The Silver Chair and Christian Liberty
I have enjoyed C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia since I was 9-10 years old. Recently, I have been revisiting them with my own children. This excerpt from The Silver Chair stood out to me in a way it had not before…
“Really, Puddleglum,” said Jill with a shudder, “you do have the most horrible ideas. How do you think of them all?”
“Oh, bother his ideas, said Scrubb. “he’s always expecting the worst, and he’s always wrong. Let’s think about those Gentle Giants and get on to Harfang as quickly as we can. I wish I knew how far it is.”
And now they nearly had the first of those quarrels which Puddleglum had foretold: not the Jill and Scrubb hadn’t been sparring and snapping at each other a good deal before, but this was the first really serious disagreement. Puddleglum didn’t want them to go to Harfang at all. He said he didn’t know what a giant’s idea of being “gentle” might be, and that, anyway, Aslan’s signs had said nothing about staying with giants, gentle or otherwise. The children, on the other hand, who were sick of wind and rain, and skinny fowl over roasted campfires, and hard, cold earth to sleep on, were absolutely dead set to visit the Gentle Giants…”
As believers, how often do we go beyond what God clearly prescribes in His Word for the sake of our own creature comforts and pleasures, and calling anyone who would raise concerns alarmists, legalists, or worse? Like Jill and Eustace, we may find that the way, though pleasurable at first, may not just distract us from our mission- but may just consume us in the process.
