not know how to make it about Maledil. For if I make it that He has changed His command, that will not go. And if I make it that we are living there against His command, that is like making the sky all black and the water so that we cannot drink it and the air so that we cannot breathe it. But also, I do not see what is the pleasure of trying to make these things.

Oh how her words challenge me! To envision an action against the Word of our Lord Jesus is indeed to paint a picture of the sky being all black and the water undrinkable and the air toxic – oh that we would see that there is no pleasure to be found in trying to make these things.

I’m reminded of Paul’s words, “But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ,” 2 Corinthians 11:3.

The Un-man assaulted the mind of the Lady and endeavored to introduce her to the knowledge of evil through didactic argument and narrative; he attempted to introduce pictures to her mind that, if followed, if she entered the pictorial narrative, would lead to her disobedience. But her simplicity and her purity of devotion to Maledil sustained her in her time of trial. (Yes, Ransom played his part too!)

The narrative in Revelation, the praises of eternity, center on the Lamb of God, of the Father’s love for us expressed through Jesus Christ. That is the narrative that matters, that is the narrative that we are to make our own. Is it any wonder that Paul writes concerning our polluted minds…And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is god and acceptable and perfect, Romans 12:2.

The Lady could not conceive without recoil of an action contrary to the will and word of God; or that that might be the case with us.