Hearing the Lion's Voice

In the book The Magician’s Nephew, the first book of the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, the magician is an evil, selfish old man called Uncle Andrew.  He and two children, Digory and Polly, found themselves in the land of Narnia just as it was being born.  They watched light and life come into the world from the beautiful song of the lion Aslan.  After the trees and animals came into being, Aslan gathered them together to begin organizing Narnia, saying to them first, “Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake.  Love.  Think.  Speak.  Be walking trees.  Be talking beasts.  Be diving waters.”  The two children understood him, as did the animals, but Uncle Andrew didn’t.  The narrator explained, “When the Lion had first begun singing, long ago when it was still quite dark, he had realized that the noise was a song.  And he had disliked the song very much.  It made him think and feel things he did not want to think and feel.  Then, when the sun rose and he saw that the singer was a lion (‘only a lion,’ as he said to himself) he tried his hardest to make believe that it wasn’t singing and never had been singing—only roaring as any lion might in a zoo in our own world.  ‘Of course it can’t really have been singing,’ he thought, ‘I must have imagined it.  I’ve been letting my nerves get out of order.  Who ever heard of a lion singing?’ And the longer and more beautiful the Lion sang, the harder Uncle Andrew tried to make himself believe he could hear nothing but roaring….  He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan’s song.  Soon he couldn’t have heard anything else even if he had wanted to.  And when at last the Lion spoke and said, ‘Narnia awake,’ he didn’t hear any words: he heard only a snarl.”          

               Towards the end of the story when Uncle Andrew was a disheveled mess after being tormented by the animals’ attempts to help him, he was brought before Aslan.  But Aslan said he could not really help him, saying, “I cannot comfort him… he has made himself unable to hear my voice.  If I spoke to him, he would hear only growlings and roarings.  Oh Adam’s sons, how cleverly you defend yourselves against all that might do you good!”  I’ve been thinking about this story and what it might teach us about our ability to hear the voice of the Lord.  Aslan of course was a symbol of the Savior, and just as Uncle Andrew shut himself completely off to the voice of the Lion, we may likewise stop ourselves from being able to hear the voice of the Lord.  This was what happened to Laman and Lemuel, for Nephi said to them, “Ye have heard his voice from time to time; and he hath spoken unto you in a still small voice, but ye were past feeling, that ye could not feel his words” (1 Nephi 17:45).  For example, when they heard the Lord’s message for them through the angel, Nephi, Laman, and Lemuel all heard it physically, but only Nephi really understood and believed it.  Some of the Pharisees and chief rulers were similarly deaf to the words of the Savior when He walked among them.  Even after all the miracles He did among them, they continually rejected Him. He questioned them, “Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word….  He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God” (John 8:43, 47).  Of course they could physically hear His words, but they couldn’t hear the voice of the Spirit and therefore rejected His words.  As with Uncle Andrew, it didn’t matter how “beautiful” the song was—they convinced themselves that He could not be who He said He was and from thenceforth could not swayed by any amount of miracles. 

               Zechariah described the people of Israel in his day who likewise would not hear the word of the Lord.  He said, “But they refused to hearken, and pulled away the shoulder, and stopped their ears, that they should not hear. Yea, they made their hearts as an adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the Lord of hosts hath sent in his spirit by the former prophets: therefore came a great wrath from the Lord of hosts” (Zechariah 7:11-12).  This is similar to the Isaiah passage in which the prophet spoke of how the Lord would “make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed” (Isaiah 6:10).  Jacob condemned all those who similarly choose not to hear: “And wo unto the deaf that will not hear; for they shall perish” (2 Nephi 9:31).  He was of course not speaking of the physically deaf but those who stop their ears and choose to not hear the Lord, just as Uncle Andrew chose not to hear the Lion’s voice for what it was.  The Lord’s council to Ezra Thayre and Northrop Sweet is surely a call to all of us: “Open ye your ears and hearken to the voice of the Lord your God” (D&C 33:1).