Category: Uncategorized

Puddleglum’s Wager

by Andrew Micah, posted in fantasy literature, imagination, philosophy, Uncategorized

I made a reference in my last post to someone named Puddleglum. I’m having a hard time falling asleep at the moment and looking for a good use of my time, so I suppose I’ll put to page some thoughts concerning Puddleglum and his statement of faith upon which I have been ruminating for some time.

First of all, who is Puddleglum? For those who don’t know, he is one of the main characters in C. S. Lewis’s fantasy novel The Silver Chair, which was the fourth to be published of the seven Chronicles of Narnia (although, according to the chronology of Lewis’ Narnia fantasy, it is the sixth book to take place). Puddleglum is a Narnian Marsh-wiggle, which is to say that he is a lanky marsh-dwelling humanoid with an overall greenish complexion and webbed feet and hands. Puddleglum, like all Marsh-wiggles, constantly gives voice to a very gloomy and pessimistic outlook on life, as though he were expecting the worst possible outcome in any given situation. In spite of this, in the course of events he paradoxically reveals himself to be the one person most to be relied upon for holding on to hope when hope is hardest to get hold of.

(spoiler alert! the following includes a revelation of some of the most significant plot points and dialogue from The Silver Chair.)

When we come to chapter 12 of The Silver Chair, our friend Puddleglum has, along with two children from our world (named Eustace and Jill), been for some time engaged in a difficult and troubled expedition in search of Rilian, the lost prince of Narnia. At long last, Puddleglum, Eustace, and Jill have succeeded in discovering the lost prince, who is held captive in the underground kingdom of an evil enchantress styled the Lady of the Green Kirtle, but more properly known as Queen Jadis. No sooner have they set Prince Rilian free from the enchantments which have been used to make him a captive and a slave than they are confronted by Jadis, who attempts by her powerful spell to make them all slaves together. Her spell is so powerful that she is able to lull the Prince and the two children from our world into forgetting that there is any real world other than her bleak underground kingdom of evil. In this moment of crisis, it is Puddleglum who rises to the occasion. He puts out the Witch’s enchanted fire with his bare foot (giving off a very disenchanting smell) and proceeds to give her defiance with this speech:

“‘One word, Ma’am,’ he said, coming back from the fire; limping, because of the pain. ‘One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you’ve said. But there’s one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things–trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies making up a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if here isn’t any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we’re leaving your court a once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that’s small loss if the world’s as dull a place as you say.'”

I have found in these words something very helpful to stiffen the backbone of my faith in times of trial (which is, no doubt, what their author intended). Puddleglum’s argument is simple. If God and His world isn’t what really is, life without Him is miserable and meaningless by comparison. It’s odd enough that we’d have longings for something that never was or is or will be, but even that aside, if there is no God, no meaning, no reality, then what have we lost by pretending that there is? I’ll wager you, says Puddleglum. If you’re right and I’m wrong, I still haven’t lost anything by pretending; and if indeed you are right, to give up my pretending would be to give up the only thing that makes my life worth living.

This is, I think, a much better wager than Pascal’s. (see Pascal’s Wager at wikipedia.org) Whereas Pascal’s wager is an entirely self-centered bet, Puddleglum comes at us from a very different direction. He says, in effect, “I have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. What is it to me if you say that the Lord does not exist? I would rather go on believing Him and living as one of His, because without Him, life is so miserable and empty that there’s no point to it at all. Just look how lame your version of ‘truth’ is,” Puddleglum says. “It’s so useless that I might as well not believe it, because even if it’s true, believing it won’t better my life at all.”

