Meg Raspberry is getting cocky. By episode 6, she’s got collecting teardrops of joy to break the curse over her down to a fine art: All you need to do is target the weak and vulnerable, flourish some magic, and voila! Tears of joy and gratitude, heh heh heh. She’s acting like a creepy old man more and more each day. Fortunately, she has people in her life who care enough for her to intervene and call her back from the sketchy path she’s stumbling down. And the way they do so, rather startlingly, paints a picture of how the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—lovingly works to correct the wandering believer, too.
Meg’s mentor, Faust, is alerted to the change in Meg thanks to the household pets, who complain about the girl’s midnight giggling as she gloats over the profusion of teardrops in her bottle. When Faust enquires as to how she’s come by so many all of a sudden, Meg grins and declares that collecting them is “easy-peasy” as she proudly shares her newly honed tactic of sniffing out the most needy among the villagers of Lapis. Meg takes it as a sign of her personal growth, but Faust sees things differently. She closes her eyes and utters a single sentence: “Meg, you’re forbidden from using magic for a while.” Meg is getting pruned.
Faust’s discipline is clear, quick, and purposeful. But it also leaves a lot unsaid. Later, we learn that in that moment, Meg asked her why, and Faust replied that “at this rate, you’ll become useless…” Faust, as the Eternal Witch, has the foresight to see that Meg is set to lose her magic, whether literally or figuratively, in the sense that if she continues down this path, her magic will remain petty and insignificant as Meg uses it solely for her own objectives. Witches in this world are meant to serve humanity; their magic is meant to change the world, and even save it from human-made ecological disaster (see episode 7)! But Meg is writing herself out of that lofty purpose by instrumentalizing her gift. She’s losing sight of the wonder and the grandeur that she encountered in the night sky with Inori in episode 3, when she was filled anew with hope. I daresay it’s no accident that episode 6 is titled, “An Evening Sky Without Magic,” for it seems that Meg has forgotten her encounter with magic under the stars that night.
But Faust doesn’t explain any of this to Meg. Her discipline does not take the form of a lecture, nor is it a set of instructions. There’s no infodump of rationale or recrimination here. Instead, Faust simply establishes clear boundaries, like hedges, to shoulder Meg back onto the better path. “Place your hand on your heart,” she says, “and think about it. You have to find the answer on your own.”
Faust’s approach to correcting Meg here puts me in mind of the way the Heavenly Father disciplines his children, whom he loves. There are two key passages in the New Testament about the Father’s discipline, with the first being Jesus’s analogy of the vine and the branches in John 15, where the Gardener (God) prunes the branches (us) so that we might bear more fruit through connection with the vine (Jesus). The second is a passage in Hebrews that tells us that: “…God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” For both Faust and our Heavenly Father, discipline has two key elements: first, it is centered on trust, and second, the purpose is not simply correction or a reset to zero with a clean slate, but rather significant growth and blessing. Let’s take a closer look.
Trust needs to cut both ways for this approach to discipline to work. Faust and the Father alike trust their children—and we learn in episode 8 that Faust does indeed view Meg as her daughter. They trust their children to actively engage with the pruning, to reflect on and learn from it. Neither parent provides a justification for their actions or record of accusation—this isn’t about the parent asserting superiority, nor is it about shaming or guilt-tripping. It’s about providing an impetus for the children to pause in the way they are going (and growing) and “think about it,” as Faust says, seeking out the greater perspective and wisdom of the Eternal One (God or Witch) to understand why that path is not good. In other words, this form of discipline entrusts the children with agency, too. Likewise, it also relies on the child trusting the parent: It only leads somewhere if Meg trusts Faust, and if we trust God. If there is mistrust or suspicion, our “thinking about it” will only feed into self-pity, self-justification, or a sense of victimhood, and the discipline will make orphans of us.
The second key thing about this kind of discipline is that it is motivated by a fundamental intent to bless. Scripture tells us straight up what we can deduce in Meg’s story, too: the discipline of the Father and of Faust is genuinely for the benefit of the child. The Gardener’s pruning facilitates abundant fruitfulness, and more specifically, the experience of holiness, righteousness, and peace—all things that, by rights, belong to God alone, but which he wishes for us to be able to enjoy too. These are the founding elements of the Kingdom of God, which is our inheritance as children of God, as Jesus tells us. In other words, the purpose of discipline is not simply correction, but rather fellowship with God, growing in trust, and receiving our full inheritance. This is what Faust wants for Meg, too: genuine fellowship, not just with Faust, but with the villagers of Lapis as well; and walking fully in the wonder of magic as a mature witch rather than instrumentalizing it as a tool for personal gain.
This is really important because Meg is about to miss out on her destiny as the Witch of Lapis. You see, while Meg has been viewing the villagers through calculating eyes that commodify them as a source of the much-needed tears, they have been coming to love her. They delight in her, calling out to her by name in the streets (they’ve finally learned her name!), and greeting her with wide smiles and energetic waves. They have even given her a nickname, which is the ultimate badge of honor for a witch, as a sign that she has been acknowledged by those whom she seeks to serve. What’s more, they have claimed her as their own, calling her the Witch of Lapis, entrusting their own community and good name into her care. It should be one of the happiest days of Meg’s life, but she doesn’t even notice, so preoccupied is she with her cunning plan. In fact, she doesn’t even recognize the people who are constantly thanking her! She never saw them, even as she “rescued” them with her magic. Faust’s discipline—her pruning away Meg’s permission to wield magic for a time—is intended to ensure that the girl does not walk right past the fellowship and inheritance that are on offer to her, pulling her up short on the disastrous path she is treading.
