There is no Sun

My family has been going through the Chronicles of Narnia, and have just finished The Silver Chair.  It's interesting timing because right about the same time we finished it, I came across a podcast that drew a connection from this book that I had overlooked.  In this passage, the Queen of Underland lulls the protagonists simultaneously into a sense of comfort and confusion and then proceeds to spin a false narrative until they themselves believe it.  The podcast draws a connection between this passage and so-called "Progressive Christianity," but I think it should serve as a warning to all Christians about the temptation to abandon truth.

Here is an excerpt from that chapter:

Now the Witch said nothing at all, but moved gently across the room, always keeping her face and eyes very steadily towards the Prince. When she had come to a little ark set in the wall not far from the fireplace, she opened it, and took out first a handful of a green powder. This she threw on the fire. It did not blaze much, but a very sweet and drowsy smell came from it. And all through the conversation which followed, that smell grew stronger, and filled the room, and made it harder to think. Secondly, she took out a musical instrument rather like a mandolin. She began to play it with her fingers—a steady, monotonous thrumming that you didn't notice after a few minutes. But the less you noticed it, the more it got into your brain and your blood. This also made it hard to think. After she had thrummed for a time (and the sweet smell was now strong) she began speaking in a sweet, quiet voice.

"Narnia?" she said. "Narnia? I have often heard your Lordship utter that name in your ravings. Dear Prince, you are very sick. There is no land called Narnia."

"Yes there is, though, Ma'am," said Puddleglum. "You see, I happen to have lived there all my life."

"Indeed," said the Witch. "Tell me, I pray you, where that country is?"

"Up there," said Puddleglum, stoutly, pointing overhead. "I—I don't know exactly where."

"How?" said the Queen, with a kind, soft, musical laugh. "Is there a country up among the stones and mortar of the roof?"

"No," said Puddleglum, struggling a little to get his breath. "It's in Overworld."

"And what, or where, pray is this ... how do you call it ... Overworld?"

"Oh, don't be so silly," said Scrubb, who was fighting hard against the enchantment of the sweet smell and the thrumming. "As if you didn't know! It's up above, up where you can see the sky and the sun and the stars. Why, you've been there yourself. We met you there."

"I cry you mercy, little brother," laughed the Witch (you couldn't have heard a lovelier laugh). "I have no memory of that meeting. But we often meet our friends in strange places when we dream. And unless all dreamed alike, you must not ask them to remember it."

"Madam," said the Prince sternly, "I have already told your Grace that I am the King's son of Narnia."

"And shalt be, dear friend," said the Witch in a soothing voice, as if she was humouring a child, "shalt be king of many imagined lands in thy fancies."

"We've been there, too," snapped Jill. She was very angry because she could feel enchantment getting hold of her every moment. But of course the very fact that she could still feel it, showed that it had not yet fully worked.

"And thou art Queen of Narnia too, I doubt not, pretty one," said the Witch in the same coaxing, half-mocking tone.

"I'm nothing of the sort," said Jill, stamping her foot. "We come from another world."

"Why, this is a prettier game than the other," said the Witch. "Tell us, little maid, where is this other world? What ships and chariots go between it and ours?"

Of course a lot of things darted into Jill's head at once: Experiment House, Adela Pennyfather, her own home, radio-sets, cinemas, cars, aeroplanes, ration-books, queues. But they seemed dim and far away. (Thrum—thrum—thrum—went the strings of the Witch's instrument.) Jill couldn't remember the names of the things in our world. And this time it didn't come into her head that she was being enchanted, for now the magic was in its full strength; and of course, the more enchanted you get, the more certain you feel that you are not enchanted at all. She found herself saying (and at the moment it was a relief to say):

"No. I suppose that other world must be all a dream."

"Yes. It is all a dream," said the Witch, always thrumming.

"Yes, all a dream," said Jill.

"There never was such a world," said the Witch.

"No," said Jill and Scrubb, "never was such a world."

