Speaker 0 00:00:00 How do we get ourselves out of pride? The first thing that Lewis says is, we recover the virtue of faith. Lewis describes it as once he says, it's the art of holding onto truths once delivered by reason, in spite of our changing moods. So one of the first things that faith does is it allows us to ascent to a truth that is greater than ourselves.
Speaker 0 00:00:30 Welcome to the Catholic Theology Show, sponsored by Ave Marie University. I'm your host, Michael dne, and today we are continuing our series on the Chronicles of Narnia and the writings of CS Lewis. We've titled this series into Narnia with Lewis because in each episode, we are gonna be pairing one of his non-fiction writings with one of his Chronicles of Narnia. Today we're gonna be looking at books three and four of mere Christianity, which were originally, uh, written as Christian morality and the idea of beyond personality, uh, and then also with a great story, the Horse and his boy. So, I wanna highlight just a couple themes as we get started. First, Lewis writes in one of an essay, he writes, okay, he presents not only how he understands literature, but in a way he invites readers to begin to understand literature this way as well.
Speaker 0 00:01:35 And it's in a small essay called The Kappa Element in Romance. And Kappa comes from the Greek, uh, well, it's the Greek letter Kappa, which comes from the beginning of the word krypton, which really means the hidden, uh, we use it in our word for Superman, right? Kryptonite. It's a hidden element. Uh, so what's the hidden element in stories according to Lewis? Well, Lewis says, what makes kind of romance stories? What makes fairy stories? What makes really any story worth reading is not so much the plot, but the atmosphere, right? A good story creates a world in which we would love to live, right? It's why when you get to the end of a movie or the end of a book that you really enjoy, sometimes there's a little bit of sadness, because while you're reading that story, you get to live in that world.
Speaker 0 00:02:26 And so, as we approach some of the stories today, I wanna focus on this theme of atmosphere and notice how Lewis creates an atmosphere, uh, especially in the horse and his boy, uh, and how in a way that atmosphere is one that we want to kind of breathe in often, Lewis will say in his Chronicles of Narnia stories, uh, that when the children are in the land of Narnia and they begin to breathe Narnia and air, they feel more courageous. They grow up. And I think in a way, Lewis is saying that's what he wants us to do when we read his writings. He wants us to kind of breathe more deeply, to feel more courageous, uh, to, to kind of be in an atmosphere in which the truths of the faith are more believable, in which the truths of the faith change our lives.
Speaker 0 00:03:14 Of course, in many ways, right? This is the biblical story itself. This is the story of the gospels. The gospels create an atmosphere of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And great literature, in a way, echoes something in that great story, the great story of creation, and the great story of redemption. Uh, so turning then to the books that we're gonna look at today in mere Christianity and, uh, horse and his boy. And again, just for any listeners who haven't read much, Lewis, that is no problem. I this, uh, conversation presupposes, uh, no prior knowledge of Lewis, because I think one of the great things about any great author is that they're able to show things and see things and depict things that really all the rest of us get to listen into, right? Uh, I don't have to, uh, have read Doki occasionally to kind of have other people tell me about him.
Speaker 0 00:04:10 So my hope today is to get to tell you a little bit about some of the things that Lewis has helped me see because he saw and depicted them so well. And really, reading Lewis has changed my life. And so I hope by sharing some of these ideas, that you too can learn to see the world, to see maybe the faith, uh, to see your own life with a little greater clarity and a little more hope. Now, in these stories, there are two themes I wanna suggest. First is the theme of communication, human speech, right? Uh, what is it for? We are often aware of how hard it is to really communicate what we have to say to another person. Um, and we often have been misled. Uh, right? Many people lie, they try to deceive us. What is speech for? And in the horse?
Speaker 0 00:05:02 And his boy at one point, the character who's actually right, a slave who's trying to escape to get to Narnia. When he finally meets Lyn, Lyn says to him, I am one who has waited long for you to speak learning, to speak properly, learning to speak the truth. Learning to speak to God is really the purpose of our lives, right? Uh, and this is something that we have to recognize, that we are kind of born into a world in which we do not speak properly, right? When we're infants, we don't have the capacity to speak. And in many ways, right, the cultures and societies in which we live not only teach us to speak, but they also, they inhibit our ability to speak the truth, right? We're fallen beings and we're born amidst fallen people and fallen societies. So we're gonna discover in a way that the need to discover true speech is rooted really in the gift of the creeds, as Lewis will show.
Speaker 0 00:06:07 Secondly, in both of these works, uh, Lewis wants to say that what's the big obstacle to our speaking the truth? And he says, it's our pride, the pride of our egos, uh, right, it, as I've said before, right? It edges God out of the picture. Our egos over exaggerate our own importance, our own influence. Uh, we want the world to revolve around us. Uh, Lewis will describe pride in mere Christianity by this just beautiful expression. He says, pride is essentially competitive. Pride in a way, has no desire, no goal other than to be better than other people. It has, in a way no genuine enjoyment of the world. And we're gonna see how in the story of the horse and his boy Lewis looks at the way, several different characters are prideful. How they discover their pride and what they do with it. So again, I want to continue with, uh, this approach into the stories.
