Believing the stories we tell...

I wonder and cogitate on some weird things sometimes.  Like, how come I can never remember how to spell the word "weird?"  I before E except after C... NOT!  Good thing we have spell check.  All hail spell check!

Okay, another thing I wonder about is when people lie, and its obvious that they are lying, do they really believe it?  I'm really not talking about common lies here, like, you were sick from work and then seen on the golf course or have a mysterious receipt for a huge bunch of flowers for a woman named Sylvia found by your wife...

Maybe I should go to my examples, that will make it clearer what I'm talking about.

There's this guy I'm acquainted with.  Not really a friend, in fact, I hardly know him at all, I just hear him talk a lot.  He likes to tell stories about his life and one of his favorites is how he got thrown out of his house by his father when he was 17 and had no choice but to go into the army.  However, his brothers say that his father offered to send him to college and that he had the possibility to share in a huge inheritance.  however, this first man refused this.  To be frank, he was a white nationalist and wanted to go off with George Rockwell or whoever was leading the Nazis of the day and join in their crusade.  The father wasn't going to fund that at all.  He also would have taken the money to go to school but wanted to go to a school in South Africa.  So, there's more to this story, but everyone this main guy tells it, his father just simply up and kicked his hairy butt out the door one day, with no money, no schooling, nothing. 

Now, I wonder, when this guy tells this story over and over (it was a long time ago, over fourty years now), does he really believe it?  Is there a bit in his mind where he goes "yeah, well, father and I just didn't get along and I wanted to make a whiter brighter world and so I had to get the hell away from him..." or does he really believe his lies now?  Really, as in the fantasy history in his mind now genuine memory.

Another example was a friend of mine, an older guy, from a long time ago.  He wasn't a well man and had suffered from societal exclusion and ostracization much as I did when I was young and sick.  He was also very intelligent.  Anyway, we both liked the author CS Lewis and he would go on and on about how he had not only seen but read a first edition of "Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" which did not involve Christianity.  It was written, he said, before CS Lewis returned to the church and held neo-pagan beliefs.  Then, according to this guy, it was rewritten by CS Lewis when he turned back to Christiantiy.   But this magical first edition still records CS Lewis' first neo-pagan and intellectually freer views.  Oh yeah, and you can't find this first edition anymore because they were all destroyed after CS Lewis reconverted.

An interesting story, but, unfortunately easily debunked by even a cursory reading of CS Lewis' life.  Yes, he did "fall out" with Christianity in his 20s and early 30s, a period in which he did dabble in alternative beliefs.  But he had reconverted long before he began serious writing.  In fact, the reason he began seriously writing again was to share his experiences in returning to Christian beliefs ("Basic Christianity" being an early work in this vein).

So, where did this old friend of mine get this bizarre story.  A story of previous editions and neo-pagan views?  Well, I can never be sure, but I think he may have heard of the "Le Fay Fragment", an early start to the Chronicles of Narnia that CS Lewis began but never finished; although the background of the fragment became the basis of his novel "The Magician's Nephew."  But even then, the LeFay Fragment dates from a period after CS Lewis returned to the church.  

My friend was no fan of Christianity for many reasons, echoing my own with bad experiences with people accentuated by medical problems which he couldn't help.  He was also a big fan of CS Lewis.  I think that he may have heard of CS Lewis' adolescent flirtations with non-christian beliefs and, wanting his hero to be non-Christian, came up with the vision of a non-Christian first edition.  Did he really truly believe this?  I really wonder, if the memories in his brain really had this as the scenario or did he know deep down inside that his stories were just so much wish-fulfillment?  

In an aside, many non-Christian people (or at least non-Anglican) love CS Lewis and have to deal with that part of him.  A Mormon gentleman I knew once would say loudly during our discussions "Too bad CS Lewis wasn't a Mormon!" with his hands thrown up. 

Lies, strange beliefs, falsehoods and distortions, I often wonder if, in trying to get others to accept them as truth, if the people spreading the stories themselves get to a point where they can't tell the difference between real and fantasy anymore either.