Even before he steps through the wardrobe, the youngest brother is itching to be king of his own life, free from everyone else. He's not about to submit to the authority of his older siblings, much less to the mysteriously absent lord of Narnia. But soon he finds himself a prisoner of his own rebellion. What happens when the price of freedom is higher than we can possibly pay?
Seeing Is Not Believing
Let's say your small watercraft has just sunk and you're in need of rescue. Desperately. Floating into your vision comes a lifeboat. The problem is, not only is the boat captained by your annoying older brother but you know that once you're brought on board, you'll have to help row at some point. So you refuse to acknowledge that the lifeboat is even there. You won't swim toward it or let anyone from the lifeboat help you out of the water.
Instead, you start swimming away as fast as your failing arms will take you.
Basically, being able to see the boat means virtually nothing if you don't act upon what you see. You're going down, whether the lifeboat is there or not.
That's exactly the choice Edmund makes as his Narnia adventure gets underway. He steps through the wardrobe on the heels of Lucy but refuses to acknowledge to Peter and Susan that he has actually seen the magical world with his own eyes. He's not willing to admit that he was wrong. And then later, after they've all gotten in together, he doesn't even apologize. Instead, he distances himself even more from all that is good and noble in Narnia, eventually making the break from his siblings altogether.
Edmund refuses to submit to the truth of what he sees.
He uses one excuse after another to justify why he's betraying his family to the Witch. But even as Edmund makes these excuses, it's clear he knows the facts about the Witch's character. He has witnessed her wickedness and cruelty for himself, but he won't admit it. He refuses to believe.
A spiritual principle is at work in this kind of attitude.
Otherwise, Jesus wouldn't have had to say, over and over again in the midst of his teachings, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear" (Mark 4:9, NIV). It's an odd statement at first. If you're not deaf, then of course you're able to hear what's being said. And yet we know exactly what he's talking about. We've all experienced times when our words to friends go in one ear and out the other or when they insist you said something you honestly never said. They had ears, but they didn't truly listen. Hearing something is not the same as accepting it as truth.
The Old Testament prophets dealt with this same problem when they were trying to get across what God was saying to his stubborn, rebellious people. The prophet Isaiah quoted God, saying that the people "listen carefully, but do not understand" and "watch closely, but learn nothing" (Isaiah 6:9). Centuries later, the early wherever they went (see Acts 7:51-60). Frustrated, they often quoted those Old Testament prophets as proof that, if a person's heart is already closed to spiritual things, then it doesn't matter what kinds of miracles that person sees or what truths that person hears. He or she will refuse to submit.
The people of Jesus' own day were the same way, especially the religious leaders. Despite seeing Jesus perform amazing miracles and hearing the truths of the Kingdom from his own lips, they rejected it all. In fact, several of them even grasped the truth but didn't dare acknowledge it (see John 12:42). They were determined to stay spiritually blind and deaf.
So hearing or even seeing something isn't the same as acknowledging that it's true for your own life. There's a difference between seeing and believing. There are also different kinds of seeing for different levels of belief. Take, for example, the disciple Thomas, affectionately known as the Doubter. According to John 20:24-29, he wanted to see the resurrected Christ for himself before he would be willing to accept what the other disciples claimed to have seen. He wanted proof. He wanted to scientifically verify that the Resurrection actually happened, using his five senses. For him, seeing was believing.
But for others, seeing isn't even close to believing. Lewis wrote about this in an essay entitled "Miracles," in which he described meeting a woman who claimed to have seen a ghost. Apparently, she believed she'd been hallucinating.
Without getting into whether or not ghosts could possibly exist, Lewis uses the example to make an important point: We won't accept supernatural events" as miraculous if we already hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural.”
In other words, whatever we have seen can be explained away if we don't choose to believe it. That's why, when someone recovers from an illness after a bunch of people have been praying, other people will say things like, "It wasn't really a miracle; it was just that the cells in her body started to fight the disease." So why, you might ask, did the cells start fighting when they hadn't been before? But of course the person's presupposition is that supernatural miracles don't happen, so your question isn't really “heard.”
And then there are people like Edmund. They don't even fall into the category of those who refuse to believe what they see. They fall into the category of those who aren't willing to admit they know the truth, deep down. Pride keeps them from acknowledging openly what they don't want to believe is actually real. Why? Because if it turns out to be true, an uncomfortable spiritual reality will have a claim on their lives. It will mean they're no longer masters of their own destinies. It means there's something or Someone out there who is more in charge than they are.
Some of us-or our friends-may fall into the category of seers but not believers. "Do you believe in Jesus?" you ask, and they say, "Yes!" Careful now. Don't let it drop there. Ask, "What do you mean by belief in Jesus?" Because simply believing in the existence of Jesus as a historical figure isn't enough. As one youth worker has said, "Believing in God is not the issue; believing God matters is the issue." We must believe that Jesus' life, death, and resurrection actually have a divine purpose.
Right. But believing he died for our sins isn't enough either, though it may sound scandalous to say so. Think about it: Sometimes when you probe, you find out your friend merely believes that there once was a historical figure named Jesus who only thought he was dying to save us from our sins. Whether your friend thinks Jesus' death actually accomplished our salvation is a different matter. Yikes!
Okay, so probe a little further. Does your friend believe Jesus is the Son of God, the King of the universe? Yes? All well and good. So do the demons, though they refuse to submit to his authority (see James 2: I 9). Yikes again! No, to be painfully blunt, none of our friends' statements of belief really matter unless they can say, in so many words, "Yes, and Jesus is my King too. I've surrendered my life to him. I'm on his side and want to do his will." Until they can say this, there's reason to question if they've really accepted the truth.
Walking with Edmund forces us to consider how honest we are about what our spiritual eyes have seen and our spiritual ears have heard. Have you asked yourself the tough questions lately?
It's not enough to merely acknowledge that the King exists. How will you act on the truth of what you've seen?
We live by believing and not by seeing.
2 CORINTHIANS 5:7
Further In
• Why do some people say they need proof of God's existence before they'll believe in him?
• How easy or difficult is it to explain away things like miracles? Why isn't scientific proof enough to guarantee faith?
• How tempting is it for you to ignore the truths you’ll see in the Bible and not act on them?
The Word on Spiritual Sight
Take some time to read one or more of the following
Bible passages:
DEUTERONOMY 29:2-9; MATTHEW 13:10-17; JOHN
9:35-41; 12:35-43; ACTS 28:23-28; 2 PETER 1:16-19;
1 JOHN 1:1-3
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