Our Last Battle (4)

 Four – Anger at Roonwit

As Jewel parries Tirian’s anger at Jewel’s suggestion that the reports of Aslan may not be true, the centaur Roonwit thunders onto the scene, sweating profusely, having galloped long and hard to reach the King. 

Note that Roonwit drinks to “Aslan and truth” first, and then to the King secondly. 

Roonwit has come to warn the King that the stars, which he reads with wisdom and understanding, say nothing about the appearance of Aslan. Quite the contrary, the stars indicate disaster. Roonwit warns the king not to believe the news that Aslan is in Narnia, for the stars proclaim not good news, but rather warn of terrible events. Roonwit says concerning accounts that Aslan is in the land, “It is all a lie.”

On hearing those words, Tirian lays his hand on the hilt of his sword. 

When Roonwit says that the stars don’t lie, Jewel interjects that Aslan does not serve the stars but the stars serve Aslan and that Aslan can do what He wants to do. Tirian laches onto that argument, for Tirian’s mind is made up, he will believe the account of Aslan being in the land. 

First Tirian is angry at his dear friend Jewel, then he is angry at the majestic Roonwit to the point where he reaches for his sword. In the six pages of Chapter Two, Tirian is angry at least ten times, hence the chapter’s title, The Rashness of the King. Tirian’s anger blinds his judgment and leads to sorrow and confusion. His refusal to heed the stars, and his insistence on placing his own feelings above the message of the stars, hinders his ability to save his people and point them to the true Aslan. 

While the central warning of Chapter Two concerns anger, we are also warned about the danger of failing to heed God’s Word, in this case, the stars. Our feelings ought to be subject to God’s Word, God’s Word is not to be subject to our feelings or thinking or agendas. Nor should we make the terrible mistake of believing that God will contradict His Word; in the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. God and His Word are One. 

Our own Last Battle includes both our own anger, as opposed to submitting to the peace of God, and whether we will submit to God’s Word or insist that God’s Word submit to us. In both instances our submission to Jesus Christ is at the heart of the matter and battle. 

We are commanded to allow the peace of Christ to rule in our hearts (Colossians 3:15).  We are supposed to be subjects of the Prince of Peace. Peacemaking is to be a characteristic of the sons and daughters of God.

Anger is a third rail that will kill us, even though we deny it in the midst of our own electrocution. Anger makes us crazy and induces spatial disorientation, it makes us forget who Jesus Christ is and who we are in Him. Anger made Tirian forget that he was a Narnian King and also subject to Aslan. Anger is no substitute for wisdom, understanding, peace, or self-sacrifice. 

I don’t think we care much about the Bible, not really. We are good at lip service to the Scriptures, but we aren’t good at obeying the Word. Just ask the world, ask the people around us. Francis Schaffer pointed out that Jesus gives the world the right to judge us based on what it observes about our love and our unity (John 13:34–35; 17:21–23). 

We’ve one group of professing Christians who have repudiated the Bible’s teaching about the image of God, and we have another group who are repudiating what the Bible teaches about caring for the stranger and the widow and the orphan and the poor. In the same communities we have churches who are affluent and churches whose members lack necessities, such as health care, decent housing, affordable groceries, and safe schools (see 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9 and then explain to me why we ignore this passage). 

We have one group of churches that criticizes what it terms the “social gospel,” while that very same group goes all in on a political agenda that endorses violence and makes excuses for the violation of the rule of law, basic morality, and ethics.

Whether we look to the right or the left, we are hardly people who take the Bible seriously unless it is as a smoke screen. C. S. Lewis did not so much take issue with theologians or pastors who did not believe the Bible – except to say that they ought to be honest and find another line of work. In other words, believe what you want to believe, but have the honesty not to make your living from the church if you don’t believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

The problem isn’t so much that discrepancies exist between what the Bible teaches and how we actually live, the problem is that we either fail to recognize the gaps or that we justify our thinking and behavior. 

Since the anger of man is contrary to the righteousness of God (James 1:20) and has its roots in the demonic (James 3:9 – 18), the fact that so many professing Christians engage in anger and vitriol in the public square is shameful and troubling. 

Professing Christians do not want to hear what the Bible teaches. They do not want Roonwit showing up to bother them with the truth of Jesus Christ. They would much rather follow a dead lion’s skin – for health and wealth, for self-righteousness, for economic gain, for political and social advantage, for nationalistic agendas, for entertainment, for personal therapy…what can we add to the list? And we certainly don’t want our anger to be placed under the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace. 

When it is convenient we want to attack authority, and when it suits our purposes we insist that others bow to our authority. We are drinking from a cup other than that at the Lord’s Table. 

There are dead lion skins all around us.