The prince and the dragons: a myth

[Username1]

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a stranger came. The people of the kingdom were kind. They welcomed the stranger as one of their own.

The stranger told them he was a prince, sent by the Great Spirit to slay the dragons that lived on the far shore of the kingdom. The people looked him up in the Observer’s Book of Princes, and sure enough, he was a prince. The Book could not lie.

The elders of the kingdom came together in council, and after much wise discussion, gave their blessing to the prince and his quest to slay the dragons. And so, armed only with his magic sword, off went the prince in pursuit of the dragons’ lair. Many days he travelled, over the great sea, until at last he reached the far shore. And there he faced the dragons.

The dragons fought hard. Fire and brimstone belched from their snouts as they hissed and snarled and whirled around the brave prince. But they were no match for such a valiant foe. Before the sun had set, all the dragons lay dead. The prince hurried back across the water to tell the people of his triumph.

As he stepped from his ship and surveyed the crowds lining the shore, lifting their faces towards him, the prince’s heart swelled. Surely the people would love him, he thought; surely the Great Spirit would reward him for his bravery.

Just then a little boy stepped forward. “Where are our dragons?” cried the boy. “You killed our dragons.”

Within a few moments the cry was carried through the mass of people ranged along the shore. “Where are our dragons? You killed our dragons!” An old lady shook her fist.

The prince looked about him in bewilderment at the scores upon scores of angry faces. “But you’re free now,” he pleaded. “I have freed you from the dragons.”

The little boy stepped forward again. “But we were already free,” he said. “And you killed our dragons. You killed our dragons.”

The people fell silent. And darkness and decay held illimitable dominion over all.

[JaelSister]

Dear Johnny. I’m being extraordinarily thick tonight. Please explain xx

[alecforbes]

Very GMD!

And with that, a couple of quotes from him…

George MacDonald said in The Fantastic Imagination
“Suppose my child ask me what the fairytale means, what am I to say?”

If you do not know what it means, what is easier than to say so? If you do see a meaning in it, there it is for you to give him. A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean. If my drawing, on the other hand, is so far from being a work of art that it needs THIS IS A HORSE written under it, what can it matter that neither you nor your child should know what it means? It is there not so much to convey a meaning as to wake a meaning. If it do not even wake an interest, throw it aside. A meaning may be there, but it is not for you. If, again, you do not know a horse when you see it, the name written under it will not serve you much. At all events, the business of the painter is not to teach zoology.

“But a man may then imagine in your work what he pleases, what you never meant!”

Not what he pleases, but what he can. If he be not a true man, he will draw evil out of the best; we need not mind how he treats any work of art! If he be a true man, he will imagine true things: what matter whether I meant them or not? They are there none the less that I cannot claim putting them there! One difference between God’s work and man’s is, that, while God’s work cannot mean more than he meant, man’s must mean more than he meant. For in everything that God has made, there is layer upon layer of ascending significance; also he expresses the same thought in higher and higher kinds of that thought: it is God’s things, his embodied thoughts, which alone a man has to use, modified and adapted to his own purposes, for the expression of his thoughts; therefore he cannot help his words and figures falling into such combinations in the mind of another as he had himself not foreseen, so many are the thoughts allied to every other thought, so many are the relations involved in every figure, so many the facts hinted in every symbol. A man may well himself discover truth in what he wrote; for he was dealing all the time with things that came from thoughts beyond his own.

“But surely you would explain your idea to one who asked you?”

I say again, if I cannot draw a horse, I will not write THIS IS A HORSE under what I foolishly meant for one. Any key to a work of imagination would be nearly, if not quite, as absurd. The tale is there, not to hide, but to show: if it show nothing at your window, do not open your door to it; leave it out in the cold. To ask me to explain, is to say, “Roses! Boil them, or we won’t have them!” My tales may not be roses, but I will not boil them.

So long as I think my dog can bark, I will not sit up to bark for him.

I love it Johnny!

All the best,
Steve

[AllanS]

You can understand why people won’t let you take away their dreams. But how bizarre when they refuse to let you take away their nightmares?

[corpselight]

Poor dragons!!!
What a nasty fellow to destroy an ecosystem that way

[pilgrim]

I hope you don’t mind if I join your company JaelSister? I too must be thick, and am proud to be thick if it puts me in your company.
Thank you Allan and corpselight for your helps along the way.
I had no idea what it meant but…[size=85] I have no doubt as to why it was posted[/size]

[Username1]

Ah Jaelsister, my child, 'tis the true story of the end of the time of dragons. It was told to me by God in a dream, and I wrote it down, every word as he told me.

It is the true story of the end of the time of dragons, handed down in my family for generation upon generation, told to the children on their mother’s knee, and faithfully retold to their children.

It is the true story of the end of the time of dragons, retold in modern idiom, with accretions and borrowings from other storytellers.

It is the true story of the end of the time of dragons recast as myth.

It is the poetic representation of a scientific fact, the extinction of dinosaurs.

It is a parable, a mythic framework expressing profound spiritual truth. The little boy represents Jesus, and the prince is the adversary.

It is a parable, a mythic framework expressing profound spiritual truth. The little boy represents the adversary, and the prince is Jesus.

It is a fairy story I tell my grandchildren to amuse them at bedtime.

It is the allegorical expression of the ancient adage “be careful what you wish for”. Oscar Wilde said that when the Gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.

