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belief, blogging, culture, disbelief, faith, opinion, perception, reality, The Wizard of Oz
We got to go see the grand kid dance in the Wizard of Oz and had a lovely day. She was absolutely perfect and didn’t miss a step, just stunning. I do love ballet. Grand kids are the best thing ever, too.
The Wizard of Oz is one of my favorites and it speaks very well to matters of faith, to perception, to human behavior, and the nature of reality. There are so many hidden treasures in that tale. I’ve been very blessed, I have seen several versions and read the originals Frank Baum wrote before Hollywood got involved. His first name was actually Lyman, a bit of trivia that has stuck in my mind forever.
It’s hard to imagine anyone being unfamiliar with the story, but Dorothy gets sucked up in a tornado and dropped into the Land of Oz, killing a witch in the process. She eventually meets three characters, the Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin man. The Lion has no courage, the Scarecrow no brains, and the Tin man has no heart. So they set off to meet the Wizard who will grant them what they are lacking and help Dorothy find her way home.
It is not that any of these characters are truly lacking these things, but they have convinced themselves they are. They have placed their faith in the idea that the qualities they desire are missing. The Wizard is actually a fraud, the man behind the curtain, who simply gives each one of them a symbolic token that hands them the confidence they needed to believe. Placebos really, but they change everything.
It is not that the Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin man have no faith, they have huge faith, it is just that their faith is in the wrong things. They have made a totally reason based decision and chosen to believe they have no courage, brains, or heart. Reason based in the land of fairy tales and children’s stories, that is. They know what they know based on the evidence before them and have quite rationally come to the wrong conclusion.
That is rather comical, because human beings have a real knack for quite rationally coming to the wrong conclusion.
It is not that these three need more faith, it is that they need to suspend their disbelief and accept that a medal has magically given them courage, a testimonial has given them a brain, and a symbolic heart has given them the capacity to love. It is not rational, it is actually about embracing the irrational and having faith…in spite of the fact that in this tale the Wizard is really just a fraud with no magical powers at all.
Once they do surrender their own reason, relinquish what they think they know, embrace the irrational, the evidence and substance of their faith comes to light. Until they manage to do this however, they are trapped in their own perceptions, in a reality of their own making, just as Dorthy is trapped in the the Land of Oz.
“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” -Hebrews 11:1
See, there's this thing called biology... 
This post is the EVIDENCE of the faith you had yesterday, it is proof of faith that others demand, and may I say, the substance is pretty darn good too.
It was non existent, yet here it is. Now to the naysayers: putem mmupp, puttem mup 😉
And would it be reasonable to conclude ms bytes that any body who disbelieves their very existence as coming from the Creator, actually resides in the land of Oz?
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LOL, yes, it would be reasonable to conclude that those who don’t believe their existence comes from the Creator, do reside in Oz among the Munchkins. 😉
That is well said, Colorstorm. We are living in a world, Somebody made it. It wasn’t us.
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I love The Wizard of Oz! I cry every time Dorothy is clicking her heels together and chanting “There’s no place like home.” There’s that longing to return home in all of us.
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I just finished my Minnesota version of the Wizard of Oz with my kids’ theater. Everyone seems to have this problem. We all pound these false ideas into our heads, thus resulting in insecurity and lack of self esteem. As Christians, we have access to the One who makes everything right in us.
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Actually The Wizard of Oz is all about politics, economics and the gold standard:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_interpretations_of_The_Wonderful_Wizard_of_Oz
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I read Wizard of Oz every summer while I was growing up. And I watched the movie every time it was on TV, even when the family still had a black-and-white TV. Wonderful memories! J.
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In the old “Star Trek” there was an episode called “Galileo 7” in which Spock’s pure logic was showcased.
Of course, all of Spock’s purely rational decisions ended in total disaster.
The moral of the story was that rationality must be informed by an objective moral standard to be effective.
Here is the first sentence from Pope Saint John Paul II, “Fides et Ratio,” with Bible citations.
“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves (cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).”
He goes on to teach that faith without reason is untethered in reality and blows in the wind like a kite with no string.
Oh and by the way, “Know thyself,” is a famous quote from Socrates.
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IB, I watched this as a child each year, and also read the book not that long ago. Baum’ s story is a reflection of his lack of faith in Jesus Christ. In his view, there is no need for repentance and faith in what is outside ourselves – the Holy One of Israel – we have all we need inside ourselves. Baum’ s picture of the Wizard working at the controls being exposed is Baum’ s contempt for God. This is borne out by his life too. Generations of American readers and viewers have been his unwitting students. How can we be blessed by his work or affirm that “it speaks very well to matters of faith, to perception, to human behavior, and the nature of reality”?
