The Mirror of Truth
Crumbs From Our Master's Table Primer Series - Pt. 2
Read Part 1 of Crumbs From Our Master’s Table: A Primer.
In the 1937 Disney classic, Snow White, the evil Queen looks into a magic mirror and asks, “Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”
In her vanity and narcissism, she seeks the affirmation of the magic mirror to tell her what she needs to hear—that she is the fairest in the land. Her value and self-worth depend on a good report from the magic mirror. But when she learns Snow White is the fairest in the land, she makes three brash attempts to kill her. The Queen’s value and identity is completely wrapped up in a favorable report of her Self, and her obsession with this “best” view of herself drives the plot of this fairy tale.
But what are fairy stories good for anyway? According to Tolkien, fairy tales are effective in helping us regain “a clear view” of real life. Fairy tales like Snow White take us out of our familiar surroundings and place us in a perilous realm where we are arrested by the unfamiliar, a place where we can see reality more clearly. This is what Snow White does for us, the reader.
The mirror reveals the Queen is evil because of the question that is at the root of her heart. It’s not the other way around. Asking the question doesn’t turn her into an evil witch; asking the question reveals that she is an evil witch already. Both her question and her response to the mirror’s answer reveal this about her heart. She doesn’t ask who is the fairest in the land to give honor where honor is due. She asks to make sure she still maintains the status of “fairest of all.” Otherwise, she would not have been horrified, and enraged, to learn Snow White had taken her place.
This same kind of experience is true of us when we look in the mirror of truth—the perfect law of liberty (James 1:25)—and the Spirit reveals the true condition of our hearts. How we respond to what we see may very well affirm what has already been revealed. According to Jesus, the Queen who sees herself as deserving and entitled to a fair status is blind still. He told the religious leaders of his day, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains” (John 9:41, ESV).
The Canaanite woman in Matthew’s gospel was not blind; she could see clearly. She could see that she did not belong at the Master’s table. She could see that, spiritually speaking, she was merely a dog, a mangy scavenger whose destiny was scrounging scraps until she died in the damned streets of her dark and cruel world. Desperate, she laid aside any vanity she might hope to muster, and begged for the Master’s scraps, just a crumb of mercy:
“Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.”
Her daughter was oppressed by a demon, and not mildly or occasionally, but severely. It would have been bad enough if she would have been oppressed in that manner herself, but her own oppression came vicariously through watching her daughter suffer so severely. She would have readily traded places with her, but reality would not allow it. Her child was in the throws of evil, and she was helpless to remedy the situation. So she humbly accepted her reality, and pled for mercy.
Hers was not the kind of desperation that stirred a mother to go out of her way or suffer some minor inconvenience to cure the situation. It was the kind of desperation that moved a Canaanite to kneel before a Jew and ask his help. It was the kind of desperation that moved an enemy of God to cry to Him for mercy.
Mercy is not what the blind ask for. The blind, when they suffer hardship or evil, demand justice—what they believe they deserve. The blind become distraught and enraged when they cannot realize the reality they envision should be theirs. The blind blame the darlings for their pain and trick them into eating poisoned apples. The blind send hunter’s to pierce the heart of the “fairest in the land.” Filled with bitterness, the blind spend eternity gnashing their teeth and summoning the powers of hell to give them their way. But they will never get it.
And they will never, ever, see reality. They will only go on in their blindness, blindly pretending, blindly believing they are getting closer to justice, but wandering deeper and deeper in the blackness of their dark blindness.
It’s the helpless and undeserving, the dogs, who see, and by seeing, cry desperately for the crumbs that fall from the Master’s table.
“Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly.” (Matthew 15:28, ESV)