Can’t You Read the Sign?

The Silver Chair is book 4 in the Chronicles of Narnia. (Yes, I know saying it is the 4^th book is fightin’ words in some circles.) If you haven’t read the Chronicles of Narnia, you really owe it to yourself to do so. They are all very quick reads which can be enjoyed by children as nice fantasy tales and by adults as a font of philosophical asides. But, (hopefully) you knew that already.

I just reread The Silver Chair, and this time out it got me to pondering the nature of signs. Hang out in religious circles long enough and you will hear many times that something or other was a “Sign from God.” Hang out in non-religious circles and you’ll hear the same thing without the “of God” part. The implication is the same in either case. Someone was faced with a decision and along came this external event which told the person what to do.

The intriguing thing about Signs from God or from some Undefined Sign-Generating Force is the need for interpretation. Signs of this sort do not show up in Red Hexagons. This type of Sign is something that is not obviously a sign at all. The question is how to interpret this thing that may or may not be a Sign.

The Silver Chair provides a marvelous example. Jill Pole shows up in Narnia and meets Aslan, who gives her Four Signs to aid her in the quest he has set for her. The Signs all seem pretty straightforward. Yet, as the story proceeds, Jill and her companions (Eustace Scrubb and Puddleglum) completely miss the first three signs. The signs pointed to things which were only obvious in retrospect. And therein lies the first problem with Signs. ”Find the ruined city of Giants” seems like a pretty straightforward command, but if the city is really, really ruined and it is dark and snowing, you may not recognize that those heaps of stones around you are actually the ruined city of Giants. You imagined something looking like a slightly ruined city with obvious buildings missing a few windows or a collapsed roof; you were not imagining large rocks in your way as you try to find a path.

Having missed the first three signs, our heroes reach the moment of crisis with the Fourth Sign. The sign was that the person for whom they were searching would be the first person who asks them to do something in the name of Aslan. Suddenly a raving lunatic who is tied to a chair utters that request.

“It’s the Sign,” said Puddleglum. “It was the words of the Sign,” said Scrubb more cautiously. “Oh, what are we to do?” said Jill.

Are the words of the sign the same thing as the Sign? How do you know? Maybe it is a coincidence? Maybe it is an accident? Maybe the Evil Queen knew about the sign and arranged this as a fake Sign?

“Oh, if only we knew!” said Jill.
“I think we do know,” said Puddleglum.
“Do you mean you think everything will come out right if we do untie him?” said Scrubb.
“I don’t know about that,” said Puddleglum. “You see, Aslan did not tell Pole what would happen. He only told her what to do. That fellow will be the death of us once he’s up, I shouldn’t wonder. But that doesn’t let us off following the Sign.”

In the fantasy land of Narnia, it all worked out nicely once they followed the Sign. As a children’s story it has a nice message about following directions.

But, Lewis is playing a deeper game than just thinking of this as a children’s story. It is the use of the word “Signs” that tips it off. The story would work just as well if Aslan had given Jill four instructions or directions or tasks; indeed all those words would fit the matter better than the word “Signs.” So, why use “Signs”? Why the repeated emphasis on the word “Signs”? Look at the discussion above and note the prominence and repetition of the word “Sign.”

Lewis is clearly referencing the Gospel of John in this matter. One of the (very many) fascinating structural details in the gospel of John is the author’s use of the word “sign.” At the end of the first miracle in this gospel (changing water into wine at the wedding in Cana), John writes, “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.”

A bit later on we get “This was now the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.” Later still, “When people saw the sign that he had done, they said, ‘This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world.’” Towards the end of the gospel, we get Johns summary:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

The prominence of the word “sign” in John’s gospel prompted people to start counting, and there is widespread consensus that John carefully constructed the story to have Seven Signs, seven being one of the numbers of perfection. Alas, there is not total agreement on which seven events in the book are the Seven Signs—but that is a matter for another day.

It is the connection between Lewis and John that is of interest here. In what sense are the events in John actual signs? As John explains, they are signs because they point to something else. It looks like Jesus is just doing a miracle or a magic trick, but John wants the reader to realize that if you are focusing on the event itself, you are missing the thing to which the sign points. Jesus feeding 500 people with trivial amount of food is a sign pointing to something much larger.

Is it obvious that these events in John are actually signs? Is the fact that John tells us that something is a sign proof that it is actually a sign? Johns says that healing a kid in Capernaum was a sign. Is he right about that? I say that the fact that it is sunny outside today is a sign; am I right about that? The debate on either of those events between a believer that it is a sign and a skeptic is inevitably tedious. “Yes, it is a sign.” “No, it is not.” Repeat.

This is where Lewis enters the conversation. Is it a Sign or just something that looks like a Sign? How do we reason this out? There are, after all, truly many ways to interpret this event, only one of which is that it is an actual Sign. Some of those other ways of interpreting the event are every bit as reasonably and logically consistent and believing it is a Sign. “Oh, what are we to do?” asks Jill (and you). “Oh, if only we knew!” exclaims Jill (and you).

Puddleglum has the only possible answer. You don’t try to reason it out. You just decide. Is this a Sign or not? If so, do what the Sign indicates you should do. And then take the consequences. Figuring out if something is a sign, Puddleglum implicitly argues, is not the sort of thing you reason out through logical argument. You either believe or you do not. It’s faith.

This is why discussions about signs are so frustrating to people. Someone comes along and says they have a sign from God that they should do something which you know is preposterous or silly or wrong. So, you try to reason them out of it, but all your fine reasoning falls on deaf ears. The person who believes in the sign, by the way, is every bit as frustrated as you are; why can’t you read the Sign?

We often don’t recognize the prominence of faith in our understanding of the world. Sometimes the signs are right there in front of us, with John pointing to them in big letters saying “Look, here is a Sign.” We can spend a lot of time like Jill agonizing over what to do about those Signs. That agonizing will get us nowhere. Some things are not amenable to reason. Instead, we can do something much better. As Lewis writes in big letters: You have no choice; Embrace your inner Puddleglum.