He can say all this, of course, because deep down in his heart, Puddleglum knows not only that Aslan and Narnia are real, but also that Aslan and Narnia are the only thing that matters. He takes the power (and ultimately his friends) out of his enemy’s hands by showing that, even if the Witch isn’t lying, they have nothing to gain and everything to lose by giving in; and if she is indeed telling the truth, they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by carrying on as though she is lying. At which point the Witch shows her true colors and turns into the serpent she is. There’s not a lot you can do to someone who says, at heart,

“Whom have I in heaven but you?
    And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
    but God is the strength[b] of my heart and my portion forever.” (Psalm 73:25-26)

Those who follow Jesus are constantly being pressured by the world around us to compromise our obedience to Him. Why do we trouble our souls for a fantasy? And while we know that Jesus is so much better than a fantasy, I think sometimes it would do us good to challenge the Enemy’s false version of truth not just on its falsehood, but its uselessness, because Jesus is so much that much better than what they want us to give Him up for that it would hardly matter if He wasn’t real at all. Of course, He is. It just wouldn’t matter if He wasn’t–not enough to make us give Him up. The Lord is our portion. He’s all we have in Heaven and all we have in Earth, and all we really want for all that. As William Cowper wrote:

“But O! Thou bounteous giver of all good,
Thou art of all Thy gifts Thyself the crown;
Give what Thou canst, without Thee we are poor
And with Thee rich, take what Thou wilt away.”

The substance of Christian devotion is to be able to say that sort of thing with an honest heart. If we can, nothing is going to pull us away from Jesus. If we can’t, something invariably will.

So hurrah for good old Puddleglum! And may God give us the strength to persevere in love like his, which is better than mere faith (I Corinthians 13:13).

A ship’s anchor from the deep

by Andrew Micah, posted in imagination, Uncategorized

“Long ago, when he had been famous among his earliest competitors as a youth of great promise, he had followed his father to the grave. His mother had died, years before. These solemn words, which had been read at his father’s grave, arose in his mind as he went down the dark streets, among the heavy shadows, with the moon and the clouds sailing on high above him. ‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.’

In a city dominated by the axe, alone at night, with natural sorrow rising in him for the sixty-three who had been that day put to death, and for to-morrow’s victims then awaiting their doom in the prisons, and still of to-morrow’s and to-morrow’s, the chain of association that brought the words home, like a rusty old ship’s anchor from the deep, might have been easily found. He did not seek it, but repeated them and went on.”

The two pages that begin thus from book three, chapter nine of Charles Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities are among my favorite pages ever written.

Bono

by Andrew Micah, posted in Uncategorized

Speaking of Bono, here’s a couple of quotes I’ve enjoyed so far:

“the world demands to be described, and so, painters, poets, journalists, pornographers, and sitcom writers, by accident or by design, are just following orders, whether from high or low [i.e. angelic or demonic], to describe the world they’re in.” p. 32

“the other thing I don’t trust is a performer who’s content on the stage, content with the distance between him or her and the audience. Whether it’s an actor or whether it’s a singer, I want to feel like the person in stage can stop playing a role, jump down, sit on my knee, follow me home, hug me, mug me, borrow money from me, make me breakfast in the morning. I’ve always had that as a performer. I don’t want people to feel comfortable in the relationship. I want to feel like it could snap.” p. 234

“I’m never nervous when I go to meet heads of state. I feel they should be mervous, because they are the ones who’ll be held accountable for the lives that their decisions will impact the most.” p. 257

Roll with it

by Andrew Micah, posted in Uncategorized

Something I am constantly learning and re-learning is the ability to look on disruptions of my plan for the day (and, as requires greater effort, my life at large) with the expectation of something serendipitous in those disruptions. A great deal of the cranky attitudes, short tempers, and frayed nerves in the world come from an inability to trust that God has unexpected good for us in the countless little and large redirections that take place in our lives. Sometimes this crankiness goes so far as to make us pridefully loath to even listen/look out for, accept, and give thanks for the good that comes our way when we are out of our way, but I am hopeful that I am seeing this fault in myself less and less. I believe, and am learning to believe, that God is always bringing disruptions of various shapes and sizes into our lives so as to teach us to trust His control rather than ours.

The specific events that provoked today’s ponderings were these: I made a trip today during my lunch hour to check out some books from the library, but when I got back, noticed that I couldn’t find the reading list that I brought with me to the library. I had spent probably a couple of hours compiling that reading list last week, and to lose it would be the loss of those couple hours which are right now very precious to me. So when it seemed that the list was lost I was very frustrated with myself. (Is it just me or do all creative people habitually lose things? Bono confesses this as a problem of his in the book I am reading this afternoon…) I cursed in euphemisms as I made my way back to the car to see if I could find the list at the library. 

