The Gruffalo - Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler
Updated: Sep 22
The Gruffalo is a new book to me (and a film I have learnt!) If you, like me have never taken a stroll through the deep dark wood then here’s what happens;
A mouse goes for a walk and comes across other animals all who would like to have him as a tasty snack! He tells them a story about an even bigger animal who would quite like to eat them as a snack, and gets away with it! Until he realises he wasn’t quite making it all up!
“The smallest dog barks the loudest.” You may have heard this saying before, but even if you haven’t, you’ve certainly heard the dog. Now, I know very little about dogs, especially when it comes to the different breeds. But when I was younger, I remember our neighbour getting a dog. We didn’t really know our neighbour; they generally kept to themselves. However, whilst we didn’t really speak to them, their dog certainly spoke to us.
Every time we left the house, whether that was to go to school or play with friends, the earth seemed to shake with a tremendous bark coming from behind the neighbours’ front door. It was intimidating, frightening, monstrous. Then one day, as I left for school, we noticed that the neighbours’ front door was open. And as we walked past, the earth began to shake with that same tremendous bark. Yet when we looked, that monstrous noise was coming from what seemed to be the tiniest dog imaginable.
Instantly, that intimidation and fear of being devoured disappeared. The bark sounded terrifying, but the dog itself certainly wasn’t. Sometimes we can do something similar. We can make ourselves appear stronger, braver or more capable than we really are. We can exaggerate, pretend, or even lie because we want to protect ourselves from something we fear.
And that brings us to The Gruffalo. Now there are no dogs in this story; instead, its main character is a tiny mouse. A mouse who goes for a walk through the forest and, throughout his journey, meets a variety of predators who are very much looking forward to a tasty mouse treat.
And,here we find our fundamental human truth - for mice and people - we lie
But the mouse doesn’t only lie because he is frightened; he lies because he is clever. As he encounters each predator, his lies become more elaborate. He
describes a mysterious monster called the Gruffalo, and with each encounter, the description becomes greater and more terrifying. The mouse uses these lies to
manipulate the other animals and keep himself safe.
And he takes great delight in how well his deception works, he’s proud of himself: “Silly old fox! Doesn’t he know, there’s no such thing as a Gruffalo?”
Eventually, however, the mouse comes face to face with the very monster he’s been lying about. Yet even then, he doesn’t stop. Once again, the mouse uses his
cleverness, lies and deception to manipulate the Gruffalo and keep himself safe.
In reality, the mouse isn’t that different form us. So the question we need to ask ourselves is this: Why do we lie? What are we trying to protect, achieve or
control?
We might lie to avoid embarrassment, protect our reputation, get what we want, make ourselves appear greater than what we are, or avoid the consequences of
our actions.
Around the same time as the neighbours’ tiny dog, I was blessed to own a PlayStation console. My mum had one rule: it stays in our house. She didn’t want it,
or anything associated with it, leaving our house and going into someone else’s.
One day, a friend in a neighbouring street got a new game, but there was a problem. He didn’t have enough controllers for all his friends to play, including me!
To my other friends, this wasn’t a problem: BYOC — bring your own controller. But I wasn’t allowed to, and I certainly didn’t want to miss out, especially if I
was going to be the only one left out.
So I hid my controller and took it to my friend’s house. Later, while running home
because I didn’t want to be late for tea and face the consequences, the controller fell out of my super-secret ,sneaky pocket.
SMASH!
I picked it up, hid it and snuck it back into the house. Later, when my mum noticed the controller was broken, I told her my friend broke it when he came to our house earlier that day. After all, he did have a reputation for losing his temper. I thought I’d dodged a bullet, not realising that mums actually talk to each other. I won’t labour the point but lets just say the consequences of taking the controller without permission and being late for lunch were far less serious than the
consequences of lying and falsely accusing an innocent friend.
My actions were foolish. The lie had protected me from one consequence but created a far greater consequence elsewhere. Relationships were damaged,
although, thankfully, overtime they were repaired.
And maybe that’s one of the problems with lying. We lie because we want to control the outcome, but we can’t control where the lie will lead. The mouse lies to protect himself. I lied to protect myself. And if we’re honest, we can probably all think of times when we’ve done something similar. My punishment for lying was severe. Ironically enough, mum forced me to read a book on lying. And no, it wasn’t The Gruffalo — although it would have been a good fit.
We all lie, but here is our Bible truth - God does not. Therefore, if we are people who lie, can we trust God?
We lie because we’re trying to control the outcome. We lie because we’re trying to control things. God doesn’t need to do that.
The Bible repeatedly tells us that God does not lie. Numbers 23:19 says:
“God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfil?”
