Consequences
I went to see The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader with my hubby. It was a great movie. I saw truths that speak to the spiritual battle that we face every day, every moment.
I don’t care what critics say about C. S. Lewis technical ability in writing. I don’t care what they say about the mystery of his overall philosophical ideas. He was spot on with so many of the things he wrote just as I look at this third book of the series. I cannot nullify truths just because I do not agree with all of his ideas. He is human and I cannot look to him as if he is some kind of supernatural being. He is bound for flaws. I only say this to clarify so that you cannot try to argue with me over my support of this man’s writings. I am only talking about one truth I saw that spoke to me.
Without ruining the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet. I want to share with you a theme and one specific scene. Trust me it is nothing more than what you have already seen in the previews.
The biggest theme of this work is temptation and how we respond to it. All the way through the characters are warning each other to be on guard against temptation. And stopping each other or themselves when they see that they are falling to that temptation.
It is such an intricately designed work in this area. We see them responding just as we would expect humans to react to situations, fear, annoyance, anger, greed, and a myriad more. And yet each time those qualities are called out, and we recognize them as faults or sins or nonsense. We realize that those actions and reactions are not natural to them they are prompted by temptation.
How true, GOD says that fear is from the devil. So if you are to be in a scary situation you are not to naturally fear. HE says that your natural reaction is to look to HIM. But satan tries to convince us that scary equals fear and that is the natural response. He pollutes everything that GOD created so that we are misguided.
The scene that I referred to earlier is when the character Lucy is hung up on wanting to be beautiful like her sister Susan. Lucy dreams about it. She envisions herself morphing from her reflection to Susan’s. In a moment she wishes her dream into reality. She walks through a door and meets up with her brothers who comment that it was nice to have all three of them together. Lucy realizes that in this “reality” it is only the three of them and she never existed.
Everything spirals from there. Her eyes are open to what would be missing without her. Most importantly, their experiences in Narnia. Since she was the one who found the way in. She is devastated by these consequences. She said through tears she hadn’t thought through all of that.
How often do we sit and justify something we know is wrong in our minds, and in that justification we also think through all of the possible scenarios. We know that if we are caught there will be specific consequences. We list them all out and prepare ourselves for them. We may even think I can handle that if it happens. Or maybe we realize exactly how much damage that consequence would cause so we guard and hide our sin. It is a painful life to live hiding and guarding on top of a destructive behavior that we choose to continue.
But view this for a moment when things begin to happen that are not even related to our predefined list of consequences than we begin to feel victimized. We know that our sin has not been found out yet we begin to have the “worst luck.” Now I don’t beleve in luck just use it as an example.
Someone at your job begins to lie about you to better their place in the company and you are passed up for the promotion you have been working for. You’re child gets sick on a day that you had planned for yourself (most likely to indulge yourself more in your secret). Even simple things like your car breaking down unexpectedly, your refrigerator breaks, you loose your wallet, food poisoning, allergies, delays due to weather. All of these things are beyond your control and you feel like they come out of left field.
You have to remember that your ways are not HIS ways and your thoughts are not HIS thoughts. You could not possibly be able to list all of the consequences that will occur when you disobey HIM and move out from under his umbrella of protection. HE is the only one who knows how much HE is blessing you. When you purposely step away from HIS protection the rain cometh down.
You didn’t think through all of that.
I don’t care what critics say about C. S. Lewis technical ability in writing. I don’t care what they say about the mystery of his overall philosophical ideas. He was spot on with so many of the things he wrote just as I look at this third book of the series. I cannot nullify truths just because I do not agree with all of his ideas. He is human and I cannot look to him as if he is some kind of supernatural being. He is bound for flaws. I only say this to clarify so that you cannot try to argue with me over my support of this man’s writings. I am only talking about one truth I saw that spoke to me.
Without ruining the movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet. I want to share with you a theme and one specific scene. Trust me it is nothing more than what you have already seen in the previews.
The biggest theme of this work is temptation and how we respond to it. All the way through the characters are warning each other to be on guard against temptation. And stopping each other or themselves when they see that they are falling to that temptation.
It is such an intricately designed work in this area. We see them responding just as we would expect humans to react to situations, fear, annoyance, anger, greed, and a myriad more. And yet each time those qualities are called out, and we recognize them as faults or sins or nonsense. We realize that those actions and reactions are not natural to them they are prompted by temptation.
How true, GOD says that fear is from the devil. So if you are to be in a scary situation you are not to naturally fear. HE says that your natural reaction is to look to HIM. But satan tries to convince us that scary equals fear and that is the natural response. He pollutes everything that GOD created so that we are misguided.
The scene that I referred to earlier is when the character Lucy is hung up on wanting to be beautiful like her sister Susan. Lucy dreams about it. She envisions herself morphing from her reflection to Susan’s. In a moment she wishes her dream into reality. She walks through a door and meets up with her brothers who comment that it was nice to have all three of them together. Lucy realizes that in this “reality” it is only the three of them and she never existed.
Everything spirals from there. Her eyes are open to what would be missing without her. Most importantly, their experiences in Narnia. Since she was the one who found the way in. She is devastated by these consequences. She said through tears she hadn’t thought through all of that.
How often do we sit and justify something we know is wrong in our minds, and in that justification we also think through all of the possible scenarios. We know that if we are caught there will be specific consequences. We list them all out and prepare ourselves for them. We may even think I can handle that if it happens. Or maybe we realize exactly how much damage that consequence would cause so we guard and hide our sin. It is a painful life to live hiding and guarding on top of a destructive behavior that we choose to continue.
But view this for a moment when things begin to happen that are not even related to our predefined list of consequences than we begin to feel victimized. We know that our sin has not been found out yet we begin to have the “worst luck.” Now I don’t beleve in luck just use it as an example.
Someone at your job begins to lie about you to better their place in the company and you are passed up for the promotion you have been working for. You’re child gets sick on a day that you had planned for yourself (most likely to indulge yourself more in your secret). Even simple things like your car breaking down unexpectedly, your refrigerator breaks, you loose your wallet, food poisoning, allergies, delays due to weather. All of these things are beyond your control and you feel like they come out of left field.
You have to remember that your ways are not HIS ways and your thoughts are not HIS thoughts. You could not possibly be able to list all of the consequences that will occur when you disobey HIM and move out from under his umbrella of protection. HE is the only one who knows how much HE is blessing you. When you purposely step away from HIS protection the rain cometh down.
You didn’t think through all of that.
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