The Dwarfs Are For The Dwarfs
Posted by Sappho on January 25th, 2020 filed in Books, News and Commentary, Theology
If you’ve read the Narnia books, you may remember the point in The Last Battle where a group of dwarfs decide that “They won’t take us in again.” Having been deceived by a fake Aslan, they will trust no one any more. “The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.”
Aslan raised his head and shook his mane. Instantly a glorious feast appeared on the Dwarfs’ knees: pies and tongues and pigeons and trifles and ices, and each Dwarf had a goblet of good wine in his right hand. But it wasn’t much use. They began eating and drinking greedily enough, but it was clear that they couldn’t taste it properly. They thought they were eating and drinking only the sort of things you might find in a stable. One said he was trying to eat hay and another said he had got a bit of an old turnip and a third said he’d found a raw cabbage leaf. And they raised golden goblets of rich red wine to their lips and said “Ugh! Fancy drinking dirty water out of a trough that a donkey’s been at! Never thought we’d come to this.” But very soon every Dwarf began suspecting that every other Dwarf had found something nicer than he had, and they started grabbing and snatching, and went on to quarreling, till in a few minutes there was a free fight and all the good food was smeared on their faces and clothes or trodden under foot. But when at last they sat down to nurse their black eyes and their bleeding noses, they all said:
“Well, at any rate there’s no Humbug here. We haven’t let anyone take us in. The Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs.”
The Last Battle, C.S. Lewis
As The Last Battle is about Christ, in context the corrosive cynicism of the dwarfs is, in context, a refusal to see God at work, in reaction to having been fooled by a false god. But “grace builds on nature,” and I think the story works as well as a parable for the all too common failing of believing “everyone does it,” and blinding your eyes to the fact that honesty and good faith exist. Both in your personal life and in your political life, a “Dwarfs are for the Dwarfs” perspective that suspects that everyone is corrupt, and rejects the “humbug” that some people might be trustworthy, makes you more likely to be taken in, not less.