Someday You Will Be Old Enough to Read Fairytales Again

When I starting time released my debut novel, Calysta and the Beast, I was nowhere near prepared for the negative feedback I would become. By and large from believers. Especially ones who were inside my network of Christians, just who didn't really know me well enough to understand what my personal walk with Christ is like.

Information technology's ane thing to judge a book by its comprehend — nosotros're even told not to do that! — only I didn't recollect thatI myself, the author,would get judged by my book's cover.

I already got a few raised brows during the development procedure of the novel, merely I shrugged information technology off, because the majority of people I interacted with — both online and offline — showed excitement at the prospect of a gimmicky Christian retelling of Beauty and the Beast. It got people intrigued to observe out how I would pull that off, and ultimately, I felt similar that was the claiming I had in writing the book:

How exercise I accolade God and make aBeauty and the Beaststory realistic in a contemporary context?

I genuinely believe that I managed to practice this in the best style I knew how and in a way that honors God, simply I was shocked to realize that there are many Christians out in that location who would never even give this book a gamble, because they genuinely believe that fairy tales are evil .

Here are a few comments I received…

• 1 writer said regarding this thing, "You cannot mix light and darkness. Fairy tales, fantasy, and magic are of the dark. How can you be a child of light and write about such darkness?"
• A more extreme annotate — one that I still blench at the idea of — retorted that the root of Dazzler and the Animalis the spirit of bestiality.
• Yet some other questioned my personal salvation, because I was writing stories that resist God.
• A friend of mine rebuked me and said that I should only be writing what God tells me to write, not fairy tales, because fairy tales are wicked. Disney is wicked.
• An organization I volunteered with had to ask me upon receiving my resume and viewing my website if I write Godly stories, because they couldn't reconcile the idea of fairy tale beloved stories existence written in a Christian context. They had to ask i of the staff to read the book to make sure it was a Christian book. She eventually informed them that the book was righteous and that she would recommend teens to read information technology.

I tin go on and on, simply I will leave it at that. The point is I did get a lot of backlash amidst the adequately practiced feedback I did receive from readers who, like me, dearest fairy tales likewise. Still, this brought me into a real spiritual dilemma, because I couldn't just castor these comments away.

"Are fairy tales evil?"

If  I were to honestly answer this question, I would probably nod and say, "Well, if yous read the originals of the most well-known fairy tales, you'll detect that they are very dark. I sometimes wonder why Disney always turned them into children'southward cartoons. I also can't argue that something is very shady about Disney."

So why was I dabbling in something that could exist considered as evil. Was this an surface area of compromise in my writing — and my life in full general — that I had to give up to God?

Was the answer to this question a resounding "YES!"?

Merely wait! What about C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald?

Didn't C.S. Lewis say this wonderfully famous quote that makes my heart sing every time I think of it?

"Someday, you will be erstwhile enough to read fairy tales over again." – C.South. Lewis

Aren't at that place many Christian authors who include fantastical elements into their stories? Dragons and sprites and fairies. Witches and sorcerers. Heroes and damsels in distress. Is there non something about fairy tales and fantasy that awakens in us a desire to know the Lover of souls? Does it not send echoes in our souls of a Bride longing for her Bridegroom?

Can I non answer this question with a "No, fairy tales aren't inherently evil."?

My incertitude led me to the Greatest Storyteller of all…

I found that the Body of Christ is divided in this matter, but instead of listening to the many voices of opinion and theology and sentimentality surrounding this issue, I went to the Creator Himself. With this matter, I had to accept my Psalm 139:23-24 moment:

Search me, God, and know my heart. Test me and know my broken-hearted thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the path everlasting.

I couldn't only answer the question myself. I couldn't avoid answering the question either as a way of defending myself against the criticism going my way. I had to run to the One Who I genuinely felt guided me throughout the writing process of my novel, the 1 Whom I hope smiles and says, "It is good." whenever He sees my creations.

I didn't ask God if He thought fairy tales were evil. I only asked Him if He thought what I wrote was evil, and of this I am certain, His answer is NO.

Limitless

We serve an eternal, limitless God, Who has such a vast and delightful array of creative and magnificent creations we can never fully fathom on this side of eternity. I genuinely believe that to box Him up and say that He cannot speak through fairy tales is to limit what He can do through our art and creativity. I genuinely believe that everything the enemy does is only a counterfeit of what God has originally created, so if something creative and wondrous has a dark side, surely at that place is a light side to it equally well, and if there isn't, every bit children of the light, are we not called to shed light into the darkness?

Wherever you stand on this upshot, I inquire only this: Be kind, because really… Perhaps the question isn't "are fairy tales evil?" Maybe when nosotros ask this question, God simply smiles and says, "What is that to thee? Follow g Me."

So are fairy tales evil? Beats me. The question I'd rather enquire is, "Am I following God?" To that, the answer cannot be No or Maybe. In this thing, I am "all in", and the Lord knows it. The answer has to be Yes. I'll make sure of it, and and so will He.

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Source: https://www.joannaalonzo.com/are-fairy-tales-evil/

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