In Which Edmund Seems to Make Sense

One of the things about lies, deception, and manipulation is that eventually, it all comes out.

I remember the day that I committed myself to embrace the goal of telling the truth always even if it means I suffer negative consequences as a result.  I was sitting in the back of my friend’s truck as we came away from a bonfire on a beach.  It had been a terrible week that ended in a terrible blaze of all manner of nasty things coming out.  Like the bonfire it took so many relationships and used them as so much fuel, ending in the ashy deconstruction of the little world around us.  We were never the same again.  I had told lies.  I had deceived.  I had manipulated.  I was no better than the others.  That was the summer I “grew up”.  

I used to say that I no longer do those things because I was lazy.  The truth was so much easier than keeping all the lies separate, or the selfish chess piece moves straight.  But, it really was the collective damage, the utter devastation of my friends, the unintended consequences of my selfish actions and theirs.  Losing someone’s trust is one of the worst feelings on the planet.  Someone else losing yours is no picnic either.  It changes your relationship to them, anyone like them, connected to them, and no longer can you fully trust anything that comes out of their mouth.  

When we think about it we know, we know, we know, that a person’s trust is one of the most precious and valuable things in existence.  But often we will treat it with contempt the second it becomes advantageous to fulfilling our selfish desires.

And so, I do, to my shame but I’m certain I’m not alone, understand Edmund.  If I just lie everything will turn out ok and I won’t be found out.  If I just manipulate a little I can get what I want.  Oh, that Turkish delight.  Is there anything sweeter than our own personal Turkish Delight?  It is amazing how little a thing we are willing to sacrifice another’s trust for.  

There are some who believe that Edmund made out that Lucy was lying about the world in the wardrobe because he was trying to keep his sisters and brother safe from the White Witch.  I don’t buy that.

When he first lies about it the text says that he was feeling sick and annoyed at Lucy for being right.  That’s not commiserate with trying to protect anyone.  Perhaps later Edmund justifies it to himself that way.  My memory is a little fuzzy on this point given that the movies and book are difficult to untangle in my memory.  Far more telling is what happens next in the story.

Edmund doesn’t keep the lies straight.  He pipes up and says that shouldn’t they head to the left if they were headed to the lamp post?

In my imagination he never finishes the sentence as he realizes that he has skewered himself.

There is a thrill that we get when we lie, and it always fades and turns into a nasty, thorny knot when we are found out. 

Peter’s reaction is actually quite interesting.  He states the obvious.  Edmund lied, and Lucy is the truth-teller.  And then, “There was a dead silence.  ‘Well, of all the poisonous little beasts-’ said Peter, and shrugged his shoulders and said no more.”

Edmund was a known liar before.  Edmund has proved himself a known liar again.  Lucy was the truth teller before.  Lucy has proved herself to be the truth teller again.  

There’s no punishment for Edmund here.  I always thought there should be.  In the movies Peter spits these lines and stops because he is about to get violent with Edmund.  Not here.  Perhaps the greatest punishment is that he is what he is and has done what he has done.  The relationship is broken but somehow it is back to what it had always been.

“Edmund was saying to himself, ‘I’ll pay you all out for this, you pack of stuck-up, self-satisfied prigs.”

When Edmund’s deceit is proved out, it is everyone else who is at fault.  It is everyone else who is the problem.  He is now looking for an opportunity for payback.

Oh, dear readers, is this not how we are with our sin?  Is this not how absolutely everyone is with their lies?  Sin tells us that we, our pleasure and happiness, are the first order highest good.  Anything that stands in the way of that is a threat that needs to be removed.  When cornered and our lies stand bald faced before others we condemn them for being moralistically superior.  As if that is the only reason in the whole world they could have any problem with what we’ve done.  We reduce them down to our own sin level, and begin to plot their destruction.  We lash out.  The worst is the cold rationality that lies in patient wait.  And that is what we see here from Edmund.

It is afterwards, after the resolve to rescue Tumnus and while being lead by the Robin that Edmund begins.  He takes Peter aside, bypassing Susan and Lucy.  He appeals to Peter’s sense as the noble leader.  Edmund asks if he is still to “high and mighty” to speak to him, and informs him they might be making a horrible mistake.  He’s telling Peter only because it might  be “frightening the girls”.

Edmund plays into all the fears Peter has; that he could be leading them into disaster, which side is the right side, how do they know the faun was honest, that the Robin is honest, and how do they get home from there? 

Honestly, I’m not sure how to put this into a spiritual context that I can wrap up with a pretty bow.  The broken, the damaged, those who have seen Him and rejected it for the Turkish Delight, those motivated by their stomach and fleshly desires, they exist.  And a piece of that mentality is inside of all of us, every single one.  From the Leaders, to the Nurturers, to the Mystics, it lies within us all.  Everyone of us has to eventually wrestle with the fact that if we lived in Germany in the 1940s it is very likely that we would all have fallen under the National Socialist spell and lifted our hand up too.

This “what if you’re missing something”, “what if it’s all for nothing”, “can you really trust anyone least of all yourself”, all sounds fully rational.  It’s why Peter is listening to someone he knows to be a liar at all.  

The Spirit calls us to be willing to step out of rationality when He calls.  They are following a Robin who seems to understand them.  Following the Spirit can sometimes feel like exactly that.  You heard, but did you?  You can only take a few more steps in the snow and see what happens.  Lucy and Susan follow the Robin with wide-open eyes.  Peter trusts the Robin because “They’re good birds in all the stories I’ve ever read.”  

Only Edmund sees treachery in this, and in the most subtle ways possible makes others question.  But why?

Because he doesn’t want to go that way.  He doesn’t know what is there, but he knows it isn’t in the direction of the two hills; the two hills between which the White Witch’s house lies.  And where the White Witch is…there is Turkish Delight.

We know it all too well.  The Spirit calls and we start thinking of all the reasons not to listen.  All we need is to remember the sweet taste of our particular Delight and we wouldn’t even see the Robin.  The Spirit calls churches and they start thinking of all the reasons not to listen, not to rescue, to doubt the messenger, to ignore the leading.  

We, all of us, need to hear and follow.