Speaker 0 00:07:16 Now, before we look at the horse and his boy, I wanna look at mere Christianity. Uh, and I want to dive in a little bit to how Lewis presents kind of Christian morality. Uh, he begins, uh, with a kind of a, a, a charming little story. He begins this way. There is a story about a schoolboy who was asked what he thought God was like. He replied that as far as he could make out, God was the sort of person who was always snooping around to see if anyone was enjoying himself, and then trying to stop it. And I'm afraid that it is this sort of idea that the word morality raises in a good many people's minds, something that interferes, something that stops you from having a good time. In reality, as Lewis continues to write, moral rules, our directions for running the human machine, every moral rule is there to prevent a breakdown, a strain, a friction in the running of that machine.
Speaker 0 00:08:18 So Lewis really thinks in a way of God as the great hedonist, God wants us to be infinitely happy with the happiness that would abide right. And morality opens up the path to that true happiness. Right? Now, often of course, we have to set aside immediate gratifications of pleasures or giving into fear or giving into anger, uh, in order to achieve right, to live according to the moral law. But the moral law gives us that deeper kind of self-esteem, that deeper, uh, when we become an esteemable self, we learn to love ourselves. Not because of what we try to do, but because of who God has made us to be. Right. When we begin to discover that God delights in us, we can then delight both in God and eventually in ourselves. When I try to talk about this in some ways with students, I often just introduce the idea of friendship.
Speaker 0 00:09:18 People may not want to live according to morality, but most people want to be good friends. They want to have good friends, right? Morality, in a way, is the description of how do we become friends with God, friends with others, and friends with ourselves. So Lewis says then, in a way, when he looks at Christian morality, Christian morality is not so much about rules, although they're important, right? Uh, you can't be a friend if you're stealing from your friend. You can't be a friend if you're cheating on your friend, right? These are different ways that, uh, there's certain kind of rules and commandments. But within that, we need the virtues to help us discover what kind of people we can become, right? The virtues of being a good friend. So, Lewis will say in here, it's not so much that God wants people who will obey a set of rules, but God wants people of a particular kind of sort, right?
Speaker 0 00:10:11 Uh, people. In a way, if you were to think about it, if you wanted, uh, a friend who could listen to, uh, classical music with you and play classical music, well, they would have to develop the habits and skills to be able to enjoy that. So what kind of people could we become that would allow us to enjoy God's company? Well, now is when Lewis gets to this chapter on pride. And this chapter on pride, I think is, uh, really one of the most powerful, uh, chapters in the book. Uh, and Lewis in many ways is drawing upon, uh, Augustine's view of pride, uh, to kind of begin with a little bit Augustine's view as he articulates it in his confessions and the city of God. Augustine will say that pride is the desire to replace God with oneself. God, in a way, has organized the entire universe.
Speaker 0 00:11:05 He's created the universe with a certain sense of order, purpose, right? That he's the highest, uh, that we're created to right. Love him. We're created to love our neighbor. We're created to love ourselves. So when we then love something else in the universe more than God, it's not just that we're loving something else, but we are now trying to become a counterfeit God. We're trying to create our own universe. And this is why, uh, pride right blocks out God, um, because pride in a way, moves into this kind of false reality. So what does Lewis say about this? Kind of bringing Augustine into the vernacular? He says this, pride is essentially competitive. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only of having more of it than the next man. You are proud of being richer, cleverer, better looking than others, right? It's the comparison that makes you proud, the pleasure of being above the rest.
Speaker 0 00:12:11 And in this way, pride also because it is essentially competitive. It sets us up in the world in conflict with others. In Lewis's, screw tape letters in letter 18, Lewis will say this, the whole philosophy of hell consists in this idea that to be means to be in competition. So the hellish way of looking at the world is that we are all in competition with one another for limited material goods, for material honor. Now, of course, this is actually an inverse quote of Dante who says that, uh, basically to exist in heaven is to exist in love. So to be means to be in competition. This is the hellish prideful approach. To be means to exist in love is the heavenly approach. Ultimately, and we can think about this, that, right? Uh, the more I love God, the more my neighbor can love God. And the more my neighbor loves God, the more I can love God.
Speaker 0 00:13:22 So there's no competition. We're really being restored to communion, right? But so what is it about pride then that especially harms us? Now, one thing Lewis says is that as long as we are prideful, we can't see the truth of the other person, but we especially can't see the truth about God. He says this, in God, you come up against something which is in every respect, immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that, and therefore know yourself as nothing in comparison with God. You do not know God at all. As long as you are proud, you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people. And of course, as long as you were looking down, you cannot see something that is above you. And I wanna say a word just about the nature of pride. 'cause we might think of prideful person as always thinking they are better than everyone else.