As I got into the car, I settled myself down for the little drive to the library and made myself determined to keep an eye open for whatever serendipity might come my way. It came in the form of a song on the radio called “Castle On the Hill” by Ed Sheeran. This is a song I have on iTunes and have heard many times, but I was struck in a new way by the joy that comes through it, and how fortunate I am to live in a time when an artist can shamelessly let himself go like Ed does in that song and it’s okay. I think if I didn’t live in such times I would feel terribly smothered. I even found myself offering a prayer of thanks to God for this goodness as I got out of the car at the library.

As it turns out, the notepad on which my reading list was written was not in the library; it was obscured in one of the stacks of forty-five library books which are lying in my room at present. But even my haste in not looking thoroughly through my room turned out for a good purpose, or at least did not keep that good from getting through to me.

As Paul Brandt says, “Talk about time / and it’s flown away before you’re done.” So it’s back to reading for me. Gonna try to finish the Bono book today, start in and something new, and perhaps read a few more chapters of my first real Dickens (a Tale of Two Cities) this evening.

by Andrew Micah, posted in Uncategorized

I do not know whether there will ever be a time when every theological question has been definitively answered and agreed upon by the church before the Lord Jesus comes again, but if there is, I would not be surprised to see it make an end of the Christianity of many people. If there were nothing left to Christianity but to hear it, take it to heart, and walk it out, there would be little in Christianity for them, which is why there is little of genuine Christianity in them.

by Andrew Micah, posted in Uncategorized

One of the things we have to learn when it comes to thinking of ourselves in a Christian way is the realization that we will never be more than rescued and rehabbed ex-cons. You, me, and everyone in God’s great nation in Christ. That is who we are. Yes, we have a new name, and a good name, but it didn’t come from us.

by Andrew Micah, posted in Uncategorized

“We have already talked about music having meaning. It makes sense to us. Otherwise we would not put up with it or bother to buy it. But it does not mean things in the way that a statement like “There is a brown oak door over there” means something.” -Jeremy Begbie, Resounding Truth

This is completely true. And yet music has meaning, just like the brown oak door has meaning, because all in creation that has not been broken by the fall reveals something of God’s wisdom and glorious nature. In this sense, the Christian cannot really agree with the atheist about what the words “brown oak door” mean. The same object is spoken of, but its meaning, or whether it has any meaning at all, is disputed.

Jesus Was a Carpenter

by Andrew Micah, posted in Uncategorized

I recently became acquainted with a song called “Jesus was a Carpenter” by Johnny Cash. I am something of a Cash fan (I am wearing a Cash t-shirt as I write), and so when an older friend of mine mentioned this song casually in the course of conversation a few weeks ago, I made a mental note to look it up online. It has a really simple, poetic, thought-provoking lyric that honors the true narrative of Christ, and ponders how He would be received in our world today. That lyric is not really the subject of my post this morning, but its opening phrases did induce a question that will serve as an introduction to the ideas I want to flesh out in the paragraphs that follow.

The song begins with the lines:

Jesus was a carpenter and He worked with a saw and hammer / And His hands could build a table true enough to stand forever

As I was driving home on Wednesday night from the youth group where I lead worship every week, I was struck by that second line, albeit in a negative way. What follows is not a criticism of the song; in fact, I would be very pleased if in response to this post you go and listen to “Jesus Was a Carpenter” and, as you listen, ponder what it has to say to you about your need for Christ.