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You are quite right, Maria, and I appreciate your pointing that out. Baum’s own doubt and questioning of faith is evident in his writing, and he is angry at the snake oil of his day, the wizards so to speak, that are representing Christ in his day.
But we do know that, “.. all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Often writers will solve their own mystery in the process of writing, reconcile their own issues, and reveal the answers to what plagues them. I don’t know if Baum ever became of aware of what he was really saying, but I do know that the Wizard of Oz has lead many people to faith, has eased their doubts, and has opened up their minds up to possibilities.
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IB, can you document your statement that he was angry “at the snake oil of his day, the wizards so to speak, that are representing Christ in his day”? Why assume that his lack of faith was the fault of false christians?
“Baum joined the Ramayan Theosophical Society in Chicago on September 4, 1892, having written in the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer for January 25, 1890 that Theosophists were ‘seekers of truth’ who believed ‘God is Nature and Nature God.'”
Baum wasn’t a freemason, but these facts about him can be found at the website of Grand Lodge of British Columbia and Yukon.
http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/biography/baum_l/baum_l.html
Can you document that his story and movie “has lead many people to faith”? Truly, we can read all the fiction C.S. Lewis wrote – all the fiction L. Frank Baum wrote – and this won’t impart faith. The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. It is clear that Baum did not believe, rejected a Holy and Good God, and wasn’t a seeker in the sense you mean. Besides this,
Romans 3:10-12 as it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one: 11 there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. 12 They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
Please don’t soft-peddle an unregenerate man. Yes, writers can try o solve their own mysteries while writing but writers can also propagandize under the cover of fiction.
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Maria, my sweet sister, I know there are many like you who feel passionately about things like this, who fear the taint of disbelief, who are horrified by propaganda, by people being misled. I don’t fully understand what is at the root of those fears and that probably has a great deal to do with having come from some major atheist (and downright satanic) indoctrination. All I had to hang onto was God himself and those stories He used to speak to me, to teach me about who He was, when I was experiencing some major psychological and spiritual abuse. If it weren’t for CS Lewis, if it weren’t for Baum, if it weren’t for God placing them in my hands at just the right time, I would have been truly lost.
On the bright side, I have come to learn that God can and will use anything to reach people, that He is good and faithful, and that we needn’t fear, because He can take even what looks wrong to us on the surface and transform it into a testimony for His existence. I have complete faith in Him that way because He’s done it for me so many times.
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Ok, IB, I understand what you’re saying and some of where you’re coming from as the child of atheists who withheld the truth from their innocent child, whom they abused by making her watch animal slaughter as a tiny person. This is horrific – my abuse was different and not part of my family life directly.
Yes, I fear deception – that’s true. Personally and religiously I was deceived. But while I believe that the Lord can do the impossible, I don’t believe He Who cannot lie uses lies to help us – I’m sorry we can’t agree.
The strange thing is that I once wrote fantasy, and as you spoke about, tried to solve a mystery through a fantasy. I leave it up to the Lord whether any of this was valuable. As a little girl I read The Chronicles of Narnia – they were being written as I grew up. I always looked forward to reading the next book (some of the only books I finished then) but never understood Aslan’s sacrifice but did understand that he was good. I did get the parables to some extent, which were part of Scripture passages read at Mass – never forgot them – and they instilled in me a fear of God, the beginning of wisdom.
I’m glad hH worked in your heart as a little girl. We just can’t agree on this.
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sorry I misspelled the pronoun He, for our gracious Lord!
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Hmmm, I shall have to ponder your words some more, especially the part about using lies, because that is complex issue, and God is the God of all Truth.
At least we are in agreement that God is good and that fear of God is the beginning of all wisdom. 😉
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IB, yes, we agree that He is the God of all truth.
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Bwahaha! Take that SB! Well said IB. There is a serious flaw in rational thinking which has often caused me to wonder why it doesn’t return wrong answers more often than it does. That flaw is that it assumes that all possible outcomes are known – the system is closed. Non-rational (and quantum mechanics by the way) actually assumes the opposite – we can never know all possible outcomes.
Cool post IB.
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You make a really good point, Paul. We cannot see the big picture or all the possible outcomes, so what we believe is “rational” is limited by our ability to perceive and the visible evidence before us. Our senses however,even our brains, are simply not big enough to hold all the data, so at best we try to make informed decisions. To complicate things even more, we’ve got experiences and biases that color our perceptions of what we do know.
I also like what you said about how we tend to think the system is closed. I am often trying to explain that God is a God of abundance and plenty, rich with His blessings, not operating from a place of scarcity and limitation.
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Exactly! 🙂
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