11-18-13<\/p>\n
The late Malcolm Muggeridge was an iconic figure in British life and English letters. An essayist and critic, soldier and spy, journalist and satirist \u2013 he served as editor of Punch, the venerable humor magazine \u2013 he was, until his death at age 87 (1990) a thinker who was forever interested, and always interesting. He walked a path that similar intellectuals walked: an early interest in Socialism or Communism (his wife\u2019s aunt was Beatrice Webb, the famous Fabian Socialist), then a roughly simultaneous conversion to conservatism and Christianity.<\/p>\n
Those others include G. K. Chesterton; C. S. Lewis; Hilaire Belloc; in America, Whittaker Chambers \u2013 literary men whose early views were either Marxist or atheist or both (Lewis\u2019 friend J. R. R. Tolkien wound up his journey as a profound Christian, but did not commence from a radical origin). Like these persuasive apologists, Muggeridge not only came to understand the gospel\u2019s relevance to the contemporary world, but he was an extraordinarily gifted apostle, a missionary to his own people.<\/p>\n
I recently came across Muggeridge\u2019s thoughts inspired by, of all things, a caterpillar: \u201cQuite often, waking up in the night as the old do, and feeling\u2026 like a butterfly released from its chrysalis stage and ready to fly away. Are caterpillars told of their impending resurrection? How in dying they will be transformed from poor earth-crawlers into creatures of the air, with exquisitely painted wings? If told, do they believe it? Is it conceivable to them that so constricted an existence as theirs should burgeon into so gay and lightsome a one as a butterfly’s? I imagine the wise old caterpillars shaking their heads \u2013 no, it can’t be; it’s a fantasy, self-deception, a dream.\u201d <\/p>\n
These are reflections not so much on the miracles of resurrection and of new life in Eternity \u2013 or, indeed, new life on earth after accepting Jesus \u2013 but upon humankind\u2019s congenital disinclination to accept supernatural gifts of God. Deliverance? Healing? Forgiveness? Salvation? Eternal life with God? Available to ME? \u201cNo, it can’t be; it’s a fantasy, self-deception, a dream.\u201d<\/p>\n
At another time, perhaps inspired by the same encounter with a caterpillar, Muggeridge was challenged by his friend William F Buckley, on the latter\u2019s television program \u201cFiring Line,\u201d to invent a parable whose meaning was unambiguous.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was actually watching a caterpillar in the path of my garden, a furry caterpillar. And I thought to myself: Now, supposing the caterpillars have an annual meeting, the local society of caterpillars. And my caterpillar, an older caterpillar, addressing them, says: \u2018You know, it\u2019s an extraordinary thing, but we are all going to be butterflies.\u2019 <\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Okay,\u2019 the caterpillars say. \u2018You poor fool, you are just like an old man who is frightened of dying, you\u2019re inventing something to comfort yourself.\u2019 [But] these are all the things that people say to me when I say I am looking forward to dying because I know that I am going to go into eternity. You see?\u201d<\/p>\n
Buckley asked, \u201cPlease explain.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so he \u2013 the caterpillar \u2013 abashed, draws back, but in a short time he is in his chrysalis, and, sure enough, he\u2019s right. He extricates himself from the chrysalis, and he is no longer a creeper, which is what caterpillars are; he is flying away.\u201d<\/p>\n
As before, the lesson I derive is not \u2013 I should say not ONLY \u2013 that there is a New Life. Because we know that truth from God\u2019s word; from examples of uncountable transformed sinners; and because some of us have experienced profound inner, spiritual changes. And in terms less prosaic but no less miraculous, we see examples of amorphous tadpoles become distinctive bullfrogs, and, indeed, creepy caterpillars become beautiful butterflies.<\/p>\n
But in the parable of Muggeridge there are, once again, the other factors as old as humankind\u2019s sentience: doubt, skepticism, ridicule, denial, and the old \u201cscientific proofs\u201d against the miracles of God Almighty. These attacks, and myriad attackers, can be daunting to a lonely believer.<\/p>\n
Yet that scenario does not affect, at all, the Truth. Yes, it is the case that we can be (and, as Christians, are in the process of being) transformed from ugly and common, to precious and unique. The Truth does not rely on people\u2019s opinions of it. Neither do God\u2019s promises wait for the world\u2019s vote on whether He will keep them.<\/p>\n
Muggeridge\u2019s predecessor C. S. Lewis wrote of the night his frankly intense devotion to atheism was transformed, melting (kicking and screaming at first?) to a realization of the Fact of God\u2019s existence: \u201cYou must picture me alone in that room\u2026 night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. \u2026 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most… reluctant convert in all England.\u201d <\/p>\n
And the rest of his days were glorious. The author of \u201cMere Christianity\u201d and \u201cThe Screwtape Letters,\u201d as Malcolm Muggeridge was to do a generation later \u2013 and as you and I may do this week \u2013 spread his new and colorful wings in splendor, affirming God\u2019s transformative power\u2026 as a new creation in Christ.<\/p>\n
+ + +<\/p>\n
I have taken us back a century or so, visiting names of great converts, great exegetes. We can also visit the 1970s, when the Jesus Movement and other manifestations of \u201cBorn-Again\u201d Christianity swept the nation. A children\u2019s song that was savored by adults too \u2013 still, to today, as we all are a little grayer or (in the case of singer-songwriter Barry McGuire) balder. But still appreciating the joy, and the truth, of \u201cBull Frogs and Butterflies.\u201d From a backstage interview in Australia recently:<\/p>\n