They Also Serve Who Only Stand and Wait

Timothy Lawrence and I have wondered whether George Lucas had ever read C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and whether it influenced Star Wars. But now I’m also wondering whether he ever read Lewis’s That Hideous Strength and whether it influenced his contributions to Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark. 

Initially this thought occurred to me because both the novel and the film have a group of villains, who, to help them take over the world, try to harness a higher power, even though this is at odds with their ideology. The anti-Christian N.I.C.E. wants to use Merlin for his magic, but magic is antithetical to their stated scientism, and Merlin, it turns out, is a Christian. The anti-Jewish Nazis want to use the Ark of the Covenant, which necessitates that they perform a “Jewish ritual.” In the violent finales of both the novel and the film, the cynical, impious villains are destroyed by the very power they sought.

But that last point of overlap led me to consider what may be a more important thematic connection between That Hideous Strength and Raiders. The fact is that neither Dr. Ransom and Co. nor Dr. Jones and Co. have to do almost anything to foil the N.I.C.E. or the Nazis. Dr. Ransom sends people to find Merlin before the N.I.C.E. do, but Merlin finds him. All Ransom does is instruct Merlin what to do and present him to the eldils so they give Merlin the power to destroy the N.I.C.E. And, as some plot-hole sleuths are quick to point out as if it were a weakness of the film, the outcome of Raiders would have been the same no matter what Indy did or didn’t do. He could have stayed home.

But to think that Raiders was supposed to be about Indy defeating the Nazis and instead he turns out to be useless is to entirely miss the point. The great revelation at the end is that the God of Israel does not need any man’s help to defeat His enemies. The point is that Indy moves from, as Tim puts it, “fram[ing] his search for the Ark in purely material, rational terms” to “at least [having] enough holy fear” to know to close his eyes when the Ark is opened. What if Indy is there, not to save the day, but to learn firsthand that our God is in the heavens and He does all that He pleases (Ps. 115:3)?

Ransom’s skeptic friend MacPhee would share Indy’s disdain for “superstitious hocus pocus,” and he’s also the kind of person who would make the above complaint about Raiders of the Lost Ark. In That Hideous Strength, he doesn’t understand why Ransom’s strategy for countering the N.I.C.E. is so passive, so deferential to the eldils (whom MacPhee does not believe in), and so much like just living ordinary lives. He says at one point, “It may have occurred to you to wonder, Mrs. Studdock, how any man in his senses thinks we’re going to defeat a powerful conspiracy by sitting here growing winter vegetables and training performing bears. [OK, that last part isn’t so ordinary.] It is a question I have propounded on more than one occasion. The answer is always the same; we’re waiting for orders” (p. 189 in the Scribner 2003 edition).

Then, after Merlin has overthrown the N.I.C.E., MacPhee seems to wonder whether he, too, could have stayed home. He says, “I’d be greatly obliged if any one would tell me what we have done—always apart from feeding the pigs and raising some very decent vegetables.” To which Ransom replies, “You have done what was required of you … You have obeyed and waited” (368). Ransom’s response reminds me of the last line of Milton’s sonnet “On His Blindness”: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Waiting on God and being ready to act at a moment’s notice is itself a form of action.

Besides, what MacPhee doesn’t see is that the communal life being cultivated at Ransom’s Manor at St. Anne’s is a valuable form of resistance to the cruel, manipulative culture of the N.I.C.E. HQ at Belbury. At Belbury, animals and people are tortured; at St. Anne’s, they are rehabilitated. At Belbury, people are used and turned on each other; at St. Anne’s, they are cared for and submit to one another in love and respect. I like Jake Meador’s recent observation at Mere Orthodoxy that the community at St. Anne’s is practicing something like the Benedict Option, which is say that Lewis puts the emphasis on spiritual formation within Christian community instead of on political action. 

It may seem like Indiana Jones is superfluous in his own story, or like the only characters that matter on the side of the good guys are Ransom and Merlin. Likewise, we may question what good it does to follow Paul’s command to lead quiet lives (1 Thess. 4:13) in a world of so much noise, when maybe we could try pulling the levers of political power to bring it down a few decibels. I say all this not to endorse quietism, but to ask whether we trust that God has the power to vindicate His justice in His own time and in His own way, and whether we are striving to first be faithful in the little things He entrusts to us, things as simple as growing winter vegetables.

