There’s a scene in C.S. Lewis’, “The Silver Chair,” where the main characters go beneath the earth and run into a witch who tries to enchant them with lies. Under the power of her spell, they are nearly convinced that everything they’ve known is a falsehood. There is no such thing as a sun—they’ve just let their imaginations run wild with the idea of torches. There is no world above, as though life existed on the ceiling of the Underlands. There is only the Underlands—nothing more and nothing less. As the witch talks, the enchantment continues, and it’s not long before her ridiculously absurd lies are are believed by her visitors, despite the fact that they are demonstrably wrong.
In modern times, anything can be perceived as truth. We act as though facts are subjective, that science is a myth, and that evidence is false if it goes against what I personally feel; for to us, nothing is greater than how we feel. If we don’t like a fact, there are conspiracies we can believe in instead—torches instead of suns—and in due time we soon find ourselves controlled by the enchantments we believe in.
The idea that truth is subjective to each and everyone of us is actually New Age theology, and it has permeated the church in recent times, working its way all the way up to the prophets themselves. But Christians cannot believe whatever they want, for to us truth is not a belief, but rather, a person. And if our eyes are focused on the way, the truth, and the life, we’ll be able to withstand the enchantments that beckon us into their unrealities, as we call each other out of the depths of the Underlands and back up to the surface.
But if we stay in the Underlands, convinced that there is no such thing as the surface, then we should expect no one to take us seriously on our earthly beliefs, let alone our Heavenly ones. Let us forcibly deny conspiracy theories and their false prophets and turn our eyes upon Jesus and receive him only, for He is true wisdom.
Jamin Bradley 