The Marsh-Wiggle Who Stomped Out the Lie

In C.S. Lewis's The Silver Chair, there is a scene that every believer should carry in their back pocket. The children Jill and Eustace, along with their companion Puddleglum, have traveled deep underground to rescue a captive prince. But the Green Witch begins weaving an enchantment. She throws a sweet powder onto a fire, strums a mandolin, and with a silky voice insists that there is no sun, no Overworld, no Aslan. Everything they believe in, she whispers, is just a children's game — a fantasy built from things they have seen in her very real underground kingdom.

And it is working. The children's minds grow foggy. They begin to nod along.

Then Puddleglum — wet, awkward, pessimistic Puddleglum — stamps his foot into the fire, and the pain clears his head. He tells the Witch that even if everything she says is true, the made-up world they remember sounds better than her real one. He would rather live as a Narnian even if there is no Narnia.

Faith often works like that. There will be voices — sophisticated, reasonable, persuasive — that try to lull you into forgetting what you know to be true. The enchantment is real. But sometimes faith is not a feeling of certainty. Sometimes faith is stamping your foot and saying, "I will not forget. I have seen the sun. I know the voice of the One who called me, and I am going home."