Peter Pan Was NOT a Christian

 

Wednesday, July 8, 2020

Psalm 131:1-3

Lord, my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty.  I don’t concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp.  Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk.  Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me.  O Israel, put your hope in the Lord—now and always.

The longer title of the story we usually shorten to Peter Pan includes:  The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up.[1]  If Peter were to walk into the room right now he would be the most teenage-looking 116 year-old you’ve ever seen; the story was written as a play in 1904.  I first saw it on TV in the 1950’s and, was so impressed, I wrote a letter to Walt Disney the next day, asking if he had any advice for me about becoming a cartoonist.  His studio sent me a very encouraging letter.

But what does any of that have to do with Psalm 131?  Well, everything, really.  In Disney’s animated movie production, Peter sings the song:  I won’t grow up!

I won't grow up, I don't want to go to school.
Just to learn to be a parrot,
And recite a silly rule.
If growing up means
It would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree,
I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up  Not me!
I won't grow up,

I don't want to wear a tie.
Or a serious expression
In the middle of July.
And if it means I must prepare
To shoulder burdens with a worried air,
I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up
Not me, Not I, Not me! So there!
Never gonna be a man, I won't!
Like to see somebody try And make me.  Anyone who wants to try
And make me turn into a man,
Catch me if you can.

I won't grow up.
I will never even try
I will do what Peter tells me
And I'll never ask him why

We won't grow up!
We will never grow a day
And if someone tries to make it
We will simply run away
I won't grow up!
No, I promise that I won't
I will stay a boy forever
And be banished if I don't!
And Never Land will always be
The home of youth and joy
And liberty
I'll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up
Not me!
I won’t!
No sir!
Not me!

Well, where do we start?  We don’t have to speak to the obvious flaw of wanting to remain a child, removed even from acknowledging that responsibilities do exist, especially if it means we might share in that burden.  The point is Scripture[2] not only calls us to leave our childish immaturity, but shows us how we can enter the process of doing what Peter Pan detested…growing up.

The Psalmist shows us Maturity-101, first page, first paragraph, lay down pride, hush all the noise…put aside your supposed deep thoughts, and trust in the LORD! 

Scripture declares that the very beginning of wisdom is to fear (reverence) God[3].

Fear of the Lord is the foundation of true wisdom.  All who obey his commandments will grow in wisdom.  Praise him forever!  Psalm 111:10

In the children’s story, Peter Pan turned his back on this; too many have followed him into Never Never Land.

Let’s Pray Together:

Father, help us today to become wise, putting down our pride, so we can begin to trust and lean on You.  Grow us strong, LORD…we are needed by others, and there is no real strength without Christian maturity.

For You Today

C. S. Lewis wrote that he didn’t think God was necessarily concerned with us being happy in our circumstances, but rather wanted us to grow up and learn to love.

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road today.  Have a blessed day!

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Title Image:  Pixabay.com  Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©

For other posts on Christian Maturity see Life Off Track and The Confident Hope of All Saints

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[1] Written by J. M. Barrie

[2] See 9 references in the New Testament of maturity or being encouraged to grow up

[3]

Lies That Kill Series #3 - To Be Free You Have to Break-Free

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He replied, “Don’t let anyone mislead you, for many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and saying, ‘The time has come!’  But don’t believe them.  Luke 21:8

So far in our series we have seen two lies:

Lie #1 is false teaching itself, false ideas and doctrines that can destroy us, or which can be destroyed by a pure heart when God forgives sin, and clears our conscience, and helps us be committed to a genuine faith in Jesus Christ.

Lie #2 is found in a currently popular saying:  I’ve gotta love me first.  Jesus says in response:  listen to the commandments of God and love Him first, others also, and don’t worry about yourself so much; God will take care of you.

Lie #3 which we explore this morning is that the only way you can find fulfillment in life is by breaking-away from any restraints that God (or anyone else) tries to place on you.  To that Jesus says:  Go ahead and dig your heels in against me; what you’ll find is more emptiness than you ever imagined.

I want to share two stories to illustrate what this lie is like, and what it means to rebuke this lie and experience the truth of real freedom.  Both stories are set in London, England; the first is about the Queen’s husband, and is a true story.  The second is fantasy about a cab driver. 

The Queen’s Husband

Phillip is 98 years old and married to the U.K.’s Queen Elizabeth.  My own Queen Elizabeth (no relation) and I have been binge-watching The Crown on Netflix; season 3 had an eye-opening look at Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh’s life.

For more than 60 years Phillip has played second fiddle to the Crown’s wishes and instructions.  His days are filled with delivering meaningless speeches at the grand openings of restaurants, dental clinics and coal miner’s union gatherings.  Inbetween those monumental accomplishments are polo matches, yachts, whiskey and sports cars.  As a jet-certified pilot the Queen’s husband longed to be what Buzz Aldren, Neil Armstrong, and Michael Collins lived…a moon-walking adventurer seeking the highest of experiences possible to the human being.  In short, the Queen’s husband was a bored and angry man, who, after meeting the three astronauts in 1969 following their historic first-ever footsteps on another celestial body, added emptiness and despair to his repetoire, because he found out they were no closer to understanding the meaning of life than he.

