Chapter 3: BAD CAN BE BEAUTIFUL
At least on the surface
(From Bringing Narnia Home by Devin Brown)
Q1: In this chapter we examined how evil may not appear as evil. Can you think of other evil characters from fairytales who did not appear evil and who disguise their true intetions?
Pinnochio by Italian authour Carlo Collodi is the second most translated children's book after The Little Prince. It was written as an educational and cautionary story for children, first published some 70 years before the first Narnia book. It was the story my dad put us to sleep with and its lectures have a lot in common with Narnia, especially when it comes to evil disguising itself as beautiful or benefitial. If you've never read the original, I highly suggest it. In my not so humble opinion I believe Pinnochio should be a book every respectable home library has - beside the Bible and a dictionary. And if you haven't read it yet and want to avoid the spoilers, please skip this answer to the next.
Pinnochio, a wooden puppet brought to life with the promise of becoming a real flesh-and-blood boy, if he'll deserve it, runs into a number of characters, who mostly promise him an easy shortcut to the pleasures in life, instead of a strenuous, but more rewarding way of hard work.
Mr. Cat and Mr. Fox are a pair of swindlers and thieves, who befriend Pinnochio, telling him they'll make him a partner on their business scheme - to actually grow money from a tree in a field of miracles. Not only do they deprive Pinnochio of all his money, they hang him up on a tree - an attempted murder! It was only then the poor Pinnochio realised he's been a fool. But not for the last time.
Later in the story Pinnochio and his schoolfriend learn of Pleasure Island, where all your dreams come true - no work, no schools, no chores, no grown-ups, just fun and games and sweets all day! To get there, every once in a while, in the dead of night, a strange carrige arrives, picking up all children who are sick of their parents and teachers and other adults restricting their free spirit with chores and church. They go the island, they have their fun, but ultimatley pay a gruesome price - and do not even realise before it's too late! Pinnochio suffers terribly because of it, and it ends with him being thrown in the sea to drown!
There were more cases, where due to disobediance and refusal to do things the right way, Pinnochio gets blindsided by the fascade evil hides behind, and always pays a terrible price, but do not worry. Ultimatley he learns his lessons and gets the reward he was promised.
Q2: In your own life, have you ever met someone who appeared friendly or caring on the surface, but later turned out to be the opposite? What were some of the details of that encounter? What were your feelings when you learned the truth?
I had this "friend". I met her on one of my errands back in uni, on the street, she and her friend were doing a survey for one of their papers from theology. She thought my answers were super cool, so she invited me to their Bible study. Throughout the study, I met more "friends" like her - literally like her. All pretty girls in their 20s, all showering me with compliments ("You're so beautiful and your heart is so beautiful!" "You are so smart, surley you'll accomplish everything") with smiles like Cheshire cats. The thing that bothered me though, was the Bible study itself. That the teacher of this principle was recieveing supposed lessons directly from Jesus in a cave somewhere and it only got more sus from there, that He didn't actually rose from the grave, it was all a spiritual thing and that Jesus, the guy who broke bread and laughed with his disciples wasn't the same Jesus, God of the universe come to save the world. Like the guy from Nazareth was, for lack of better word, posessed by God for the purpose of salvation. Sketchy stuff. The other thing that bugged me about it was that they never mentioned that teacher's name. They told me his life story as this miraculous tale of devotion, all while avoiding his name, only ever calling him teacher. When I asked her about his name, they would say: "not yet, later! Other people say such mean lies about him, it's best not to say". Cruising between trying to trust my friends and all the bothering statments they claimed were theological facts finally drove me to a deep-dive search where I got some very irrefutable evidence that the teacher they so carefully avoided the name of, was in fact a notorius cult leader, imprisoned for concrete-proven multiple SA (it's the JMS cult, there's a documentary on Netflix too). Next time, I confronted my "friend" about it. She was horrified as in "how can you believe such lies! Jesus was persecuted for lies too!" After that, we distanced, because I refused to go to the "Bible study". And I felt so relieved after that, like I've just avoided a grand disaster of some sort. I felt disappointed and betrayed by my friend - someone I trused and believed I can confide in, only to find she was trying to pry me away with secrecy - "don't tell that to anyone, especially not the youth group you go to. I feel like they are a bad influence on your spiritual journey!" I felt dismayed and disgusted how they tried to use that the most holy and wonderous truths, that God lived us so as to give His only Son for our salvation, as a mimic, an exuse for a deeply corrupt and evil man. And lastly I feel sorry for that "friend" and her other "friends" - I don't think they were evil themselves, I think they were so deep in that that they reject any truth outside the one they believe it to be.
Q3: How about your own actions -- have you ever tried to excuse something bad you did? Can you think of an occaion when it was hard for you to see your own flaws?
Oh, countless times! That same "friend" I mentioned above could say that about me, because truth be told, I did my absolute best to avoid her after that encounter - rainchecking meetings, not replying or reacting to messages, esentially ghosting her, untill she stopped messaging me altogether. I'm not the type of friend that would constantly send messages and inquireing about others' lives, I do remember things like their birthdays and do catch up on occasion or say hi if we were to pass on the street. I know that for most I could do better, and I hide behind vapid excuses like "no time as is; I'm an introvert; I'll do that some other time" and hers was not the first friendship that would end that way - us slowly growing apart because I would not make an effort to keep in touch. I know I can do better, it's just easier to not bother with it all. Though for her I kept telling myself that it was she who betrayed me first; who used my friendship with no regard to me and my feelings. I suppose the "I'll forgive her, I guess, because she did not know what she was doing," is still a poor enough excuse because it comes from a place of pettyness instead of actual forgivness. I must let that go, I know. It's always hard for me to see my own flaws because I do care too much for what others think of me and how I present myself. It's way easier to blame everything else but yourself to be at fault. But I do believe I can overcome that.