Speaker 0 00:14:16 But I think this doesn't really get at the picture. The prideful person is simply always comparing oneself to everyone else. And remember, according to Lewis, and according to Augustine, right, we are all wounded by pride. Pride is not something that is just a few people or some people, or maybe perhaps great athletes or billionaires, right? Pride is something that affects each and every person. Pride in a way, puts, seas ourselves on the ladder of competition with everyone else. Now, depending on our temperaments, we might see ourselves as at the top of the ladder looking down at other people. We might see ourselves on the bottom of the ladder looking up. Either way, we are fundamentally kind of wounded by this false way of seeing the world. And so, to a certain extent, we have to get off the ladder of pride and kind of really joined the circle of fellowship, the fellowship of recognizing that we are all creatures of God, right? The fellowship that really becomes the communion of the human race, wounded by pride, and therefore only restored in the communion of the church, right? Both in this life and then eventually in heaven.
Speaker 0 00:15:34 So this is kind of that, uh, the, the key idea then, Lewis, is understanding of pride. And I wanna just suggest quickly how Lewis then moves on to three antidotes to pride, faith, hope, and love. Uh, so the first thing again, he says is, the first important thing about pride is just to admit we're prideful. Uh, and because he doesn't mean, of course, pride is not being proud of your accomplishments, it's not being proud of loved one's accomplishments, right? Pride is this particular approach that's rooted in, um, being essentially competitive. So how do we get ourselves out of pride? Well, the first thing that Lewis says is we recover the virtue of faith, the theological virtue of faith. Lewis describes it as once he says, it's the art of holding onto truths once delivered by reason and spite of our changing moods, right? So one of the first things that faith does is it allows us to ascent to a truth that is greater than ourselves, right?
Speaker 0 00:16:36 Paul will speak about the sacrifice of our faith. We have to, in a way to sacrifice our pride and our egos to accept the truth about the world and to accept the truth about revelation. Moreover, Lewis says that faith is a kind of bankruptcy, right? Uh, faith is saying that my own attempts at overcoming my pride, my own attempts at trying to love God, loving my neighbor, loving myself as I ought all fail, right? Despite my best efforts, right? I, I, I don't do the good I want to do, as Paul says in Romans. And so he says, in a way, it's when we finally admit our bankruptcy, when we admit our powerlessness to love as we ought, is when we are kind of freed from the deceptive illusion of pride. That's when faith begins to work. So faith admits that we cannot do what we need to do, and only God can do it in us.
Speaker 0 00:17:39 Uh, Lewis also interestingly, uh, just in a brief comment says that, right? Well, what about faith and works? Which, how are we somehow made right with God? And, uh, Lewis, uh, says in kind of just a, a memorable line, he says that, right? Uh, asking whether or not faith or works saves us is a bit like asking which side of the scissors does the cutting, right? Both blades are necessary. We have to totally trust in God, totally believe in God, and right struggle to follow him. Now, then when he turns to the virtue of hope, he says that hope is fundamentally rooted in our desire for something more, right? That there is a inner longing. Sometimes he'll use the German word sun as a way this spiritual longing for something more. And he says, in a way, we can either keep trying to follow it through material goods or material pleasures or material things in the universe created goods, or we can become disillusioned.
Speaker 0 00:18:38 Or he says, we can follow the Christian way. And the Christian way is what he says, is that if we have a, within ourselves, a desire for something more than this world, then it's very good evidence that something more than this world exists. This is kind of a natural argument for the existence of God. And then Christianity comes in and shows this is exactly what God has planned for us, right? To be with him in heaven. Finally, when he speaks of love, uh, he raises just two interesting ideas. And I find sometimes, uh, listeners or students will sometimes struggle with this concept, but he says, right, if you're worried about whether or not you love your neighbor, right, act as if you did. Um, and then you'll find that you will begin to love your neighbor more. If you don't know how to love God, act as if you did, and you'll begin to love God more.
Speaker 0 00:19:27 Some people struggle with this because I think our culture really values sincerity and authenticity. But the problem is, if I'm completely sincere and completely authentic, then that means I will never grow, right? I will be stuck as I am. So, yes, we ought not to be hypocritical. Uh, but this kind of aspirational acting as if is really the necessary way of growing, right? I have some, uh, grandchildren, right? And, you know, children have to act as if they can talk before they can, so that they learn to talk, they have to act as if they can crawl before they can. And then lo and behold, eventually they begin to crawl. So this certain sense, we have to act as if we love our neighbor and as if we love our God, even when we don't feel that. And then that becomes the very means by which God can help us to grow in these virtues.