"There never was any world but mine," said the Witch.

"There never was any world but yours," said they.

Puddleglum was still fighting hard. "I don't know rightly what you all mean by a world," he said, talking like a man who hasn't enough air. "But you can play that fiddle till your fingers drop off, and still you won't make me forget Narnia; and the whole Overworld too. We'll never see it again, I shouldn't wonder. You may have blotted it out and turned it dark like this, for all I know. Nothing more likely. But I know I was there once. I've seen the sky full of stars. I've seen the sun coming up out of the sea of a morning and sinking behind the mountains at night. And I've seen him up in the midday sky when I couldn't look at him for brightness."

Puddleglum's words had a very rousing effect. The other three all breathed again and looked at one another like people newly awaked.

"Why, there it is!" cried the Prince. "Of course! The blessing of Aslan upon this honest marsh-wiggle. We have all been dreaming, these last few minutes. How could we have forgotten it? Of course we've all seen the sun."

"By Jove, so we have!" said Scrubb. "Good for you, Puddleglum! You're the only one of us with any sense, I do believe."

Then came the Witch's voice, cooing softly like the voice of a wood-pigeon from the high elms in an old garden at three o'clock in the middle of a sleepy, summer afternoon; and it said:

"What is this sun that you all speak of? Do you mean anything by the word?"

"Yes, we jolly well do," said Scrubb.

"Can you tell me what it's like?" asked the Witch (thrum, thrum, thrum, went the strings).

"Please it your Grace," said the Prince, very coldly and politely. "You see that lamp. It is round and yellow and gives light to the whole room; and hangeth moreover from the roof. Now that thing which we call the sun is like the lamp, only far greater and brighter. It giveth light to the whole Overworld and hangeth in the sky."

"Hangeth from what, my lord?" asked the Witch; and then, while they were all still thinking how to answer her, she added, with another of her soft, silver laughs: "You see? When you try to think out clearly what this sun must be, you cannot tell me. You can only tell me it is like the lamp. Your sun is a dream; and there is nothing in that dream that was not copied from the lamp. The lamp is the real thing; the sun is but a tale, a children's story."

"Yes, I see now," said Jill in a heavy, hopeless tone. "It must be so." And while she said this, it seemed to her to be very good sense.

Slowly and gravely the Witch repeated, "There is no sun." And they all said nothing. She repeated, in a softer and deeper voice. "There is no sun." After a pause, and after a struggle in their minds, all four of them said together. "You are right. There is no sun." It was such a relief to give in and say it.

"There never was a sun," said the Witch.

"No. There never was a sun," said the Prince, and the Marsh-wiggle, and the children.  

--C.S. Lewis, The Silver Chair

I believe it's no mere coincidence that Lewis has this same queen transform into her alternate form as a serpent.  I think he was making a very clear connection between the queen in this passage and the serpent who intersects our lives as well.  In fact, you can see some of the same tactics in the account from Genesis 3 where the serpent deceives Eve:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 

--Genesis 3:1-6

The Queen of Underland and the serpent of Genesis both start the same way. With questions. Some about the nature of reality, but ultimately the questions are there to make them question the nature or commands of God.  Dangling comfort and pleasure before us, and in the case of Genesis, adding the ultimate temptation of autonomy -- self-rule.
Autonomy is not a new temptation, it was the first.  It manifests differently in different generations,but today it seems to have taken the form of Tolerance.  I don't mean Tolerance in it's original sense. As the Oxford English Dictionary would define it:

The ability or willingness to tolerate the existence of opinions or behaviour that one dislikes or disagrees with.

