Essay: Finding Our Faces

Before reading this essay, I would recommend reading Till We Have Faces, the novel by C.S. Lewis this essay is based on. I hope you can understand my points without the background, but it's an excellent book, all the same.

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Makeup, the internet, and programs for editing photographs have made it easy to hide one’s true face. If a woman were not content with her face, for whatever reason, she could hide it under a layer of fake imagery to the point where she became another person. Such a practice has become so commonplace that people have forgotten the importance of having a face. A face does not exist to be pretty, but to distinguish between different people. This idea of being different—of having an identity—has been lost to the materialistic view that there is no moral or spiritual significance to a face. By hiding the faces given to them at birth, such people become faceless in a sense, seeking to blend in with the world’s common desire to be beautiful. C.S. Lewis worked with this idea of facelessness in his novel, Till We Have Faces, which he based on the myth of Cupid and Psyche. The idea Lewis seemed to present in this work was that man has no face before God, unless he has been purged with the blood of Christ, when he is given Christ’s identity.

One of Lewis’ characters in Till We Have Faces, Orual, demonstrated one of the world's uses for having no face: hiding the ugliness of one’s true visage. Throughout the story, Orual became progressively aware of her ugliness, not just physically, but spiritually, too. And as a result, she decided to cover her face with a veil at all times. Orual also despised the vulnerability of going about barefaced. Without a veil, Orual’s eyes—which, in literature, are usually considered the windows to the soul—were open for the entire world to see through. But when she covered them with her veil, her identity disappeared. This idea of hiding is akin to Adam and Eve’s fig leaves in the Garden of Eden, after they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They used their leaves to cover up the shame of their sins, just as Orual used her veil to hide her sins from public view. This protection served her well for a time, when she became the queen of Glome.

When Orual took the throne, her veil was no longer merely a covering for her shame, but also a source of power. Orual’s power came from the fact that she could see the men in her court, but they could not see her, and thus could not judge how best to work with her. In a similar way, man cannot see God in His entirety, but He can see us. Thus, Orual tried to set herself up as a god. Orual’s facelessness was also similar to the goddess Ungit, the deity of Glome. Because Ungit was merely a lump of rock in the temple, and ergo had no face, the people (including Orual) had a tendency toward imagining faces for Ungit. The people also imagined faces for Orual when she wore her veil, varying between ravishingly beautiful and horrifying.

Man was made to have a face, and not just a physical one. He was also made to have a spiritual face in the presence of God. But man, in his sinful state, has no identity unless it is by the will of God Himself. This is because without God, man has no worth, nothing to recommend him to God because of his sinfulness. A man may try to be virtuous through his own power, but he will never be able to do enough on his own that can cover the debt of his sins. However, Christ died on the cross so that man could have standing with God. When Christ died and took on man’s lowly identity, He gave man His, so that he could be righteous in the presence of God. Thus, in a sense, man was given the opportunity to have Christ’s face. In the same way, at the end of Till We Have Faces, Orual looked at her reflection and saw that she looked like Psyche, her beautiful sister who had endured many trials for the sake of Orual.

Although physical beauty loses its purpose in death, the idea behind putting in effort to make oneself appear falsely beautiful applies to the soul, too. For if a woman’s goal in life is to be beautiful enough to fit a man’s ideal in attractiveness, she simply becomes another face lost in the crowd, having no identity. Her focus is centered on the world, not on what is to come after this world has passed away. Orual’s veil in Till We Have Faces was another form of makeup, since without her true face to remind the people of her ugliness, she was considered beautiful by almost the entire kingdom. At the end of the tale, though, Orual forsook her veil and, after a series of visions and arduous tasks, received the beauty of Psyche as her own. So too, Christians were given the beauty of Christ in the eyes of God when He died, taking man’s ugliness upon Himself.

Question 6: Is the Pen Mightier Than the Sword?

Is the pen mightier than the sword?

I have two conflicting sayings to present to you today:

1. The pen is mightier than the sword.
2. Actions speak louder than words.

If the pen is mightier than the sword, does that mean words actually speak louder than actions? And if actions really speak louder than words, then is the sword actually mightier than the pen? Which is it? Or are they both true? I would argue that they both actually have some truth to them. I'll start with the truth behind the first of the two.

What this first statement says is that the words of a skillful writer can sway a mind more thoroughly and more efficiently than a conquering king can in battle. A king can conquer a land, but that does not necessarily put the minds of the conquered people in his hand. They may be in his power for a time, but they do not necessarily believe what he tells them to. The conquered people may follow his laws but rebel against him in their minds if they believe his laws are unjust.

On the other hand, a man can sway a whole country to his views if he uses the right words. He does not even need to conquer the people in battle to win their hearts to him if they believe what he says is true. Even if what he says is not true and he poses his ideas in a desirable way, the people can be swayed. So in that sense, the pen is mightier than the sword.

The second saying can be applied more generally than the first. In any situation in life, if you have to prove an idea is true, you can speak all you like about it and still not have anyone believe you. Even if you speak well, the best method to back up your ideas is to have actions supporting them. This is not to say that words cannot convince people, but that actions are more powerful. Not just actions involving physical combat, like in the first saying, but any kind of action. For example, if you wanted to show the power of forgiveness, you could talk all you liked about and still not make any sense. But if you proved its power by actually forgiving someone yourself, or showing the result of another person forgiving someone, that would have much more weight with your audience.

This idea can also be applied to the first saying. If a man took the first saying to heart and attempted to sway a people with his words instead of the sword, he would still need actions to prove his ideas. He wouldn't have to conquer the people to prove he is powerful, but if he were simply trying to prove the validity of a scheme of government, he could point out examples in history of when it has worked. This would have much more weight with the people, because the man has made it no longer about his own words, but about the proof of the past.

Thus, both ideas are true and can be applied in the same instance. Words are powerful, but can only get you so far before you need examples to back up your ideas.