Don't be the man who ends up as Sigmund Freud's favourite story

Sophocles' great play, King Oedipus, was based on the legend of Thebes. Sophocles tells the legend like this at the beginning of the play:

 

"To King Laius [of Thebes] and his wife Jocasta a son was born. Before even a name had been given to this infant … his life was clouded with the presage of disaster; for Apollo's oracle had nothing but ill to foretell of him: he was destined one day to kill his father, and to become his own mother's husband. …

 

The child should not live. They would not indeed take upon themselves the guilt of infanticide, but they would deliver the child to a servant of theirs, a shepherd, with orders to abandon it on the mountain-side, its feet cruelly pierced with an iron pin, so that it might not even crawl away to safety. …

 

[T]he shepherd had not the heart to leave the child to perish, instead he entrusted it to a fellow-labourer, a Corinthian … a servant of Polybus, King of Corinth, [who] in due course brought the child to his royal master, who, being childless, gladly welcomed the infant and adopted it as his own, giving it the name of Oedipus (Swollen-foot) in commiseration for its painful treatment. …

 

Oedipus grew to manhood, the honoured Prince of Corinth … But by chance he came to hear, again from the mouth of Apollo's ministers, the terrible prediction concerning him. Again, as his parents had done, he sought to give the lie to the oracle. He fled from Corinth, resolved never again to set eyes on his supposed father and mother as long as they lived.

 

His wanderings brought him [back] to Thebes [the place of his birth], where now all was calamity and confusion. King Laius had been killed by an unknown traveller on a lonely road; the city was in the grip of a deadly monster, the Sphinx … destroying all who failed to answer her cunning riddle: and none could answer it.

 

But in Oedipus the creature met her match. He answered her riddle and destroyed her power, and so was received joyfully in Thebes as her king and heir to the house and fortune; a happy man … he married Jocasta; and sons and daughters were born to them.

 

There passed some fifteen years of seeming prosperity. But beneath the deceptive surface a hideous depth of shame and infamy lay concealed. The gods could not longer brook in silence the affront of Oedipus's unwitting sins."

 

As the play goes, it gets revealed to King Oedipus that when he fled Corinth he killed his own father in a fit of rage—at a cross-roads. He did not know it was his father.

 

Then, after defeating the Sphinx, Thebes (in the aftermath of hearing of their dead king, Laius—Oedipus' biological father) declares Oedipus the new king. The new king is given the old king's wife, Jocasta—Oedipus's mother. Hearing of this, that her son killed her husband and then impregnated her, Oedipus' mother kills herself.

 

Upon discovering that he is the cause of both his parents' death, and that his children are actually his own incestuous siblings, Oedipus puts out his eyes with pins from his dead mother's clothes. Following this, Oedipus is banished from Thebes for ever. His daughter-sister Antigone chooses to go with him.

 

It is a gut-wrenching story. In it I find a moral.

 

The story shows the power of a lie wrapped up in fear.

 

The oracle of Apollo was real. But that did not make it true. It was a real voice alright. The 'Python' (for that was her name) at Delphi spoke the oracle and delivered the message. Oedipus' father Laius and his mother Jocasta heard the lie. But they mixed the lie with fear. And the addition of fear made the lie come true.

 

Next, after some time, Oedipus himself hears the lie from the oracle. He too feared. He too mixed fear into the lie. It caused him to flee. And caught in the flurry of a lie fused with fear he did the very thing the oracle said: He killed his father and slept with his mother.

 

The devil's work is to lie to you. The original python, from time to time he will sit on your shoulder. Then he will proceed to lie to you. It is his native language. When he speaks he lies.

 

He might even use true facts. But true facts that are twisted are really lies. Lies that use true facts become the most powerful kind of lie, because they have elements of factual truth. And that clothes them with credibility.

 

The devil's lies become very believable. And that is exactly the point. The devil is selling a belief system too. He too wants you to believe in him. He wants you to put your faith in fear. He will use lies to do it.

 

And then, when gripped by fear, the victim adds faith to the fear and to the lie. The trifecta of a lie, a fear and belief produces the very terrible thing the heart has tried to avoid. The lie comes true. The very thing you feared comes to pass.

 

This is the genius of Sophocles. Dramatic irony. The sense of the inevitable. That feeling that when the lie is spoken it will come to pass. The devil sells you that one too. He makes you feel like the lie is inevitable, that you have no choice but to believe.

 

Yet I choose to read Sophocles another way.

 

What if Laius and Jocasta had heard that oracle and said: "That voice is not from God. God does not speak death where He wants to bring life. God does not bring a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power and love and a sound mind. I will not brook a lie. Nor will I release a spirit of fear. I will not vest my faith in a lie and in a fear. And darkness is anything but inevitable."

 

Here's a trick I have learned. When the devil's oracle speaks, when the python hisses, when a lie comes with the foul breath of fear—it is generally the opposite of what God is trying to say to you.

 

The devil is reactionary. He is not the Creator. He is an imitator. God brings things to life. God desires to do good things in you and create and bring life. The devil gets wind of these things. Then, having picked up on God's good plans for your life, the devil tries to meddle. He tries to thwart that which God is doing.

 

What if God's voice to King Laius and Queen Jocasta was that he wanted to bless them with a fine boy who will grow up to do great things, even save the city of the Sphinx?

 

So the next time a lie comes to you and your heart slumps with fear—do not combine those things with your faith. If you do the disaster predicted will become inevitable.

 

Rather, when you hear the lie—run to God. The lie will give you a clue of the work God is trying to do. If you haven't heard from God about what He is trying to do, perhaps He has been trying to speak to you for some time? Perhaps He has allowed the lie to nudge you to listen better. And if you have heard from Him, then it is a simple case of re-agreeing with what He is planning and doing. In either event, the lie is a strong clue toward what God is wanting to achieve.

 

Displace the lie God's promise. His promise will never bring fear to your spirit. All of His promises are good. A real promise from God will bring hope and power to your soul.

 

Then, armed with the promise, agree with it. Put your faith in it.

 

It is at this point that Sophocles' dramatic irony will kick in. That is to say that goodness, a happy ending, will become inevitable.

 

Don't be the man who ends up as Sigmund Freud's favourite story. Be the man who ends up full of promise, full of faith, full of the inevitability of God's good plans.