From Jim McGuiggan... Puddleglum

Puddleglum

Eustace, Jill and Puddleglum, the Marsh-wiggle, had travelled far together on an assignment from Aslan, C. S Lewis tells us (and Charlie Harrison reminded me), and now they find themselves in the Underland and in the presence of the witch-queen of that gloomy domain. They had found Prince Rilian and would have been pleased to go home immediately but it wasn’t that simple. "Home"? Where was that? The witch-queen had filled their hungry bellies and with sweet words she assured them that her dark and gloomy world was all there was. So she said, as she strummed her hypnotic music and threw a strange powder on the fire. The music and the aroma were stealing the memories and so were stealing the minds of the adventurers. There is no other world, there is no Narnia, there is no great lion called Aslan-—those are all dreams, figments of the imagination that a good dose of realism would cure. But great truths are stubborn things and Puddleglum was no wild dreamer. He knew the difference between gloom and pointlessness and knew how shabby the life the witch-queen of gloom, in her good Freudian fashion, was offering compared with a world he knew was real. He speaks for a host when he rises against the great seducer:

          "One word, Ma'am, he said, coming back from the fire; limping because of the pain. One word. All you've been saying is quite right, I shouldn't wonder. I'm a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won't deny any of what you said. But there's one thing more to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things—trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Suppose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, 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. That's why I'm going to stand by the play-world. I'm on Aslan's side even if there isn't any Aslan to lead it. I'm going to live as like a Narnian as ever I can even if there isn't any Narnia. So, thanking you kindly for our supper, if these two gentlemen and the young lady are ready, we're leaving your court at once and setting out in the dark to spend our lives looking for the Overland. Not that our lives will be very long, I should think; but that's a small loss if the world's as dull a place as you say."

Paul was realist enough to believe that if Christ hadn’t risen from the dead the Christian faith is false and the Christians were more pathetic than any others in the world. But he knew! Christ had risen. So without conceding anything, we’d say with Puddleglum that the world non-believers think is wishful nonsense is a better world and true to the best in humanity than the gloomy existence of which the atheist, H. J Blackham, said, "It’s too bad to be true!" He thought the greatest argument against unbelief was, "Its pointlessness...It’s too bad to be true." Christians, with Puddleglum, would sort of say about the Christian faith, "It’s too good not to be true."

©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.

Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.