However, on this particular listening of the song, the words “true enough to stand forever” caught my attention as not being strictly correct. This is no criticism of the song or the writer. The writer did not intend to argue, I am sure, that whatever piece of carpentry came from the hands of Jesus would in fact last forever. He simply meant to say that Jesus, being faithful as He was in everything He applied Himself to, must have been a very diligent and careful carpenter from whom the best kind of work would be expected. This is no doubt true. Being ethically perfect in his humanity as he was, we can be sure that our Lord Jesus was diligent in his craft and so attained the excellence in it that comes from diligence. His works as a carpenter would no doubt have been beautiful in their symmetry and functionality. None of those works remain to the present day, and it is doubtful that great lengths taken by those devoted to Christ could have ensured their preservation. Jesus did not go about his work as a carpenter intent on creating things that would last forever on earth; if He did, He would not have made them from perishable wood. His works as a carpenter were made with an eye to the transient blessings of rest and refreshment and fellowship his works would facilitate for everyone who made use of them.

This is a fact which can bring some encouragement to us as craftsmen, artists, tradespeople and so forth. As children of eternity stranded in time (to borrow a phrase from Michael Card) we humans have a strong impulse to reach beyond the transience of our temporary existence and make in our work an eternal monument to ourselves. We want more for ourselves than to be forgotten, because we want more for ourselves than to be forgettable. We want to make something permanent with our lives in the hope of making ourselves permanent. But the fact is for most of us that when our lives are well past, we will not be remembered, or at least not all that much. The passage of time will carry us and our works away. 

As a songwriter this could be difficult for me to come to terms with. There is little I would love more than to compose something of such transcendent, unforgettable beauty that it would be remembered long, long after I am gone. This is certainly a possibility, by no means unattainable, but also not to be expected. Of those who have attempted to achieve such permanence in human memory through their artistic works, many more have failed than have succeeded. I have one precious life, so I might as well try, not for the earthly crown itself, but for the love of the excellence that its achievement signifies (which distinction of values is a subject deserving of its own discussion in another post). I have no desire to bury my talent or sell myself short on my potential through fear of not realizing my artistic ambitions. 

But even if I succeed write a song that is sung five hundred years after I am gone, there will still be an intransience to it. The same thoughts and feelings that gave birth to the song will not be passed on perfectly to all who hear or sing it. And what about all of my other works that don’t survive? Must the knowledge that the song I am writing at a given moment will one day be forgotten discourage me from completing it?

The answer is, absolutely not. I believe that a moment of praise, of reverent thought toward God or reverent appreciation for and delight in His works, or of simply enjoying any good gift of His from a pure heart, is a moment of eternal worth and quality; that even if it is only a moment, it is something precious and irreplaceable to God. 

And I think that it was because Jesus knew and believed this that he was able to apply himself to constructing transient things for transient purposes without frustration. His carpentry, done as a service to God, has an eternal reward in the moments of thanksgiving around a family table or quiet reflection and rest in a chair that His carpentry made possible or somehow enriched. It is only in the course of working and crafting with this kind of a perspective that we really honor God’s creation for what it is as sub-creators instead of making it a tool for elevating ourselves. God remembers every good thought and every feeling of hope that my songs may have inspired, and they are valuable to Him, even if I or others have forgotten them. 

In our temporary lives we are always in the course of moving on. If we didn’t not move on from the past and leave some things in the past we would have no room in our minds for present works and thoughts. When a song I have written has run its course and been sung by the last pair of lips to the last pair of ears that will hear it on earth, it will not cease to be valuable in eternity; it is still a part of the great story of God’s creation, and hopefully a noble and honorable part, however small in the grand scheme of things. I like to think that Jesus thought the same things of His chairs and tables as He worked long and unremembered hours for thirty years in His earthly father’s shop, forever dignifying every honest labor of those who would follow in His footsteps. He could have skipped over that part of life, but He didn’t, and considering that He is the perfect image of the invisible God, I think we can learn something from this aspect of His life about what kind of a God we serve. When our desire for greatness in our works loses an appreciation for the goodness of humble things and the humility of most good things that we see reflected in the life story that Jesus chose for Himself, it has ceased to be Godly ambition and has actually become Satanic. Jesus was fit to begin the work of new creation because He loved creation in ways that Satan never did or could. He has the name above all names because He loved God and His works for their own sake, and He displayed that love by confining himself to a very humble aspect of sub-creation for most of His earthly life. 

-Andrew