Several things recently have got me thinking about fairy tales. We recently (I know we're way late) watched Frozen. Several of my friends have posted other Disney related items on Facebook. They were even mentioned on the DVD of the teaching session for my class tonight. So I've been thinking about fairy tales.
I have a 2 and a half year old little girl, so it's really not that odd that this is coming up. She's not quite old enough to understand most of the princess/knight/fairy stuff just yet, but she has been proving to me again and again that she does understand the difference between "bad guys" and "good guys." While playing with my Lord of the Rings LEGOs that I keep in my office (thanks to my beautiful wife), she was making the Gandalf mini-fig hit the Eomer mini-fig. Now she doesn't know who these characters are, so I tried to explain to her that they were both good guys and shouldn't be hitting each other. Her response? "Not all the guys are good, daddy." She still doesn't really like conflict in TV shows or movies, but she's growing into realizing that it sometimes must happen. (We still mainly watch the Andy Griffith Show, Curious George and Leap Frog learning TV while she's awake.) You might be wondering why I've brought this up, and the reason is that fairy tales also teach kids about conflict. One of my favorite quotes of all time is from G.K. Chesterton: "Fairy tales do not teach children that dragons exist. They already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales teach children that dragons can be killed."
My daughter keeps teaching me that she is more observant than I give her credit for. Children notice that there are bad, evil and scary things in the world. Even before they have words for such things, they know that evil exists. What a good fairy tale story can do is show that even though there is evil, there is good that can overcome. That is a truth necessary to our existence. Without knowing that good can overcome evil, nihilism makes perfect sense. Without knowing that good can overcome evil, sinking into depression can happen all too quickly. We need hope. We need there to be good.
I am so grateful we have the true tale of the darkness being overcome. As Christians we know that Christ conquered the grave, and that we can have hope through Him. Romans 8 provides us with such a clear articulation of the hope we have. "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ... But in all things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us." (31,37 NASB). The hymn writers knew it too : "My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness/ I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus' name." We have hope and conquer because of Jesus. Praise His name.