Speaker 0 00:20:19 Now, one last thing that Lewis does in the last book of Mere Christianity is he introduces really a treatment of the creed. Uh, and fundamentally what he does is he wants to introduce us to the doctrine of the Trinity. And at one point, he says, now, of course, uh, people have warned him that he shouldn't talk about the Trinity with, uh, regular people. Originally, these were given as, uh, lectures on the B, B, C. And he says, of course, this is nonsense, right? Um, because if people don't have good ideas about God, they have bad ideas about God, right? So he says, right, theology is very practical. He says, theology is like a map. It might be more beautiful to stand at the beach and look at the ocean than to look at a map. But you can't ever figure out where to go on the ocean if you never look at a map.
Speaker 0 00:21:06 A map, he says, is really collected of the experiences of so many other people who have been on the beach and in the ocean, and it's necessary to go anywhere. So theology, in a way, is a collection of other people's experiences, right? In some ways, with Christian theology, it's about the experience of Jesus Christ as the son of God who was one with his Father. Um, it's the experience of Mary who said yes to God. It's the experience of the apostles who left everything to follow God. It's the experience of the Great Saints, uh, in a way, how foolish I would be to stand at the beach by myself and not ex share from the wisdom of so many others who have gone before. So this is, uh, what Lewis wants to suggest. Doctrines are a map for receiving the wisdom of the church and for really converting, for transforming our lives, ultimately for getting out of pride.
Speaker 0 00:22:02 Now, GK Chesterton's book, the Everlasting Man, was one that Lewis said had baptized his intellect, GK Chesterton, when he mentions the creed of the faith. And this is the creed, the Apostles creed, the Nicene Politan creed that is recce, uh, recited every, uh, Sunday at mass. Uh, for those who may uh, go to Mass. Chesterton says this, he says, think of a creed like a key. A key has a hard shape that allows it to unlock the door. It has kind of an arbitrary given shape that allows it to unlock the door, and it opens the door. And he says, the creed, in some ways is the same way. It has a hard, definite shape. The definiteness of the creed isn't something we should turn away from, but we should embrace when it says, I believe right in, in the Son of God. Right? And that the Son of God became incarnate, was born of the Virgin Mary, right?
Speaker 0 00:23:00 That specificity is exactly what I need to cling to, because that's what allows the creed to work. I couldn't have figured it out on my own. I couldn't have discovered it by rationalism. Uh, I just have to receive it. And Chester ultimately says, if we think we're in a prison, then we want a key that opens the door, right? If we think we're at home in the world, then we just wanna stay here forever. But the creed is that which opens the door out of our own pride and out of the pride of others. One of the beautiful things about discovering that we are prideful is that we can then begin to recognize how much we need, right? The incarnation, how much we need, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the gift of the Holy Spirit, death to ourselves in baptism, admitting our powerless, all of these things to genuinely begin to become a little less prideful, and to be able to be restored into right communion with God and with our neighbor.
Speaker 0 00:23:56 Lewis, at the very end of this then describes that God's plan and the creed is simple. He sends his son into the world to make more sons, right? The son of God became the son of man, so that the sons and daughters of men might become sons and daughters of God. This is St. AAC St. Augustine. This is a classic teaching of the fathers of the church, second Peter, right? Uh, one four says that you will become sharers of the divine nature. So Lewis says, in a way, we have to allow God to turn us into his children using a great image. Here. He says, imagine you're a kid and you're playing with 10 soldiers. Wouldn't it be fun to have those 10 soldiers come to life and be turn into human flesh? Well, he says, it'd be fun for us, but it would be the tin soldier might hate it because the tin soldier would be losing all of his tin in order to become human.
Speaker 0 00:24:55 So we in a way have to lose our kind of natural wounded selves, our natural prideful selves, and therefore, we often resist. But when we do that right, we then can become in a way, real tin soldiers. And Lewis says, of course, this is what he thinks is exactly happened in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Imagine a tin soldier that turned into a real little man in Jesus Christ. For the first time, we've seen what a real little man looks like, no longer wounded by sin, no longer wounded by death, but now restored into perfect communion with God. So we're gonna take a little break, and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna look at how Lewis helps us in the horse and his boy to really discover the powerful and also deceptive delusional blinding character of pride in us. And then how we find our way out of it, ultimately, right through Lyn and through his power.
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Speaker 0 00:26:31 Welcome back to the Catholic Theology Show. Today we are continuing our series on Narnia with c s Lewis, and we're looking at really the themes of pride and speech conversion evangelization, as these are found in, uh, books three and four of mere Christianity, which we've just discussed, and now the horse and his boy, which is one of the Chronicles of Narnia. Now, the horse and his boy is a really just kind of a lovely tale, uh, probably among all of the Chronicles of Narnia. It's really somewhat self-contained. Lewis would describe it once in a letter as the story of a conversion of a heath into Christianity, right? Uh, that christianity's a story of conversions. And so the horse and his boy is really simply just the story of conversion, right? What does it mean when somebody goes from not believing in God to believing in God?
