WHAT MAKES A MAN GO WILD?

(Post by: Lilly Hobbs)

I am convinced that Lucy Pevensie (a character in C. S. Lewis’ Narnia series) is one of the greatest and most brilliant contemplators. If you have read the series, you understand just how deeply she thinks about the world and her role in it.

One of the things that always strikes me about Lucy is how willing she is to confront difficult questions and thoughts, and how optimistic she is that Aslan will always make the wrong right again.

I have been recently considering one of Lucy’s contemplations in which she makes a profound statement I hope will never leave my memory. Let’s begin with some background first, shall we?

In the Narnian world, some of the animals are people, and possess all the human abilities like talking, reasoning, and feeling just as we do.

In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Lucy, Edmund, Susan, Peter, and Trumpkin are making their way back to Prince Caspian when an enormous bear makes its way out of the woods to seemingly attack them.

Susan hesitates to shoot the bear with her arrow, as she is unsure about whether or not this bear is a Talking Beast, and to kill a Talking Beast would be an upmost evil.

(Many years after the Pevensie’s reign in Narnia, the Calormenes arrived and took control, and the Talking Beasts began to go wild.)

“Wouldn’t it be dreadful,” Lucy says to Susan, “if some day in our own world, at home, men start going wild inside, like the animals here, and still look like men, so that you’d never know which were which.”

Read Lucy’s statement once more.

Now, let me ask you a question… What if, in our world, men start going wild inside, and become so much like animals, but are still men, making it difficult to know the difference?

Maybe, just maybe, Lucy is on to something here. Is this not what we are seeing in the political realm? We have leaders in positions of authority who are willing to steal and cheat and lie and are wild. Is this not what we are seeing in the American Church? We have pastors and elders who have allowed, and even invited, the enemy in through the front doors of their churches, making them increasingly wild Sunday by Sunday. Is this not what I saw at a local restaurant when a group of teenage boys, from a Christian school, were inappropriately hitting on a teenage girl who also happened to be at the restaurant and forced her to leave?

Now, allow me to ask you another question… What makes a man go wild?

I believe we are all aware that if a piece of land is not cultivated consistently and pruned constantly, it will never cease to return to being a wilderness and wasteland. It will always go back to its former state. I don’t believe we are all aware, however, that our hearts can do the same if we are not obedient to Christ and allow Him to do His work of cultivating within us.

Our souls are in desperate need of being tended to.

All it takes to make a man go wild is to leave him to his own devices.

The rejection of truth, goodness, and beauty will always leave us wild. Always. However, the public glorification of evil within a society will not go unpunished.

“Disorder in the world implies that something is out of place. Usually, at the heart of all disorder you will find man in rebellion against God. It began in the garden of Eden and continues to this day.”  (A. W. Tozer)

Though our culture is becoming increasingly more savage by the day, we must not lose sight of the hope we have that Jesus makes new creations out of wild creatures!

So, my friend, resist wildness as Lucy did, knowing that one day all that is wild will be forever tamed.

SO, WHAT IS YOUR RESPONSE?

= How can you pursue truth, goodness, and beauty in your own life?

= What was most challenging to you in this post?

= What are you going to do differently?