Our Last Battle (13)

 Thirteen – Reality Check

When A False Aslan Means No Aslan

In Chapter Seven of The Last Battle, Tirian’s cohort frees a group of Dwarfs from Calormene slavery. Then Tirian displays poor old Puzzle to the Dwarfs, showing them that they, and others, had been deceived by the Ape. 

When Tirian draws his sword to attack the Calormenes and deliver the Dwarfs, he does so saying, “The light is dawning and the lie is broken,” for he is certain that when the Dwarfs see the lion skin over the donkey that they will rejoice and be glad in the true Aslan. Tirian’s expectation is that it will “be a beautiful moment” when the Dwarfs see the truth. 

Instead he hears the Dwarf Griffle saying, “I don’t know how all you chaps feel, but I’ve heard as much about Aslan as I want to for the rest of my life.” 

When Tirian tries to reason with the Dwarfs, he is asked if he has a better imitation of Aslan and told that the Dwarfs have been fooled once and they are not about to be fooled again. The Dwarfs demand that Tirian show them Aslan.

Then Tirian makes a mistake, for out of his mouth come the words, “He is not a tame lion.” These are the very words Shift used when manipulating the Dwarfs and others, and the Dwarfs instantly recognize it. 

The Dwarfs reject everything Tirian, Jill, and Eustace have to say. They reject Tirian’s motive for rescuing them, they reject Aslan, they reject “silly stories about other worlds,” and from that point on, the Dwarfs will be for themselves, the Dwarfs will be for the Dwarfs. The narrator tells us that the Dwarfs, “tramped off into darkness.” When we reject Aslan, we indeed tramp into darkness.

However, let us acknowledge Poggin the Dwarf, who manages to separate himself from the other Dwarfs and return to stand with Tirian and Aslan. It is better to die with the few faithful than to live in darkness.

Now we come to the crux of Lewis’s warning in Chapter Seven, we come to an excruciating element of Our Last Battle, something we will face time and again…if we are faithful to Jesus. 

“Tirian had never dreamed that one of the results of an Ape’s setting up a false Aslan would be to stop people from believing in the real one…But now, it seemed, he could count on nothing.” 

In The Last Battle, we see some Narnians remaining faithful to Aslan, we see others embracing Tashlan (actually Tash), and we see others, such as the Dwarfs, rejecting all notion of a deity and other worlds. 

In Our Last Battle, those who reject Jesus are not necessarily sarcastic, nor are they necessarily selfish, nor have they ill will toward others. In fact, many who reject Jesus do so with broken hearts, with much pain and sorrow, and even in their pain they seek to serve others, to alleviate the suffering of others. 

Of course, they are not rejecting Jesus as much as rejecting dead lion skins, but they don’t realize it. They see the blatant hypocrisy of the professing church and they can bear it no more. The very idea of “going to church” is repulsive, and the church’s refusal to confront its hypocrisy and sin and its insistence of justifying itself is more than these people can continue to bear. 

The notion that, “Well, the church isn’t perfect,” is seen for what it is, a smoke screen, a ruse so that we don’t have to confront the truth about our departure from the Gospel and the Person of Jesus Christ. 

We know a person, a group of people, a leadership group, by its nature. We know the nature of a thing by the way it behaves, by its actions…not solely by its words. We see the Nature of Jesus Christ in the Gospels. If Jesus is the Head of His Body, the Church, then we will know the true Church when we see that Body displaying the Nature of Jesus Christ. 

A church, any church, which sexually abuses others, be they children, adolescents, or adults can hardly be the Body of Christ. Nor can a church which engages in cover up and facilitates the continuation of this behavior. Have we lost our minds to think otherwise? We see this nefarious behavior across traditions. 

Many whose hearts are broken by dead lion skins see the myth of the Prolife Movement. They see that while many professing churches claim to be Prolife, that they are really Probirth, for once a child is born they care little, if anything, for its actual life. They don’t care about health care, safe housing and neighborhoods, decent education, reasonable employment, healthy food – all they care about is birth – from that point on baby and mom and dad and family are on their own. Why do we not have the courage to see this?

Nor do those who profess to be Prolife advocate for the men and women and young people who have the courage and love of family to seek shelter within our borders. We will send (we say) missionaries to others, we will send (we say) medical supplies to others, but should God send others to us we will send them back to God, and whether they live or die is of no concern to us. 

Others whose hearts have suffered, puzzle at Christian Nationalism, when they thought they had been taught that we are to worship the Trinity and the Trinity alone. When they had been taught that the Kingdom of Jesus is not of this world. When they had been taught that the Kingdom of God is without borders. Many who had been raised in so-called conservative churches which criticized so-called liberal churches for a social gospel, now see conservative hypocrisy in propagating a political and nationalistic gospel. 

 A shocking reality of Our Last Battle is the realization that Christians don’t really care about dead lion skins. They don’t much care if what they believe is true or not, or whether their image of Jesus is true or not. Some will hold onto dead lion skins no matter what, and others will decide that since they’ve been taken in once, they won’t be taken in again. 

In the latter group, some separate themselves because of hurt, others out of anger, perhaps most out of both. In the former group, I suppose peer pressure plays a significant role, from pastors to seminary professors to Sunday school teachers and small group leaders, to those in the pew who are expected to pray and pay and conform.

For many Jesus is only a figurehead, for others the ideal of Jesus is a dream shattered, for a remnant He is the holy Lamb of God seeking to draw humanity to Himself.

Our Last Battle can be discouraging, indeed it can. Let us keep looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2).  

We can always count on Jesus.