No, that's not what the culture today tends to define as tolerance. In today's culture one cannot claim to know truth or claim the exclusivity of Christ as a means for salvation without being labelled intolerant or bigoted. This warped version of "tolerance" only tolerates those who say "You do you," and even celebrate all ideas and moralities as EQUALLY valid.
This isn't tolerance, it's moral relativism, and it tends to be intolerant of anyone who disagrees. Furthermore, it does not hold water. The same individuals that, in word and action, deny any absolute morality will often tell us in the same breath that it's wrong to impose our morality on others.  Even Christians, myself included, fall into the trap of saying "We ought not legislate morality." If that's the case, then why to we legislate against theft, murder, pedophilia and rape?  Aren't those moral judgments?
I know the most common secular answer to this is that morality is simply a social contract.  Many will say that it evolved over time to what it is now.  The real question is, if that's the case, then how can we say that our concepts of morality are any better than those previous?  If you believe that a society with racial equality is better than a segregated one, if you believe that woman's suffrage is progress, and if you believe that a society without slavery and forced prostitution is actually, objectively better than one where that is legal, then you believe that morality has an external locus.  It comes from an authority that is greater than our personal preferences.
A view of morality that sees it as merely a social contract would have to, by definition, label all freedom fighters or civil rights leaders as immoral.

Unfortunately, in our culture of false tolerance, it's often hard to stay grounded in the truth. With so many false narratives, even about Christianity itself, we often find it difficult to hold to our values. We live in a society that tells us we're quaint or foolish to believe in such a thing as objective moral truth grounded in God.  A society that condescends whenever the topic comes up, just like the Queen of Underland condescends in her false narrative.  And much like the protagonists in The Silver Chair, it may feel as a relief to let go of objective morality, follow the cultural narrative and repeat in unison:  "There is no truth."

It turns out that the wisdom of our age is no different of the ages previous.  Noah was scoffed at as a fool for believing God would flood the land, the Pharaoh scoffed at Moses, and the prophets were scoffed at by the people of Israel who trusted their own wisdom above that of God. I think Paul explains it best in his letter to the Romans.

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.  For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.  For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools,  and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.  

-- Romans 1:19-25

This is the same path by which "Progressive Christianity" starts to veer from the truth of God.  First they condescend the scripture.  The first attack is often on the authenticity or inspiration of scripture.  "Did God really say...?" is the driving theme of books by the likes of Rob Bell and Jen Hatmaker.
The next step is to call into question the goodness of God by appealing to our human emotion. I like the response Tim Keller gives to this:

If your god never disagrees with you, you might just be worshiping an idealized version of yourself.

— Timothy Keller (@timkellernyc) September 12, 2014

These "progressives" like many before them are wise in their own eyes.  Denying God and ultimately choosing self-worship over true worship. In believing themselves to be wise, they fall into the foolishness of moral subjectivism -- an ultimately unsustainable ideology.
How then should we as Christians protect our hearts and our minds against these temptations? I would suggest we start by actually knowing what we believe.  Many really don't.  Barna did some polling that showed a startling number of professing Christians subscribe to non-Christian ideologies rooted in secular philosophies.  Numbers like 61% of Christians polled agreed with ideas rooted in New Spirituality, 27% of Christians polled STRONGLY agreed with the statement "Meaning and purpose come from becoming one with all that is."  That idea could not be any more opposed to the Christian worldview which says our meaning comes from being Set Apart (or Holy, as it is often put in the Bible.)  We are to be transformed by the Holy Spirit, not conformed to the world around us (See Romans 12).
While I would argue that we ought to value the study of our faith and theology beyond a simple daily devotional, actually reading the Bible for ourselves is a fantastic place to start. Begin a daily Bible reading plan.  I like the "Read Scripture" app by The Bible Project.  It helps you track your progress and also contains videos that help place the various books of the Bible in context.  You can get it on iOS or on Android.  Or if you are on the go a lot, Dwell is a fantastic audio Bible app.  If you process data like I do, you might do a mix of both.  Listening on Dwell while simultaneously reading along.  I find I retain a lot more that way.
Those are just a few suggestions, take them or leave them.  The important thing is that we need to be familiar with the truth of scripture if we are ever going to keep afloat in a world drowning in ideological counterfeits.