Speaker 0 00:27:28 What does it mean when somebody goes from not believing in Jesus Christ, to believing in Jesus Christ, right? To believing that Jesus Christ is the providential Lord of history, who has entered into history, died and rose again. So the story begins in a way, kind of a classical tale. Uh, there's a young woman named Arvis, who is pledged to, uh, be married, uh, to a, a older ermine, which is kind of the, the, the country of the slaves in, uh, the South. And, uh, she doesn't want to get married. Uh, so she decides to actually go and, uh, you know, end her life. Her horse, who happens to be a talking horse of Narnia, speaks to her, right? And, uh, the horse and Arvis, Wynn is the name of the horse. Uh, they decide to try to escape to Narnia. Turns out Wynn had been a, um, a young, uh, mare in Narnia when she had been, uh, stolen and, uh, kidnapped, and then was in, uh, ermine.
Speaker 0 00:28:32 And so now we have this, uh, the young, uh, woman who doesn't want to be in this arranged marriage against her will. And so she is escaping, uh, to the free Narnia, uh, where no, as, uh, Lewis puts it at one time where, uh, no woman is, uh, forced to marry against her. Will we also have another Es Escapee, uh, who is Shasta, who's a, a young, uh, boy again, who is a slave, uh, in Ermine, and he realizes he's gonna be sold to, uh, from the person that he had called his father, uh, right, again, called his father. The certain sense of which speech can become deceptive, uh, that, of course, a man was not his father, the man, uh, really employed him as a slave, but he called himself his father in order to kind of justify it. And so he went, he realized he's gonna be sold to another, uh, master who's, uh, wicked and cruel.
Speaker 0 00:29:29 He decides he wants to escape. And a horse that is with him, a famous warhorse, breathe the warhorse, right? Uh, he and Shasta decide to try to escape for Narnia, and they have this great cry throughout the story, Narnia and the North, right? Uh, Lewis himself would say with me, he was a young, uh, boy growing up in Northern Ireland, that he would look up to the northern mountains and they would just fill him with awe and wonder, right? This desire for something more. Neither Shasta nor Arvis, uh, the boy and girl in the story are kind of satisfied with the world they are in. Uh, but they see that desire not merely as a rebellion against the world they're in, but as a desire for something more. And really, the story is their kind of great escape, right? Their escape and eventual entrance into the world of Narnia.
Speaker 0 00:30:29 Now, along the way, again, we saw that we have the theme of speech communication, and also the theme of pride and humility with respect to speech. It's really interesting to see the way Lewis does this, uh, throughout the story. Uh, Shasta is one who doesn't know how to speak. He doesn't have manners. He doesn't know how to tell stories. Uh, he, when he, every time when he tries to talk to an adult, it says that he isn't sure what to say. And it never occurred to him to tell the truth, because for him speaking to adults meant right that he would often get hit, he would get beat, he would be right. It was a world of violence. Again, this certain sense in which we're born into a wounded world, pridefully immersed within a prideful culture, right? The culture in which we live actually is competitive.
Speaker 0 00:31:27 So we learn to kind of hide ourselves to somewhat move through patterns of deception in order to survive. Uh, so when Lewis has Shasta first encounter the nar, uh, in this great city, he or the Nars, of course, are like, well, what else would I say? But the truth, right? And it ticks Shasta until the, almost the end of the whole encounter, halfway through the story, when all of a sudden, uh, he finally tells one of the Nars the whole truth about his story. When he begins to tell the truth about things, this is the beginning of his conversion. We also see little ways in which, uh, Lewis says that, uh, the caller means have these very eloquent sayings, proverbial sayings. But every time Lewis has them doing it, they're doing it in a way that is, uh, somewhat kind of fraudulent, right? Um, when, when Ash, uh, who's one of the, um, kind of princes in the story is with, um, the, you know, the, the, the great leader of, of the caller means.
Speaker 0 00:32:34 He will always say, you know, you are the light of my eyes. And then Lewis will have him say, but he had a look in his eyes that made it look very clearly that, uh, his father was not the light of his eyes, right? That this, we can fall into the traps of having conventional speech that does often blind and kind of deceive. And the Nars will have these, uh, kind of simple home spun sayings. Uh, one of the times they'll say, right? When Susan Queen, Susan of Narnia, who had come down to visit Ash, the Prince, possibly to get married, but eventually realizes that Ash is a cruel tyrant and therefore doesn't want to marry him, and wants to get back to Narnia, and now begins to realize that she's also trapped. So we have another woman almost trapped in this story. So Louis is, um, again, kind of drawing on these big themes, but the nar will say things like, um, you know, easier in, uh, or easily in, but not easily out outside the lobster about the pot, right?
