#...aaaaannd disney messed that part up too

[queenlucythevaliant]

Lucy tells God to shut up

There’s a brief moment at the end of LWW—one of Lucy’s most human—that the Disney movie cut in favor of “they all hug:”

“There are other people wounded,” said Aslan while she was still looking eagerly into Edmund’s pale face and wondering if the cordial would have any result.

‘Yes, I know,’ said Lucy crossly. ‘Wait a minute.’”

I consider this one of the most direct statements Jack makes about human nature in the whole of the Chronicles, one that I think children benefit from hearing early.

When God speaks to us, in our broken humanity, more often than not our reaction is to tell Him to shut up.

Another short story I’ve had in my mind as long as I can remember: When my mother was a teenager, she was ice-skating hand-in-hand with a friend when she heard the voice of God audibly say, “slow down, you’re going to crash.” She responded: “No. He’ll laugh at me.” A few moments later, she fell and badly injured her face. Each time she’s told me that story, from the time I was very little, she’s finished, “… and looking back, I am absolutely confident that man is basically evil. Because my knee-jerk reaction to a warning from God was to say, ‘No.’”

Nothing as dramatic as either Lucy’s or my mother’s story has ever happened to me, but I know well what it’s like to tell God to shut up. I’d imagine that most Christians know it too. Sometimes, it’s insistently ignoring the conviction of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, it’s a negative reaction to something you encounter in Scripture. Regardless, it’s very human. Like Sarah’s laughter when God promised her a biological son. Often, we do not react to the voice of God with the obedience and delight that we ought to have, but with rebellion and incredulity.

Which is why (or, I should say, one of the reasons why) Lucy’s reunion with Aslan in PC is one of my favorite sequences in the series. This time, when Aslan commands Lucy to do something she’d very much rather not, she does not say, “shut up.” She tells him that she doesn’t want to and asks if she really has to—which is not wrong, Jesus Himself did it—then takes a moment to gather her strength from Aslan, and says, “alright, I’ll do it your way.” And then she does.

Each time I read Lucy saying, “I’m ready now” I think, Oh Lucy, how you’ve grown. Each time Aslan responds, “now you are a lioness,” I remember that although fallen man is basically evil, redeemed man is capable of great things.