I wonder how often we are like Meg in this—how often we, too, are set to walk right past the blessings God has destined for us? Selah.
This episode doesn’t just show us a beautifully nuanced picture of the Father’s discipline, though, but also the role of the Holy Spirit and Jesus in godly correction. Let’s pick up the story with Meg right after Faust’s pruning…
Meg does what any one of us would do in this situation: she whines and complains to her best friend, Finé, while eating pastries! But instead of the expected sympathy, there is chiding in Finé’s tone as she queries Meg’s depiction of Faust: “She’s not the type to make unreasonable demands just because she doesn’t like something or because she’s on a power-trip,” she points out, and Meg concedes that this is true. Without realizing it, Meg was choosing mistrust over teachability, but Finé reminds her of who Faust is.
Next, Finé asks a few pointed questions to get the story out of Meg, who preens yet again at her accomplishment in “figuring out the trick” of collecting teardrops and getting used to success: “It’s almost too easy!” she revels. In response, Finé gently but firmly reproves Meg for sounding like a con artist: “I’m a little disappointed. I feel like I didn’t want to hear you talk about ‘tricks’ or being ‘used to’ getting [teardrops] now. … I think I preferred it when you treasured every single one.” Finé is reminding Meg of who she used to be, and she’s doing so in the context of friendship.
Like Faust, Finé doesn’t harangue Meg—she’s nothing like the arrogant friend Jesus warns against, who tries to pluck a speck from another’s eye while maintaining a plank in his own. No, throughout this exchange, Finé’s words and tone are more akin to the work of the Holy Spirit, reminding Meg who she is and who Faust is (as her good parent), just as the Holy Spirit reminds us of every word that Jesus has said, including what he says about who we are and who the Father is to us. What’s more, Finé’s words plant a seed of conviction in Meg that gradually blossoms as the episode progresses, inspiring her to rediscover a more genuine way of engaging with the people of Lapis.
But there’s more going on here, too; there’s something servant-hearted about Finé’s responses to Meg. She is not offended by her friend’s behavior, nor does she seek to put Meg in her place or take her down a peg or two, even though, honestly, she deserves it. Instead, it’s as if Finé’s words are seeking to cleanse Meg, to brush off the dust that her recent path has coated her with, and call her back to a place where her heart is pure once again. A little like the washing of feet after a long day walking the streets of Jerusalem…
Here’s the thing: Biblically, there is in fact a fundamental connection between discipline and cleansing, and it goes back to a seeming non-sequitur in Jesus’s analogy of the vine. After describing how the Gardener prunes the branches in order that they may be fruitful, Jesus continues (John 15:3): “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.” Huh?! Did he lose his train of thought? Not at all! This is actually some pretty clever wordplay, because the words for “prune” (kathairo) and “clean” (katharos) share a root meaning. And by using the two together so closely like this, Jesus is revealing a powerful truth: Pruning cleanses!
This is literally the case when it comes to grapevines. When I was growing up, my grandma had a lovely vine growing in her loggia (sunroom), and I used to help prune it whenever I visited. There were rules about when to trim and where in order to encourage as much fruit as possible and to allow the bunches to ripen and sweeten in the full sun, unobstructed by too much leaf growth. The grapes were worth the labor of pruning, and John 15:2 made sense. But it wasn’t until I moved into a rental house with a neglected vine in the garden that the following verse, 15:3, gained some meaning for me, too. You see, that half-feral vine had not been pruned in years, and as a result, it was filthy! Bark peeling off in multiple layers at a time, insects burrowing and making a mess every which way, and ropes upon ropes of scraggly, peeling vine shooting off in every direction, nary a grape to be seen. It took me a couple of weeks to prune and clean it, and more years than I had to spend there at that house to see it bear any proper fruit again. Here’s the key, though: My grandma’s vine never got dirty. The pruning not only made it fruitful, it kept it clean too. The Gardener who prunes is also the Servant-King who washes our feet.
In the end, the pruning from Faust and the cleansing from Finé—delicately plucking the mote from her eye—enable Meg to see herself and others clearly, prompting her to repent and reconnect with those around her. But that’s not all! Meg doesn’t just return to where and how she’d been before—she levels up, discovering in the course of her recovery that she now has a proper witch’s nickname, bestowed upon her by the people, and with it, an unexpected love shining through for them and for the privilege of belonging to them. She finds fellowship with the villagers and with Faust, and steps into her inheritance as a maturing witch.
When we’re being pruned, it can feel like the absolute end of the world. It can be terribly painful, confusing, and unexpected, just like it was for Meg, and just like the writer of Hebrews acknowledges, too. But like Faust, the Father can be trusted, and his goal is never simply to take away or correct. Instead, the Father’s discipline always has a redemptive purpose at heart. His pruning comes with the cleansing of the Servant-King and an invitation to fellowship. Meanwhile, any prohibitions come with the call to greater things, that we might enter our full inheritance, the very Kingdom of God. Truly, the Triune God’s discipline gives life.
And sometimes, it’s not as bad as we think. It’s more of a foot wash, really, if only we can see it.
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[…] Meg has had revelations before in this series. I’ve written about two of them already, in fact, and there are more! But in each case, Meg’s growth and maturation was more […]