It is a prophetic tale whose true meaning is known only to the elect. God has blinded the eyes of the infidel to it.

It is a dream I had after too much wine and cheese last night.

It is a coded message to encourage oppressed believers in China.

Ah Jaelsister, my child, 'tis the true story of the end of the time of dragons. It was told to me by God in a dream, and I wrote it down, every word as he told me.

[corpselight]

It is a parable, a mythic framework expressing profound spiritual truth. The little boy represents Jesus, and the prince is the adversary.

As a reptile enthusiast, this is my favourite one LOL…so IT gets to be true
also because it means no real reptile got hurt

[Username1]

Ah Steve, tha’ knows

Thanks for your kind words. Love, love, love those GMac quotes. Here’s another, along the same lines, from my favourite theologian, Robert Farrar Capon. In his book on the Parables of Jesus, he says this (my emphasis):

“GK Chesterton, who was a master of the apt illustration, once gave some sardonic advice about the limitations of parabolic discourse. He said that if you give people an analogy that they claim they do not understand, you should graciously offer them another. If they say they don’t understand that either, you should oblige them with a third. But from there on, Chesterton said, if they still insist they do not understand, the only thing left is to praise them for the one truth they do have a grip on: “Yes,” you tell them, “that is quite correct. You do not understand.”

To put it simply, Jesus began where Chesterton left off. In resorting so often to parables, his main point was that any understanding of the kingdom his hearers could come up with would be a misunderstanding.

This is one of the most profound theological statements I have ever read. Capon is a true visionary in my eyes.

Cheers

Johnny

[Username1]

It is a parable, a mythic framework expressing profound spiritual truth. The little boy represents Jesus, and the prince is the adversary.

As a reptile enthusiast, this is my favourite one LOL…so IT gets to be true
also because it means no real reptile got hurt

Ah James, you see clearly my child.

[Username1]

Thank you Allan and corpselight for your helps along the way.

Spot on, John. We must all try and help each other light the way, because so often the way is so dark.

All the best

Johnny

[WE_ARE_ALL_BROTHERS]

To my mind, the Christ-Prince slays that great Adversary, the Dragon. And yet, the hard-hearted still reject their newly acquired freedom, preferring to return to the slavery of their now-conquered dragon. “And darkness and decay held illimitable dominion over them for it”.

It’s not a very universalist parable, but I do think its important to meditate on our stubbornness all the same. It resonates with my experience, in that sense. Thanks Johnny.

[Sobornost]

Absolutely great Johnny -

And I love the quote from Capon (although I do not understand - well at least I only understand in part)

[corpselight]

To my mind, the Christ-Prince slays that great Adversary, the Dragon. And yet, the hard-hearted still reject their newly acquired freedom, preferring to return to the slavery of their now-conquered dragon. “And darkness and decay held illimitable dominion over them for it”.

It’s not a very universalist parable, but I do think its important to meditate on our stubbornness all the same. It resonates with my experience, in that sense. Thanks Johnny.

No, no! The dragons are the victims here

Clearly they were scapegoated as the cause of some trouble the prince likely invented to make himself look good!

Wow, this is too easy…so easy to see how ones interpretation of the data (based on their presuppositions) can breed argument

Only poking at your interpretation, WAAB, to illustrate that point, mate!

[JasonPratt]

Y’all aren’t exactly filling me with confidence about reopening CERTAIN THREADS tomorrow.

(Though I did enjoy the parable. And its multivalent meanings. And various replies to it from different sides.)

I suppose I should mention that, as several members here can testify from having read drafts of it already, Edge of Justice has a dragon/knight parable in it, just to clarify that I didn’t get the idea from reading this thread. (Yes, WAAB, it’s rather more universalistic in tone. Great Halloween floppy dragon costume photo, btw! – my nieces would adore that!) I don’t want to distract from discussion of the parable here by relating it, though.

{poking around} As it happens, I already posted it in a doc file back in March 2009, in a thread with yet another dragon/prince parable from Nimblewill, so readers can find both of them there. (Any remarks or discussion of either parable should be in that thread, not this one, which is for Johnny’s. )

As for GK Chesterton, while I don’t recall anything he himself ever wrote that indicated he thought it was only possible to misunderstand Jesus’ parables (although that seems foreign to what I have read of him, and foreign to the procedure reported by that interpreter), MacDonald did teach that Jesus wanted people to understand Him, including in parables. MacD was also extremely charitable about people who didn’t understand, but that is entirely different from claiming there can be nothing but misunderstanding. (“If we are bound to search after what our Lord means – and he speaks that we may understand – we are at least equally bound to refuse any interpretation which seems to us unlike him, unworthy of him.” – “It Shall Not Be Forgiven”, USerms Vol 1)

[Username1]

Capon’s big thing about the Parables, Jason, is that Jesus uses them to confound his hearers’ expectations of what the Kingdom of God ought to be like. For example, it ought to be a Kingdom where the feckless vagabond son gets his butt kicked by an angry father instead of having the fatted calf killed for him. It ought to be a Kingdom where all those shirkers who only put in a few hours work down the local vineyard don’t get even half as much pay as those diligent folk who slaved away there all week.

And I reckon he’s right. The shocking reality of Grace is anathema to most people - especially some Christians!

[Sherman]

I love it Johnny! Awesome. It reminds me of John’s Revelation, visions of what simultaneously was, is, and is yet to come, and what is not!

[Username1]

Aw, thanks Sherman . I’m not John for nothing .