God the Storyteller

Fairy Stories: 

What if the fairy tales are true? Tolkien, Star Wars, Harry Potter. Wouldn’t that be nice? What if Science is just another fairy story. 

After reading Tolkien, I look at the world with new wonder. On the surface, it seems I wish it were true, but deeper than that is an inkling that it is true. A gnawing suspicion eats away at my secular assumption that the forest can be reduced to an ecology textbook. Perhaps the fairies are a symbol for the harmony enjoyed in nature. But on closer inspection, is that not just a bunch of words to explain away mystery? As C.S. Lewis says, “you see through something to see something. If you keep on seeing through, you see nothing.” If you hear music, don’t you assume someone is playing the music? 

According to biographer William Raeper, MacDonald's theology "celebrated the rediscovery of God as Father, and sought to encourage an intuitive response to God and Christ through quickening his readers' spirits in their reading of the Bible and their perception of nature." -wiki

Physicists (Bohm) and Psychologists (JBP) argue more and more that reality is more explicable as narrative than matter. Perhaps matter matter. Stories are “true” like numbers are “true,” as Peterson argues. Like music is true. In heaven, the angels sing praise to God. Perhaps all stories are fairy stories, the better a story is, the more we sense the fairies. Rather than an escape from reality, stories show us reality.

If life is a story, it has an author. And the author of your life is clearly not you, because the story began long before you were born and will go on after death. It’s a popular hubris to want to be the author of your own life. But you are the hero. Imagine watching a movie in which the hero is constantly denying the existence of the filmmakers, always denying the call to action, ignoring the plot points, and insisting on a re-write. It could be a one-off art house movie, but it would be tedious and dull—a postmodern nightmare, or a bad acid trip. Perhaps our obsession with authoring our own lives comes from a fear of being the hero. Once we accept the authority of the author, we can commence with the story. 

We are living inside of a movie directed by God. We know the script. As Tolkien says, the passion narrative of Jesus is a fairy story, but it is true. It’s common to quibble on this truth, but there is far more evidence of the life of Jesus than any other person in history. If the life of Jesus is “just a story,” then all of history is “just a story.” Furthermore, the Bible is the original book. It is the foundation of of all Western stories, and by comparative mythology, it fulfills all stories made by humans. The story of Jesus is the best possible fairy story. How so? Death is the ultimate villain. Jesus beats death. Before that, he gives us the beatitudes, the rock on which every “moral of the story” is ruted. There are no good stories in which the bad guy wins. Tragedy results from a flawed hero, who is bad in some way, and thus he conquered by good. We all know this. It is written in our hearts, as the prophet Jeiniah says. 

The fairy tales are true. Better yet, we are living in a fairy tale. 

-fit this: We turn fairy tales into something for children. This harshens the process of growing up. The children must be disappointed to learn the fairies are not part of the “real world.” But what is the fantasy? But as Tolkien says, it is humans who are supernatural. Which is more real—a spider web or the World Wide Web? A mountain or a skyscraper? What if adulthood could bring to life what the child can only imagine? What if it’s a fairytale that the fairytales aren’t true. 

-Magic: it’s popular now popular for people to be spiritual but not religious. These same types love the Lord of the Rings while overlooking the fact that Tolkien was catholic. Some people go so far as to call themselves witches, pagans, or animists. People will get tarot readings without any clear notion on what force is “speaking through the cards,” yet still act on the advice of the tarot reader. These people want magic to be real as a response to industrial, corporate capitalism. Yet they treat magic like a consumer good. They want the benefits without responsibility—they ignore the cross-cultural teaching that not all “spirits” are good. They want magic to do the dishes, like Harry Potter. What about dishwashers?!

We are surrounded by magic. Music, sex, food, words, sunlight. All these things are magical. Technology is totally magical.

If you follow the tradition of magic, it leads to Christianity at every turn. Quote: Tolkien fairy stories: Christ is the ultimate fairy king. He beat death. 

Angels are cooler than fairies. 

More important than if fairies exist, is: we are living inside of a fairy tale. 

JBP talks about self authoring. But first I think it’s important to watch the movie. 

-Self help: is it a good movie? What is the hero being called to do? Who’s the villain? What’s the moral?