Fairy Tales and The Story

I had a chance to see Snow White and the Huntsman recently.  I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I was very pleasantly surprised.  It wasn’t dark, it wasn’t sappy, it wasn’t….what I expected.  It was, in fact, “real”.  And it got me thinking quite a bit about Fairy Tales and the Story (i.e. The Gospel).  First a disclaimer – while there are parallels and trails of thought that I can bring out of this movie in relation to Christianity, I fully realize that there are places the analogy falls short.  At least as far as I know, the story of Snow White was never intended as an allegory of Christ. (Although it is interesting to do a Google search on this topic and see how many other people have made comparisons).

So let me deal with storyline first.  There is a king.  He’s a good king, and he rules his kingdom well.  Unfortunately, he is tricked by an evil queen.  The king dies and the queen becomes the ruler of the kingdom.  Because of her evil nature, the kingdom suffers – not just the people, but the land itself.  We are told of the queen “she wants everyone dead, all of us!”  In the midst of this, there is Snow White, the only hope for the destruction of the evil queen.  One of the dwarves describes Snow White and the effect that she has on the land and those she comes in contact with:  “she is life itself”.  Furthermore, the evil queen is told “[Snow White’s] innocence and purity is all that can destroy you” – and going even further, “only by fairest blood is it undone”.  So am I crazy in thinking this is a familiar storyline:  a good king, the kingdom taken over by evil that only wants death.  The victory over that evil through someone who is “life itself”, who is innocent and pure, and who undoes this evil through “fairest blood”?  And of course I won’t even mention the whole “poison apple” thing. 

Well, I don’t think I’m crazy.  And I wonder how much of God’s story found its way into the movie, if not the original story?  And that further begs the question of why?  What is so appealing about the story of our creation, fall, and redemption that it would find its way into this (and so many other) stories?  Could it be that we hear and see the truth of that story in our lives and in the world around us?  There’s no denying we live in a fallen, imperfect world.  There’s no denying death.  And we yearn for something more.  We yearn for rescue from the cold “dark forest”, and from the rule of the evil one.  We yearn for “life itself” and the “sanctuary” where the white stag lives.  And we hope (even pray) that it is more than just a fairy tale.  Some of us believe it is more.

But that brings me to the last part of this ramble – how do we (those of us who believe the Story) tell that story?  I remember watching Disney’s version of Snow White.  It’s fluff.  It’s 2 dimensional, it's cartoon, and it's boring – even with a dragon.  It’s singing birds and everything rosy and even the bad things aren’t “too bad”.  But this movie….this movie was different.  It's 3 dimensional, it's flesh and blood.  In this movie Evil is pure evil.  Even though it looks beautiful, it isn’t.  It drips tarry ooze and yells, and kills, and it is old and shriveled and hateful underneath.  And the people (and dwarves) that fight evil aren’t perfect.  They have their faults and sometimes its hard to love them.  But they love Snow White and what she represents.  They fight for that, and the fighting is hard.  There are casualties in that fight.  There is pain and suffering and sacrifice in that fight.  So let me ask you, how do you present Christianity?  Does it come across as a fairy tale where all is fluffy and bright and painless, or does it come across as an epic battle of Good versus Evil, involving imperfect (sometimes downright ugly) people who nevertheless join the fight and overcome evil not by themselves, but through the blood of the one who gives life itself?  Yes, the story is real.  Yes, there is still magic in the story, but it is not “fairy tale” magic.  It is “epic” magic.  So I close by challenging you (and myself) to take a look at how you tell The Story, and even whether you tell The Story at all.  Because you see, it’s only in Fairy Tales that “they all live happily ever after”, because fairy tales don't really matter.  But epic stories do matter, and decisions carry life - or death.

Hermeneutics, Physics, Autism, and Postmodernism....

So, today was the second day of my hermeneutics class.  Hermeneutics is the act of determining the author's intended meaning in a Biblical text and then applying it to our current times.  It can be split up into exegesis - determining the author's original intent within the context of the Scriptures, and contextualization - applying that meaning to other times and cultures.  Inherent in these definitions are several important ideas:
1)  There is a "meaning" to be determined.
2)  That meaning is determined by the author, and has to be interpreted in the context.
3)  If 1 and 2 are true, then "meaning" doesn't change (although significance might).

Now this all makes sense to me, and one would wonder why people would see it differently, but this is where post-modernism comes in.  Some would say that "meaning" lies with the reader, and not with the author.  We see this in the "well, that's all fine and good for you, but this is what it means to me" statements we often hear these days.  It's easy to confuse interpretation and meaning.  We may "interpret" a meaning differently, but that doesn't mean there are two meanings.....(lots of "means" in this rambling, sorry!).  In class today we talked about "sentences" versus "utterances".  A sentence by itself has no meaning, wheras an utterance (because of context) does.  It's a hard concept for me to grasp, but as I understand it, a bunch of words strung together could have multiple meanings (i.e. "he hit the ball" - who hit it?  With what?  What kind of ball?).  It is not until that sentence is used as a communication (where there is someone "uttering it" with communicative intent) that meaning occurs.  This brings us to the question of where the meaning lies - does meaning come into existence with the speaker, with the words, or with the hearer?  And this brings us to physics....

This reminded me of Schroedinger's Cat.  In this "thought experiment" (note no animals were actually harmed in this physics experiment or this blog) the cat's state of being is "indeterminate" until perceived by an observer.  So it would seem that Schroedinger would argue that meaning and truth are determined by the observer.  Other quantum physicists (Heisenberg, maybe?) seem to think that complete meaning and understanding can't be obtained because the observer interferes (changes?) the existence of the thing being observed.  But maybe I'm trying to hard to stretch physics into metaphysics.

Which brings me to autism.  Many of the kids I see have "echolalia".  Basically, they repeat things they hear, but they don't understand what they're saying and the repetitions are usually (but not always) out of context.  For example, I remember a 3 year old son of a military person in Japan telling me "practice good operational security" when I greeted him with "hello".  Now, I'm pretty sure he didn't know what that meant, but I did.  The thing is, I was interpreting what he said based on my experiences.  For all I know he might have been saying "hi", or he might have been saying "I don't like being in this doctor's office", or he might not have been trying to say anything at all.  So here's the question:  was there meaning in what he said?  And if so, who determines that meaning - me as the listener, or him as the speaker?

Which brings me back to the Bible.  Is there meaning in Scripture? And if so, who determines that meaning - me as the reader, or God as the author?  What do you think?