Speaker 0 00:33:35 Or, um, you know, if you want to know a bear, uh, come live with him in his den, right? These simple sayings, in a way begin to reveal the truth. So eventually what happens is, as they continue their way northward to Narnia and the North, uh, the characters at one point, uh, Shasta, uh, Arvis actually learns of a plan by eSSH to invade Akin land and Narnia, uh, and to kind of try to do a surprise, uh, sort of over 200 men and basically kill everyone in the Akin land, uh, castle Kingdom, and then try to overthrow Narnia in order to steal Susan back. So Arvis learns this arvis rejoins up with Quinn and breathe the horses, and then with Shasta, and they now realize that if they can take, they're not only trying to escape for themselves, now, they have a message. They have a message in a way of warning that if they can get to Arkle and Narnia, they can help deliver others.
Speaker 0 00:34:40 And this is where Lewis is. So, uh, just kind of beautiful, right? Uh, right in some ways, right? We seek the truth of Christianity for ourselves, uh, but we also seek it for others, right? Um, conversion always leads into evangelization. At one point, Shasta finally gets all the way to King Arkin land, and he just says, in broken words, Ash 200 men horses attack Castle at Armour. He delivers the message. And that's all that matters. He doesn't speak it well, it's not eloquent, he's out of breath. But because he speaks that message truthfully, he's able to save akin land, Arkin land is able to set up its defenses. Narnia eventually comes down and supports ark and, uh, land, and Spence and rabid as, and all his soldiers are routed and rabid as is captured. Uh, so, and again, that's kind of that it, Lewis is somewhat saying here, speech is not necessarily so we can become eloquent so we can attract attention to ourselves.
Speaker 0 00:35:46 Speech is to communicate a message about reality. Um, and just stepping back for a moment, right? If we think about our cultural setting, postmodernism, uh, that's often very, um, kind of rampant in our assumptions, is we, if you go back to say, to Nietzche, Nietzche would say that human beings became a clever, interesting animal when we developed speech because we developed infinite capacities to deceive, right? What is speech for Nietzsche? It's a cloak for the will to power. Speech is not a will to meaning as, uh, Viktor Frankl would say, but it's a will to power. So what Lewis here is showing that no speech can be, that it can be corrupted into prideful speech that tries to impose its will on others. But at the same time, speech can communicate truth, speech can liberate, right? Speech can be a creed, it can be a key.
Speaker 0 00:36:51 It can unlock doors, it can unlock the doors of our hearts. It can communicate love, right? It's not accidental that at the end of the story, uh, we have a marriage, right? In the story, we move from an arranged marriage to a, to the joy. Uh, Lewis even has this wonderful thing where he says, Avis also had many quarrels, and I'm afraid even fights with core, but they always made it up again. So the years at later when they were grown up, they were so used to quarreling and making up again, they got married so as to do it, to go on doing it more conveniently, right? And they become king and queen eventually of arc and land. But, so here we really wanna have that idea. Do we really believe that speech, although limited, can tell us a message that we need to know and that we can tell others' messages that we need to know, right?
Speaker 0 00:37:38 And that when we do that, in a way, good things happen, right? Speech can tell the truth. It's just hard. Now, the other thing we do in this story is we learn about the ways in which pride prevents our speech from telling the truth. Now, I want to be, uh, look, first at, I wanna look at three cases. Breathe the warhorse Shasta, the slave boy, who actually haven't told you yet in the story, but it turns out he was actually, uh, the son of the King of Arkin land. Uh, he met his twin brother, Corin in, uh, ermine. Uh, but he didn't, they didn't know they were twins yet. But eventually we discover, uh, that there was an attempt on his life when he was born. And so they tried to, uh, put him in a, in a, in a great ship. Uh, eventually he, the ship sinks, uh, and he washes up on the shore with, in, in a boat, uh, and is cap is basically taken by, uh, the man who is his, who he calls his father.
Speaker 0 00:38:42 So he grows up thinking he's a slave, that he's, in a way, nobody. But eventually he discovers that he's actually the child of the king, right? He's the prince. He's the one to become King Lewis does this several points, of course, and this is really our story. We grow up thinking we are orphans. We are lost. We've lost our identity. We have no meaning, purpose, perhaps other than the limited immediate environments of our family and culture, but we are actually children of the king, right? We were made in God's image and likeness created to be children of God. Sons and daughters of the king meant to reign with him. So Lewis then looks at, breathe the warhorse, and breathe the warhorse is a great character. Um, at one time, the, as they're escaping across the desert, trying to carry this message of warning to king, loon of arkin land, right?