Ultimately it was the despair that drove Phillip to seek help from Bishop Robin Woods, and, in time, rediscovered faith in God.  This led the Duke on a lifelong journey of soul-searching and humanitarian endeavor.  In his early arrogance Phillip felt trapped by the monarchy ordering even the smallest step of his days; he pushed God far from his heart and mind, and longed to break-free and really live.  When finally broken by despair and a sense of meaninglessness in life, he confessed his need and was found by God.  Life’s meaning was not out there above some cloud; it was (in his words) in here (head) and here (heart)!  He didn’t have to break-free; brokenness revealed the Son who could set him free, indeed.

The Cabbie’s Trip
Our second story comes from the rich mind of C.S. Lewis, author of The Chronicles of Narnia.  There are 7 novels in all, the first, and perhaps most widely known is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  Narnia is a mystical, magical, fictional place which most fans of Lewis imagine represents God’s Kingdom.  Lewis wrote these stories to stir the fantasy-receptive minds of children.  I love re-reading them!  (Don’t tell anyone).

The final book in the series is The Magician’s Nephew, which starts in London, but quickly moves via teleportation to  Narnia.  The nephew is Diggory, and…

After the witch causes havoc in London, Polly and Diggory manage to get her back into one of the magical worlds (Narnia) which is formed moments after they arrive. However, whilst transporting themselves and the witch, they also transport their uncle and a cab driver (cabby) who Aslan makes the first ever king of Narnia.[2]

Here’s how Lewis describes Cabby’s meeting with Aslan, the lion, who is by all accounts the undisputed representation of Jesus in the story:

“In the darkness something was happening at last.  A voice had begun to sing…Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself….It was so beautiful we could hardly bear it…One moment there had been nothing but darkness; next moment a thousand, thousand points of light leaped out – single stars, constellations, and planets, brighter and bigger than any in our world…

‘Glory be!’  Said the Cabby.  ‘I’d ha’ been a better man all my life if I’d known there were things like this’…

They made you feel excited; until you saw the singer himself, and then you forgot everything else.  It was a Lion.  Huge, shaggy, and bright, it stood facing the risen sun.  Its mouth was wide open in song and it was about three hundred yards away…The lion was striding to and fro about that empty land and singing his new song.  It was softer and more lilting than the song by which he had called up the stars and the sun; a gentle, rippling music.  And as he walked and sang the valley grew green with grass.  It spread out for the Lion like a pool.  It ran up the sides of the little hills like a wave.  In a few minutes it was creeping up the lower slopes of the distant mountains, making that young world every moment softer.  A light wind could now be heard ruffling the grass. Soon there were other things besides grass…”[3]

Conclusion

Two stories and one conclusion, which the Apostle John wrote long before C.S. Lewis ever held a pen:

So if the Son sets you free, you are truly free.  John 8:36

The Queen’s husband, Phillip had to see there was nothing over the next cloud’s end that was worth seeing until he first opened his heart to see what God wanted to give him.  Only then was he a fit vessel for the great humanitarian and spiritual work God was able to do through him since that time.

Phillip got set free by the Son of God, and he was free indeed.

While Phillip was married to a queen, and would himself never be a king, Cabby had never even been close to a king.  A nobody, just a poor cab-driver from the inner city of London is taken by surprise to Narnia.  And, staring into a thousand points of light, hearing the song of the King of Kings, his heart is opened to the sound of grace.  And when grace lands in your heart and soul in full force there is no stopping what it can do with the rest of you!

Aslan made the nobody cabby the first-ever king of Narnia.  This is the upside-downness of Jesus the Son, and the way His grace sets people free. 

And this table is a place where that grace abounds for whosoever will come.

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…Amen!

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[1] Title Image: Pixabay.com.    All Scripture from The New Living Translation (unless otherwise stated) 

[2] Answers.com  Narnia images courtesy of WikimediaCommons.com

[3] (The Magician’s Nephew) - photo credit “sarahrichterart” (pixabay).

Squirrel Theology

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Monday, June 25, 2018

Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers.  Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ.  This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.  Then we will no longer be immature like children.  We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching.  We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth.  Ephesians 4:11-14^(NLT)

There was a pastor who had earned his doctorate in seminary, and was well-known for his doctrinal sermons, taking the exposition of Scripture through the great life-giving themes of salvation, baptism, the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ incarnation, and so-on.  He had just been extended the invitation to serve as pastor by the elders of a very evangelistic congregation. 

Not everyone on the elder board was in total agreement, however.  One cantankerous old-timer was overheard in the parking lot expressing his dismay over the decision to call this seminary-trained preacher:  I just ain’t sure this-un’s the preacher fer us; I don’t want none o’ that doctor-in-all preachin’.  Jus’ gimmie some Bible is all!  If’n I get sick I’ll a-go see me a doctor. 

