Are You in Prison?

My oldest Texas grand boys were with me this summer and while they were here, we spent some time in Narnia.  Now for those of you who don’t know, it is a place that C.S. Lewis created in his great children’s series, The Chronicles of Narnia.  After they left, I wasn’t ready to leave Narnia and spent time in the final book, appropriately called, The Last Battle.  It is filled with theological thought and I believe that one of the things C. S. Lewis dealt with in this final installment of his Narnia collection was atheists.

Because God is so real to me, I truly cannot understand that some people cannot see Him.  I associate everything with God and His love for me.  It gives me peace that passes all understanding and gives me purpose for living.  The hardest thing in my ministry is to try and explain to someone pre-disposed to not believe that God actually IS.

Currently there is a group who call themselves the “new Atheists.”  They describe themselves in their book, The New Atheists, (authored by Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens) as a progressive thought and different in belief from prominent historical atheists such as Nietzsche and Sartre. They don’t claim, “God doesn’t exist.”  They claim they just don’t believe He does. Read this review:

A popular tendency among some atheists these days is to define atheism, not as the positive thesis that God does not exist, but as the neutral claim that an atheist is one who simply lacks belief in God. If we could scan the mind of the atheist and catalogue all the beliefs the atheist holds, we would not find a belief of the form, “God exists.” Those who insist on defining atheism in this manner want to avoid the implications of having to defend the claim that God does not exist. They demand justification for faith in God while insisting that they bear no rational burdens in the debate since they are not making any positive claims on the question of God’s existence.

It is the easy way out!  No defense, it is just what I think.  No truth, no lies, nothing other than what I have in my own mind.  It is all about “me!”  I am the final judge…all for me and only me.

It was the same in Narnia! There were a group of Dwarfs who were disillusioned with the idea that there was a “great lion” called Aslan. (A character that symbolized Christ)  They had not seen Him and therefore, he must not exist.  At one point in the book, there was a scam of a fake Aslan and they had been duped.  Never more would they believe in such a silly thing.  They claimed, “We haven’t let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs!”

I see this same thought in the US today.  False Christianity over-shadows real faith and “the world is not going to be taken in again.”  But in the book Aslan actually came to the dwarfs yet they refused to see.  Aslan showered them with great foods and they refused to admit the food was good.  He gave them light, yet they preferred darkness. Their pride kept them from the best thing they could ever experience!

I understand that. Pride, kept me from seeing and experiencing all God wanted in my life for many years.  I knew all the answers…I just didn’t know any of the questions!  When I finally allowed myself to see God as He really was, “High and lifted up!” (IS. 6:1) my eyes were opened to the light and life He really gives.

All of Aslan’s followers saw the Dwarfs sitting in a circle looking down, refusing to see and begged Aslan to help them.  His comment was:

They will not let us help them.  They have chosen cunning instead of belief.  Their prison is only in their own minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.   

It is sad that there are those who refuse to see.  My prayer is that I will keep my eyes looking for Him and to pray for eyes of the blind to be opened.  If you are in a prison of your own making allow God to release you. He will!