Speaker 0 00:39:43 They're not going as fast as they could, and they're not going fast enough. So Asline, the Great Lion, actually runs behind the horses, not letting them know that he's Aslan and he scares them. So the horses run even faster. Brie, the great warhorse runs the fastest of all, so much so that the lion almost, uh, is at the, is ready to kind of attack and devour Avis. And Wyn. Shasta jumps off as he puts it, like shouts idiotically. He has no rock, no sword, nothing. He just shouts at the lion to go home, go home, and the strangest thing happens. The lion stands up on its hind legs and pauses, and turns around and goes home. Shasta's speech is effective when an arvis run and are safe, but later then, after they've been delivered, Bree is so ashamed of his cowardice that he refuses to go to Narnia, right?
Speaker 0 00:40:53 He says, at one point, I'm only fit for slavery, right? I need to go back to Ermine. I can never go to Narnia. Brie was so prideful, was so maybe cocky, was so confident of his ability to be a great warhorse, right? When confronted with his weakness, right? He couldn't go on. Anyway. I think when we are, when we discover in a way our sins and our failings, and they overwhelm us with despair, one of the things that we discover is that not that that's bad, as though like you're, you're being bad, but it's ineffective. It's unhealthy. It's actually is like it's the wrong way of looking at the world. It's actually prideful to be so despairing over our wounds. So breed. The warhorse has always looked down on everyone else. He looked down on Shasta. But eventually what happens is that the, the hermit of the march, uh, speaks to him and he says, this, my good horse, you've lost nothing but your self conceit.
Speaker 0 00:42:06 No, no, cousin, don't put your ears and shake your mane at me. If you are really so humbled as you sounded a minute ago, you must learn to listen to sense. You're not quite the great horse. You had come to think from living among poor dumb horses. Of course, you were braver and cleverer than them. You could hardly help being that Brie was a talking horse of living amongst, um, non-talking horses. And he continues. It doesn't follow that you'll be any, anybody very special in Narnia. But as long as you know, you're nobody very special, you'll be a very decent sort of horse on the whole taking one thing with another. And so this idea, in a way, pride again, is this essentially competitive disposition in which we need to be very special. But how do we define being special? Not by being loved by God, but by being better than cleverer, than, uh, whatever it is.
Speaker 0 00:43:02 Uh, there's a funny line in the story or a little plot subplot where, uh, Brie is always worried about whether or not, um, the talking horses of Narnia roll on their back or whether or not he loves to roll on his back and itches back, but he is worried that he discovered it from the poor, dumb horses, right? He's so concerned with how he appears that he can't, in a way, truly live. So this sense, as long as you know, you're nobody very special, you'll be a very decent sort of horse on the whole. And this, in a way, is what we have to discover. Pride in a way, wants us to be exalted. Uh, and we have to recognize that that's just an illusion, right? We're not actually better than everyone else, right? Who knows, right? The only thing we know is that we're not as good as we need to be, and we can't live according to what is higher than us without God's help.
Speaker 0 00:43:57 Later on, Brie, when somebody asks him, why does he always swear by lion or by the lion's mane? He explains that by the lion's mane is a metaphor. Of course, Aslan is not a real lion. And of course, uh, we are only referring to the courage and strength of a lion. Uh, and of course, Lewis, in his own way, actually kind of criticizing a lot of maybe, um, kind of, uh, modern theologians that tend to downplay the reality of the creed, the reality of scriptures, and try to de mythologize them or turn them into only metaphors. And so when he does this, at one point, he has, uh, Brie explaining this, and then right behind Brie jumps, Aslan, right? The huge great lion who breathes on him and tickles him with his whiskers and brie runs across, uh, the little area, scared to death again, of lions.
Speaker 0 00:44:53 You can't really blame the horse. They're, uh, wired to be afraid, pretty much of everything, and certainly of lions. Uh, but he says this, now, Brie Lyn says to him, you poor, proud, frightened horse draw near, near still my son. Do not, dare not to dare. Touch me, smell me. Here are my paws, here is my tail. Here are my whiskers. I am a true beast. Ashlyn said, Brie, in a shaken voice, I'm, well, I'm afraid I must be rather a fool. Brie or Aslan responds Happy the horse who knows that while he is still young or the human either, this, in a way, is the great path out of pride, is to recognize that we're poor, proud, and frightened, right? Um, that's simply what we are. And when we begin to say that, oh, I must be rather a fool, right? Then we can become happy, right?
Speaker 0 00:45:59 Then we can become at peace with ourselves and with others, and ultimately with God. And it of course, it's really through, right? The actual incarnate Aslan, uh, the incarnate Jesus. So that's Brie's eventual conversion from pride to humility. Another, uh, side of pride I want to look at is Shasta. Now, if Brie is the character who's looking down at everyone, Shasta is the character that throughout the story is looking up at everyone, always looking up at Revis, looking up at Brie, and thinking that everyone is looking down at him. Um, at one point he says in the story that, uh, he says, right, he falls in a way into, let's describe this as self-pity, thinking about this, not so when the prideful character of self pity, and he will say at one point, Ray, I must be the most unfortunate boy that ever lived in the whole world.
