speak of the sun that's visible in the world above, she asks them what a sun is. Groping for words, they compare
it to a giant lamp. She replies, "When you try to think out clearly what this sun must be, you cannot tell me. You can only tell me it is like the lamp. Your sun is a dream; and there is nothing in that dream that was not copied from the lamp."
When they speak of Asian the lion, king of Narnia, she says they have seen cats and have merely projected those images into
the make-believe notion of a giant cat. They begin to waver.
The queen, who hates Asian and wishes to conquer Narnia, tries to deceive them into thinking that whatever they cannot perceive
with their senses must be imaginary—which is the essence of naturalism. The longer they are unable to see the world they remember,
the more they lose sight of it.
She says to them, hypnotically, "There never was any world but mine," and they repeat after her, abandoning reason, parroting
her deceptions. Then she coos softly, "There is no Narnia, no Overworld, no sky, no sun, no Asian." This illustrates Satan's
power to mold our weak minds as we are trapped in a dark, fallen world. We're prone to deny the great realities of God and
Heaven, which we can no longer see because of the Curse.
Finally, when it appears they've succumbed to the queen's lies, Puddleglum breaks the spell and says to the enraged queen,
"Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Asian himself. Suppose we have.
Then all I can say is that . . . 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 playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world
hollow." 28
The truth is exactly the opposite of naturalism's premise—in fact, the dark world's lamps are copies of the sun, and its cats
are copies of Asian. Heaven isn't an extrapolation of earthly thinking; Earth is an extension of Heaven, made by the Creator
King. The realm Puddleglum and the children believe in, Narnia and its sun and its universe, is real, and the witch's world—which
she tempts them to believe is the only real world—is in fact a lesser realm, corrupted and in bondage.
When the queen's lies are exposed, she metamorphoses into the serpent she really is, whereupon Rilian, the human king and
Asian's appointed ruler of Narnia, slays her. The despondent slaves who'd lived in darkness are delivered. Light floods in,
and their home below becomes a joyous place again because they realize there is indeed a bright world above and Asian truly
rules the universe. They laugh and celebrate, turning cartwheels and popping firecrackers.
Sometimes we're like Lewis's characters. We succumb to naturalistic assumptions that what we see is real and what we don't
see isn't. God can't be real, we conclude, because we can't see him. And Heaven can't be real because we can't see it. But
we must recognize our blindness. The blind must take by faith that there are stars in the sky. If they depend on their ability
to see, they will conclude there are no stars.
We must work to resist the bewitching spell of naturalism. Sitting here in a dark world, we must remind ourselves what Scripture
tells us about Heaven. We will one day be delivered from the blindness that separates us from the real world. We'll realize
then the stupefying bewitchment we've lived under. By God's grace, may we stomp out the bewitching fires of naturalism so
that we may clearly see the liberating truth about Christ the King and Heaven, his Kingdom.
† The NASB supplies words not in the original (here, in italics), which make the three things that Satan slanders appear to
be only two: "And he opened
it to a giant lamp. She replies, "When you try to think out clearly what this sun must be, you cannot tell me. You can only tell me it is like the lamp. Your sun is a dream; and there is nothing in that dream that was not copied from the lamp."
When they speak of Asian the lion, king of Narnia, she says they have seen cats and have merely projected those images into
the make-believe notion of a giant cat. They begin to waver.
The queen, who hates Asian and wishes to conquer Narnia, tries to deceive them into thinking that whatever they cannot perceive
with their senses must be imaginary—which is the essence of naturalism. The longer they are unable to see the world they remember,
the more they lose sight of it.
She says to them, hypnotically, "There never was any world but mine," and they repeat after her, abandoning reason, parroting
her deceptions. Then she coos softly, "There is no Narnia, no Overworld, no sky, no sun, no Asian." This illustrates Satan's
power to mold our weak minds as we are trapped in a dark, fallen world. We're prone to deny the great realities of God and
Heaven, which we can no longer see because of the Curse.
Finally, when it appears they've succumbed to the queen's lies, Puddleglum breaks the spell and says to the enraged queen,
"Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Asian himself. Suppose we have.
Then all I can say is that . . . 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 playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world
hollow." 28
The truth is exactly the opposite of naturalism's premise—in fact, the dark world's lamps are copies of the sun, and its cats
are copies of Asian. Heaven isn't an extrapolation of earthly thinking; Earth is an extension of Heaven, made by the Creator
King. The realm Puddleglum and the children believe in, Narnia and its sun and its universe, is real, and the witch's world—which
she tempts them to believe is the only real world—is in fact a lesser realm, corrupted and in bondage.
When the queen's lies are exposed, she metamorphoses into the serpent she really is, whereupon Rilian, the human king and
Asian's appointed ruler of Narnia, slays her. The despondent slaves who'd lived in darkness are delivered. Light floods in,
and their home below becomes a joyous place again because they realize there is indeed a bright world above and Asian truly
rules the universe. They laugh and celebrate, turning cartwheels and popping firecrackers.
Sometimes we're like Lewis's characters. We succumb to naturalistic assumptions that what we see is real and what we don't
see isn't. God can't be real, we conclude, because we can't see him. And Heaven can't be real because we can't see it. But
we must recognize our blindness. The blind must take by faith that there are stars in the sky. If they depend on their ability
to see, they will conclude there are no stars.
We must work to resist the bewitching spell of naturalism. Sitting here in a dark world, we must remind ourselves what Scripture
tells us about Heaven. We will one day be delivered from the blindness that separates us from the real world. We'll realize
then the stupefying bewitchment we've lived under. By God's grace, may we stomp out the bewitching fires of naturalism so
that we may clearly see the liberating truth about Christ the King and Heaven, his Kingdom.
† The NASB supplies words not in the original (here, in italics), which make the three things that Satan slanders appear to
be only two: "And he opened
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