Praying and Sleeping in Gilead

Reading Marilynne Robinson’s wonderful novel Gilead a few weeks ago, I was struck by how it joins together two things I tended to think of as being at odds with each other: prayer and sleep. 

I first noticed this about halfway through, when the narrator, the aging and ailing Reverend John Ames—the whole novel is an extended letter written to his young son—closes a section by saying, “Much more prayer is called for, clearly, but first I will take a nap” (125). And then, he says something similar just a few pages later: “Now I will pray. First I think I’ll sleep. I’ll try to sleep” (131).

My initial reaction reading these lines was concern. My thought was that prayer should come first, then sleep. When I think of prayer in relation to sleep, my mind automatically goes to the disciples falling asleep while Jesus prays in Gethsemane, and I know from experience that tiredness is a strong temptation to not pray. So, naturally, reading these lines, I thought, “Uh oh.” It seemed to me that sleep was keeping Ames from bringing to God the troubles weighing on him.

True, Robinson’s novel does recognize that sleep can be a way of avoiding hard things. In one scene, Ames’ best friend, Boughton—also an aging, ailing pastor, seems to fall asleep, and Ames explains why: “Boughton sort of nodded off then, as he does when conversations get difficult” (212). 

Tiredness can also make people irritable, working against the kindness they pray to able to show to others. At one point, Ames gets up before sunrise and goes to his church’s sanctuary to pray—until, just like the disciples in Gethsemane, he falls asleep. When he is woken up by Boughton’s prodigal son, Jack—the very person he had been “praying for the wisdom to do well by”—Ames confesses in his writing that “I was immediately aware that my sullen old reptilian self would have handed him over to the Philistines for the sake of a few more minutes’ sleep” (167). Sleep, it’s true, can be a hindrance to love of God and neighbor.

But Robinson’s novel ultimately shows that prayer and sleep can work together. First, sleep can be an answer to prayer. Ames says the reason he fell asleep in the sanctuary that morning is because he had been “praying for tranquility”; as a result, “I had arrived at a considerable equanimity, there in the dark, and I believe that is what permitted me to sleep” (168). This reminded me of Psalm 127:2: “he gives to his beloved sleep.” The ability to sleep is a gift God gives us out of love; so we should pray for it.

(As an aside—this doesn’t seem to be a point implicit in Gilead—prayer and sleep can both be ways of submitting our lives and cares to God. In Psalm 127:2, resisting the gift of sleep is a symptom of “anxious toil,” of not trusting God to provide. But the person who has prayed in the faith that God provides can fall asleep trusting He will answer. To quote another psalm, “In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O LORD, make me dwell in safety” [Psalm 4:8].)   

Second, the novel suggests that prayer and sleep work together to help us see clearly. Ames writes later on that “I have prayed considerably, and I have slept awhile, too, and I feel I am reaching some clarity” (201). Notice that the clarity comes not from depriving himself of sleep so he can pray all night, nor from sleeping in and neglecting prayer; instead, Ames associates the clarity with praying and sleeping. 

Elsewhere, Ames reflects that “right worship is right perception” (135). To worship God rightly, we have to see Him as He is. That’s hard to do when we aren’t praying, as Jesus did in Gethsemane, “Thy will be done.” When we aren’t praying “Hallowed be Thy Name,” we are following after our own skewed vision of reality, in which everything revolves around glorifying ourselves. And it’s also hard to see God as He is when we are exhausted or sleep-deprived. How many times have I thought the sky was falling and God had forgotten me, when all it took to show my fears and unbelief for what they were was a good night’s rest? 

The novel ends with the line, “I’ll pray, and then I’ll sleep” (247). Is this a sign that Ames was wrong to put sleep before prayer earlier, and now he’s got the order right? I think not, because taken as a whole the novel treats both sleeping and praying as ways that Ames receives peace from God. This last line is instead a sign that, after weeks of spiritual trial leading to “elusive … grueling” sleep (155), he is at peace with God and neighbor once more.