Speaker 0 00:46:58 Everything goes right for everyone except me. Now, it's kind of comical to hear, um, Shasta say this in the story because we know actually things are going wrong for everyone. Um, but in a way who hasn't felt that at some point, I think that I must be the most unfortunate person who's ever lived. Everything goes right for everyone except me, right? At one point, then, when Lyn speaks to Shasta, he says, right, I, who are you? I am one who has waited long for you to speak. And eventually he says, you're not dead. Are you dead? Oh, oh, please go away. What harm have I ever done? You? Oh, I am the un luckiest person in the whole world, right? Shasta thinks he's even more unlucky now that he has met Lyn once more. He felt the warm breath of the thing he doesn't know yet. It's asline on his hand and face there, it said, that is not the breath of a ghost. Tell me your sorrows.
Speaker 0 00:48:00 Now, how does Asline approach the person wounded by pride of self-pity? Tell me your sorrows, right? He doesn't, he doesn't chastise him. He doesn't punish him. He says, tell me your sorrows. And as Shasta begins to tell him his sorrows, then he begins to un show him how actually it was Providence at work. Aslan was actually the lion throughout his story. And ultimately helping Shasta be able to do what he needed to do to deliver the message, uh, and eventually recover his own identity, right? As a child of God, and eventually the king of arkin land. So I think this idea, when we have the pride of self-pity, we can turn to who says to us, tell me your sorrows. And then finally, I wanna consider the case of ramash, of somebody who gets stuck in pride and refuses mercy at the very end. Ramash, um, who is right, the one who, uh, assaulted, uh, ark and land with, um, you know, in, in, in a surprise attack, eventually a, they offer a mercy.
Speaker 0 00:49:07 Ashlyn offers him mercy. Uh, and he says, rabid Ash said, Lyn, take heeded. Your doom is very near, but you may still avoid it. Forget your pride. What have you to be proud of, and your anger who has done you wrong and accept the mercy of these good kings. Forget your pride. What have you to be proud of, and your anger, who has done you wrong, right? How often we can be filled with anger and pride, resentment, and at times, the only way forward is forget our anger, forget our pride. Accept the mercy of the good kings. Accept the mercy of the church, the mercy of Christ, the mercy of Asam, of course, in the story Rapidash refuses to, and when he refuses it, he becomes a donkey, he becomes an ass. He loses the ability to speak, right? All he can now is the awful bray, a haw right of a donkey, right?
Speaker 0 00:50:07 This is what happens. Pride will eventually take away our capacity to speak the truth about ourselves and others, right in its fullness. Uh, so this is kind of the last character of that. So we wanna see, again, this is the way living in pride is living within a prison of hurt and competition alienation. And we have to find our ways out of pride, right? And we ultimately do that through the virtues of faith, hope and love, through going on the journey that Arvis, Shasta, Bri and du the journey to Narnia and the North. So again, as we close this, I want to just remember what is language for? Language is ultimately so we can tell the truth about ourselves and the truth about God. And so we can learn and communicate the message of salvation, of how we are to live, of how we are to find true happiness.
Speaker 0 00:51:03 And in some ways, right? What's language for? Well, it's to tell God our sorrows, right? It's to speak to God. Uh, secondly, I wanna look at the idea that, that within this story, uh, and within the mere Christianity, right? Lewis wants to say that our natural life in its wounded state because of pride, has to die in order that grace can be reborn. But when it's reborn in grace, it becomes more fully what it is. We become more fully human when we become children of God, right? When we surrender attempts at prideful speech, we learn how to speak more truthfully. Ultimately, the faith is, as Lewis puts, it, is the son of God, right? Wants to make more sons of God. Christ wants to make more little Christs. That's it. That's the creed. Finally, I want to show how this is a call to conversion and evangelization.
Speaker 0 00:52:05 It's really for us to say, do we believe the message? Are we willing to change, to admit we are prideful? And also, do we really believe that there are enemies in the world, right? That there is an enemy about ready to overtake Narnia and akin land, that there are enemies, sometimes our own sin and our own pride, and the pride and sin of others, and the pride and sin of the devil, right? There are enemies that aren't working. So we have to share the message, right? And we have to make a decision. Lewis will ultimately, uh, say finally, right when he has an Aslan, right? When we say to him, who are you? And we think about God saying to us, one, who has waited long for you to speak. And I wanna close with this last little image. Uh, Lewis says this, finally, he says, we are like eggs, and we cannot go on being a decent egg forever. We must either be hatched or go bad. Thank you very much.
Speaker 2 00:53:05 Thank you so much for joining us for this podcast. If you like this episode, please rate and review it on your favorite podcast app to help others find the show. And if you want to take the next step, please consider joining our Annunciation Circle so we can continue to bring you more free content. We'll see you next time on the Catholic Theology Show.
