Episode 36: Perception of Inception

December 4, 2011

Featuring Matt Anderson and Ben De Bono

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One comment on “Episode 36: Perception of Inception

  1. Michael Dec 9, 2011

    Re: What if Christianity didn’t exist in some real world we woke up to? I think CS Lewis has something to say about this in “The Silver Chair.” The witch tells Puddleglum and the kids that, in the surface world, the real world, Aslan doesn’t exist. (Of course, she is wrong; but I think the situation holds.) After some hesitation (but not much), Puddleglum says:

    One word. All you’ve been saying is quite right, I shouldn’t wonder. I’m a chap who always liked to know the worst and then put the best face I can on it. So I won’t deny any of what you said. But there’s one more thing to be said, even so. Suppose we have only dreamed, or made up, all those things–trees and grass and sun and moon and stars and Aslan himself. Supose we have. Then all I can say is that, in that case, the made-up things seem a good deal more important than the real ones. Suppose this black pit of a kingdom of yours is the only world. Well, it strikes me as a pretty poor one. And that’s a funny thing, when you come to think of it. We’re just babies making up a game, if you’re right. But four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow. That’s why I’m going to stand by the play-world. I’m on Aslan’s side even if there isn’t any Aslan to lead it. I’m going to live as like a Narnian as I can even if there isn’t any Narnia. (Chapter 12, “The Queen of Underland”)
    Now, this used to strike me as very naïve and foolish – “hardly a mature affirmation of faith,” I thought. But I have since come to realize just how profound an affirmation of faith it is. Faith is conviction of a reality even in the face of evidence to the contrary. So, if I woke up into some world where Christianity didn’t exist, I would like to think I wouldn’t feel compelled to let it go, but I would hang on to that “dream” in the belief that, even though it may (in this new world) be factually unverifiable, it is nevertheless true – and might even help conform the “real world” into the “dream world.” And, really, how diferent is this from the situation we find ourselves in, where the “real world” so-called we live in is really not at all like the Kingdom of God – but we who have been given the gift of faith, we who have had this dream of God implanted in our minds (so to speak), are called to make “reality” more like “the dream,” God’s dream? As the movie says, ideas are infectious!

    Anyway, just wanted to throw good old Puddelglum into the mix!

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