Narnia: Beware The White Witch Series

Take the divine gift of sex: marital love. What does Satan do? He tells some people that all sex is bad. He tells other people, using the same mouth and English vocabulary, that all sex is good. If sex was a ballot measure in a California election, he’d be paying for the “YES on Sex” and “NO on Sex” propositions at the same time.

And all Satan’s deceptions soon lead to deprivation. His parties always come to an early end. This Edmund makes a pig of himself eating Turkish Delight and deciding he’s going to be the White Witch’s favorite son. The next time he goes to Narnia, though, the good times are over. There’s no more Turkish Delight – instead, a hunk of dry bread. Now there are no kissy compliments; there’s no throne for him to sit on. All of a sudden he’s a slave, pulling a heavy sled through the cold snow, the wicked witch screeching at him, and he says to himself with a broken heart, “How could I have been so foolish?”

There’s one more Narnia reality that is very meaningful to me this week. There’s a verse I want to give you in the original King James. Here it is – John 10:10: The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

And here in this frozen land where it’s always winter but never Christmas, the enemy of God’s children, this evil queen, is dedicated to taking away. Taking away your joy, your freedom, your ability to be yourself, to grow into God’s image.

Tuesday night I was here in Temple City for our pizza party and Bible study. And as I drove home to a second Bible study, my cell phone rang. I had a long visit with one of you. Someone’s heart was breaking because of family pain, because of the barriers and the hurt and the scars that are caused by our humanity, by the fact that we breathe the poisonous air pumped out by this common enemy.

And there wasn’t much I could do, not much I could say. I share these same times of frustration, where you want so much for things to be well, to be healed, to be at peace with that certain someone . . . and the wall between you is so cold and forbidding. Winter but not Christmas.

So I’ve spent the past four days thinking with a heavy heart how Lucifer separates Edmund from his brothers and sisters, and separates us from those we love – and want to love. People we simply cannot reach because they’re over in that castle of the other side. In fact, there’s a scene in C. S. Lewis’ story where the children get to her fortress and all the captives she’s taken have been turned to stone. How can there be reconciliation when that person we love is now stone? All the therapy in the world, all the “sorry’s” and “please forgive me’s” are futile if this person’s heart is as hard as stone. And we remember that happier time when we were friends, when we were close, and when that person wasn’t a frozen statue but our friend, our relative, our child.

Let’s never be so naive as to think that this war isn’t going on, or that Lucifer is not a reality. I have felt the reality this week, and maybe some of you have too. I’ve had people in the church leave the church, and cut themselves off completely. They made them impenetrable. Letters unanswered. E-mails ignored. Phone calls reach a disconnected number. Nothing! A person I loved and who used to love me is now stone.