Sunday, January 5, 2025

Our Last Battle (7)

 Seven – He Will Eat You


We have seen how the idea that Aslan is not a Tame Lion was used to deceive and manipulate people, and how it was misunderstood by those who did not understand Aslan’s immutable character and Word (the stars). Now let’s consider what the idea might actually mean, what it is intended to convey to us.


One of the richest scenes in the Narniad is Jill’s encounter with Aslan in Chapter Two of The Silver Chair. I consider this scene and Chapter Twelve of The Silver Chair not only two of the most glorious scenes in the Narniad, but two of the greatest pieces of writing from the pen of C. S. Lewis. Chapter Twelve of The Silver Chair stands alongside the crescendo of The Last Battle and its glorious concluding chapters as having a texture beyond the earthly, reaching back to the Stone Table and the Deeper Magic from Before the Dawn of Time in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 


In Chapter Two of The Silver Chair, Jill has just been the reason Eustace has fallen over the cliff into who knows where. While Eustace is falling, a lion appears next to Jill, but rather than roaring it is blowing over and beyond the cliff. After its final blow, the lion walks back into the forest. 


Soon Jill realizes that she is terribly thirsty, and upon hearing running water she decides to find it, moving carefully, mindful of the lion. When she locates the stream, she also finds a problem, the lion is lying between her and the stream. What to do? She reasons that if she runs the lion will catch her, and if she goes forward, she’ll be in the lion’s mouth. 


The lion speaks and says, “If you’re thirsty you may drink.” After the lion repeats this statement, it then asks, “Are you not thirsty?”


Jill then asks the lion if it would mind leaving while she drinks. The lion makes no reply. Jill’s thirst is driving her crazy, so she asks, “Will you promise not to – do anything to me, if I do come?”


Here we come to the heart of Jill’s encounter with Aslan, and I suppose of our encounter with Jesus Christ. Here we come to the realization that Aslan is not a Tame Lion, and that Jesus is more than an image on a wall, a picture in a book, or a purveyor of cotton candy. For Aslan replies, “I make no promise.”


While in her thirst Jill unwittingly takes a step nearer to the lion, she asks another question, “Do you eat girls?”


“I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms.” The narrator observes, “It didn’t say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.” 


When Jill says that she dares not come and drink, the lion says, “Then you will die of thirst.”


When Jill then says that she’ll have to find another stream, the lion informs her that there is no other stream. 


I hope you will read this entire section in The Silver Chair to witness this remarkable scene in its fulness for there is no substitute to actually being there. 


As we ponder Jill’s encounter with Aslan (and there is much more to it in the chapter), what do we see in Aslan? Is He a Tame Lion? 


Would not a tame lion have honored Jill’s request to go away while she drank? 


Would not a tame lion have assured Jill that he would not eat her? 


And what of the lion’s declaration that it has eaten girls and boys and women and men and kings and emperors and cities and realms? 


What do we make of the lion’s matter-of-fact statement that Jill will die of thirst? 


An element of Our Last Battle is whether we know the real Aslan (Jesus) or whether we have bought into a caricature of Him. A caricature can have many forms. One form is what we’ve seen in The Last Battle, it is a depiction of Aslan as a self-serving, harsh, enslaving tyrant. 


We see this in the scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus’ time. A severe merciless legalism in which the people serve the religious system, in which God demands sacrifice above healing on the Sabbath, and which compromises with Caesar in the interest of self-preservation. This is a system and a leadership that will murder Jesus Christ and persecute His disciples. 


We see this same caricature in that flavor of Christianity today that perpetuates guilt and shame and sin – consciousness in the Church. We see it in those leaders who amass wealth and fame and position and influence, manipulating others to give, give, give to them in the name of Christ Jesus. We see it in those who may have a form of godliness but deny its true source – the Vine Jesus Christ. We see it in those who teach and employ a syncretism with political and economic and cultural powers.


But we also see caricatures of Jesus in those systems that teach that we need no longer conform to His Word, nor expect Him to be consistent with His Word. Here we are taught that the image of God portrayed in the Bible and affirmed by Jesus has been superseded by our greater learning and understanding. Here we are also taught that Jesus is the Walt Disney of life, that Christianity is a Disney Land, that Sunday morning church is an entertainment venue, that Jesus is the way to prosper materially and grow rich and eat cotton candy. Christianity is a place to have fun and pastors are playground monitors, and if the playground monitors don’t cooperate we will ignore them, fire them, and find monitors to cater to our whims and fancies. And make no mistake, we expect our offerings to be used to purchase new playground equipment, we want the latest and greatest. 


The Jesus of the Bible, the Jesus that walks and talks among us today, within His Body today, is the Jesus who will not agree to our request not to do anything to us, He will not make us such a promise. Jesus will make no promise to not swallow us up. 


In fact, Jesus makes it clear that if we desire to follow Him that we must take up our cross, lose our lives rather than seek to save them, deny ourselves, and witness to others of Him (Mark 8:34–38). Jesus teaches us that since the world hates Him, the world will hate us (John 15:18–16:4). Jesus commands us to love as He loves, and He is clear that this love means laying down our lives for Him and for one another (John 15:12–13; 1 John 3:16). 


Jesus does not beg us to remain so that He may have crowds around Him (see John Chapter 6 and John 8:30–59), nor is He concerned that offerings diminish and that bloated budgets and campuses cannot be maintained. Jesus is not concerned whether we have to invade our endowments to fund operating deficits (why do we hoard money and yet keep asking for more, more, more?) Jesus desires those who will say, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life” (John 6:68). 


How can I write these things? Because I know, in some modest measure, the character of the Jesus of the Bible – the Jesus who gives and gives and gives again, whose relationship with His Father, and His love for us, is everything. Can you envision this Jesus hoarding funds in His bank account while people, created in His Father’s image, are hungry, homeless, sick, and hurting? Have we not exchanged the dollar sign for the Cross in our thinking and decision making? 


Do you know any church that obeys 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9? (Pay particular attention to 8:12 – 15). Do you know any church that even talks about this passage? Any church that aspires to it? 


Now I don’t know how you are responding to what I’m writing, but here is the thing, if you aren’t feeling some tension in this, some tension in wanting to know the true Aslan, the true Jesus, as opposed to a caricature, then I have made my point. 


We are called to a pilgrim’s progress, to a journey of knowing Jesus as individuals, as marriages, as families, and as brothers and sisters in Him. However, if we don’t encounter Jesus as Jill encountered Aslan, if we insist that He is a Tame Lion that we can control, then we are deluding ourselves and others. 


For to be sure, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah will swallow us up and our lives will never be the same. 


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