We will do what we will do, won't we?

Today's Handbook For Solving Bible Difficulties, pp. 107-108
David E. O'Brien

I can't help thinking of a scene in the seventh book of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. The Last Battle pictures Narnia wracked by the evil of the Beast and his prophet, a donkey dressed in lion skins, and a chattering ape.

After what seemed to be the defeat of Narnia at the hands of the armies of the false god, King Tirian was thrust into the door of a stable that ushered him and his party into an Edenic world. It was a place where the fruit was so sweet that "all the nicest things in the world would taste like medicines after that."

In that wonderful world, they found a band of dwards who had shouted the time-honored cry of sinners everywhere: "The dwarfs are for the dwarfs!"

Thrust through the same door, into the same Eden, these sinful creatures sat huddled together, cursing the darkness and filth of the stable they believed they were in.

Lucy, one of the queens of Narnia, was moved by the sadness of their plight. She tried to convince them they were sitting in a beautiful grove of trees, but they insisted, in the pride of their ignorance, that they were all shut up in a stable. They accused her of trying to trick them.

She moved to show them the truth of what she could see and they could not. She stooped and picked some wild violets. "Listen, Dwarf," she said. "Even if your eyes are wrong, perhaps your nose is all right: can you smell that?"" She leaned across and held the fresh, damp flowers to Diggle's ugly nose. But she had to jump back quickly in order to avoid a blow from his hard little fist.

"None of that!" he shouted. "How dare you! What do you mean by shoving a lot of filthy stable litter in my face? There was a thistle in it, too."

In spite of Lucy's good intentions and best effort, the dwarfs clung to their belief that they'd been battered and imprisoned and were sitting in darkness and filth awaiting their doom.

When Aslan came back from the land of his Father, the Emperor-Over-the-Sea, Lucy went to him. Grieved that the dwarfs would not see, she asked him to do something for them.

Aslan growled close to the dwarfs, but they cautioned one another not to believe in the sound because it was a hoax. He set a feast before them.

The ate and drank, but they could only taste things found in a satble. For them Aslan's feast was hay, an old turnip, raw cabbage leaves, and "dirty water out of a trough that a donkey's been at!"

Their feast ended in a brawl, as each fought the other to get what little he had. When it was all over, they who had been in the presence of the Lion and could have had everything were left with nothing more than their boastful cry, "The dwarfs are for the dwarfs."

"You see," said Aslan, "They will not let us help them. They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afriad of being taken in that they can not be taken out."

So this pretty much sums up our ability to think what we will no matter what we might be told differently. You ever notice this happening in politics? Folks pick a candidate and become die-hard fans. And especially in the church. We believe a certain way, and BAM!, there's no turning back. Most of the time we don't realize we've begun to think that way, either.

The big question is: What do we hold on to and what are we willing to let go of? Are we willing to be wrong? What about the big stuff? Shouldn't we hold on to that and never let it go? These questions are difficult to answer, that's for sure.

Just pay attention to the next time you hear something and think, "They're crazy. They're way wrong. I know it's not like that!" Are you being a dwarf?