It’s not easy to get past hard-headedness.  Perhaps the seminary word would be obtuse! 

Another stumbling block to understanding and communication is squirrel-headedness.  A few weeks ago, I was travelling to church on a Sunday morning and, in the space of a mile or so, I had to swerve twice to miss squirrels. 

One thing is certain – you can never be certain about which way a squirrel will turn…left, right, forward, back, or zig-zag like a gnat in a fire storm; the only thing you can count on is that it won’t be boring!

I once counselled someone who had the squirrel thing down pat.  She would ask me a question; I would answer with a suggestion as to how the Scriptural approach would take some time, but be better in the long run, and she would leave all smiles, determined that her life was going to change.  The next week she would be in shambles because she had tried to do the Biblical thing (for six minutes) and become disillusioned at how it didn’t work.  Zig, zag, left, right, forward one step, backwards two!

Grrrr.

Pastors do not know everything, whether they’ve been to seminary, or if they fell off the turnip truck one morning, bumped their head, and took it as a sign to go into the ministry that day. 

But one thing is true – when God gives a gift is isn’t lacking; pastors, may I say, are no exception.  And when it comes to the Scriptural principles we find in the church’s doctrines, a pastor worth any Biblical salt at all will show you the parallel between what Scripture says, and what’s going on in your life.  And it would pay to give it more than six minutes of try-out time.  Barring that, you could be in danger of squirrel theology, bouncing in the wind from this acorn of teaching to that twig of promise, without a shred of doctrinal reality.

For You Today

If God gave you a pastor who teaches sound doctrine, thank God, and keep measuring his or her teaching by Scripture. 

If you have a pastor that makes you wonder if the Bible has anything certain, true, and life-building to say about the way to live your life, maybe the nut has fallen a little too far from the tree!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day. 

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com

When Tolerance Grows Up into Spiritual Maturity

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Friday, December 15, 2017

I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection.  But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.  No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing:  Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.  Let all who are spiritually mature agree on these things.  If you disagree on some point, I believe God will make it plain to you.  But we must hold on to the progress we have already made.  Philippians 3:12-16^(NLT)

Paul takes the humble position of allowing for his own human fragility.  In one of his other letters (to the Corinthian church) Paul stated it clearly that when he let go of having to control everything – letting God do what God does – his weakness became the effective mighty power of God.[2]

Rather than trying to be “strong” in his own abilities, Paul desired to put the past behind and focus on what God was doing.  Henry Blackaby’s Bible study Experiencing God calls that mindset locating where God is working and cooperating with Him.  

The important point is that Paul understood, even in a wonderfully vibrant fellowship like the church at Philippi, there were going to be disagreements; that is inevitable with human beings!  What Paul wanted to stress was that even in the most controversial of differing opinions genuine spiritual maturity will not lose sight of the goal.

Tolerance has been an overly-accepted word in our vernacular the past several decades.  It hangs like a Behavior Storm Trooper over the entire culture.  We are expected to tolerate others’ viewpoints; in fact, we are expected to surpass tolerance to the degree that all people’s ideas and values are considered equally valid.  That may be high-sounding, but it is dangerous.  For instance, the person that holds an idea that thirty-five cents in his pocket is enough to buy a new car is going to have a huge problem when it comes to the Mercedes dealer allowing him to drive a $63,000 E-Class SUV off the lot for that price; not all ideas are equal!  There will be conflict…if not arrests!

Tolerance can also tip the scale toward arrogance.  Check into a discussion between a Christian conservative and a Christian progressive and you will not have to wait long before the accusations and tempers begin to fly.  The same holds true for liberal and conservative political discussions. 

What Paul suggests is spiritual maturity.  Hear it again from the apostle:

If you disagree on some point, I believe God will make it plain to you.  But we must hold on to the progress we have already made. 

Holding on to the progress already made is a matter of not losing your Christian cool!  It means being willing to be weak personally so that God’s Spirit can be strong in the middle of strengthening relationships.  It means in spite of a disagreement you’re willing to wait for God to make things clear.  A dear friend of mine made that point with me after he’d witnessed my prolonging a heated discussion with another believer.  He said:  You know, Russell, you don’t have to have an answer for everything!

This is the essence of spiritual maturity – when you refuse to take personal offense over a disagreement.  When someone wants to get in your face and turn up the volume, you can turn the other cheek and offer graciousness; if not, you disown the opportunity to build-up the person who disagrees with you. 

And if you’re simply (and arrogantly) tolerating someone’s ideas (because in your humble opinion he or she is an idiot) your attitude towards them can only bring deeper separation and fuel the angry fires of misunderstanding.

So, as Paul also said:

…but we are to hold to the truth with love in our hearts.  We are to grow up and be more like Christ.  He is the leader of the church.  Ephesians 4:15^(NLV)

For You Today

Growing-up into the likeness of Christ – keep that in focus!

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a blessed day!

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[1] Title Image: Courtesy of Pixabay.com

[2] 1 Corinthians 12:10