The Edmund In All Of Us

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The Edmund in All of Us

C.S. Lewis author of the famed Chronicles of Narnia once wrote in his book title “Mere Christianity” these thoughts…

Why is God landing in this enemy-occupied world in disguise and starting a sort of secret society to undermine the Devil? Why is He not landing in force, invading it? Is it that He is not strong enough? Well, Christian’s think He is going to land in force; we do not know when. But we can guess why He is delaying. He wants to give us the chance of joining His side freely. I do not suppose you and I would have thought much of a Frenchman who waited till the Allies were marching into Germany and then announced he was on our side. God will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in our world quite realize what it will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on stage the play is over. God is going to invade, all right: but what good of saying you are on his side then, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream and something else- something never entered your head to conceive- comes crashing in: something so beautiful to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will have been too late then to choose your side. There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will not be the time for choosing; it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not. Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever. We must take it or leave it.

Lewis’ thoughts here parallel what was going on in Narnia, when the Pevensie children first found their way into that magical world. Maybe you have read the books or in fact seen(or will see) the movie ‘The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.”

The Pevensie children are as follows, Peter the oldest, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy the youngest. And as a young reader/listener of these Narnian tales and even as I watch today I find Edmund the most repulsive of all the children.

He treats little Lucy awful, he lies about Narnia in the first place, and he chooses the wrong side! He becomes a betrayer of his own family, he rebels against all that is pure and right. And I found him repulsive.

That is until it dawned on me that there is a little bit of Edmund in all of us. In fact there is a lot of Edmund in all of us. Left to our default settings, our natural bent, we are repulsive, betraying little rebels going against everything that is pure and right.

Edmund ran into the White Witch and her Turkish delight long before he ever ran into Aslan. I don’t know about you but that parallels my life pretty well. I ran into Satan and his tricks before I ever ran into Jesus Christ. In the Chronicles of Narnia, Lucy runs into the Fawn first and hears about how evil the White Witch is, and Peter and Susan follow her tale and that of the beavers. It works great for that Narnian fairy tale, but in real life, we go with Edmund, we fall way down in rebellion against God ... next page »