When Fairy Tales are True

            You either love M. Night Shyamalan or you hate him. Though the nation was a fan of his 1999 film The Sixth Sense, the movies that followed—Unbreakable, Signs, The Village—were met with mixed or negative reviews. Some folks like me, however, have become die hard Shyamalan fans. His latest movie, Lady in the Water, continues the love/hate tradition. Though it did poorly at the box office, I love it because it teaches an important truth about the story God is telling.

            Lady in the Water came to theaters last August which means it will be out on DVD soon. Not a movie for young children, its plot was nevertheless created by Shyamalan as an on-going bedtime story for his own kids. Alongside our own world is a magical world of water nymphs. From this world a messenger comes to meet a man who, upon gazing at her, will receive an enlightenment and clarity of thought which will allow him to write a book that will change the world for the good. Though she accomplishes her mission, the nymph or “narf” becomes stuck in our world, stalked by a wolfish creature, and in desperate need of getting home lest her own world suffer from her absence. She must have human help in order to get home.

            This help comes in the form of a janitor with healing powers, a boy who reads secrets of the universe in cereal boxes, an elderly oriental woman whose “party life” daughter must translate her ancient story that’s happening right now, a hero who body builds only one side of his body, and many others, all tenants of a single, six floor apartment building.

            The key moment in the story occurs when all seems lost and events are becoming too bizarre to be believed. At a moment of hesitation, one of the characters cries out something like, “There are times in life when we must decide to believe that some stories are true.”

            I couldn’t agree more. Of all the stories in the world, Fairy Tales are among the truest, not because they really happened, but because they best point to the magical story that did. The most amazing book I’ve read in the last ten years is a little book by John Eldredge called Epic. In it he argues that all the really great stories, the ones we love most, are so very powerful to us because they are patterned after the great epic story that God is telling—the story of which we are all a part. The pattern is simple:

• Once there was a magical kingdom of beauty, goodness and love.
• Then an evil enemy rose to power and brought darkness through betrayal.
• Now the forces of good war against the forces of evil.
• Out of this conflict a hero arises to put an end to the powers of death and darkness.
• And some day all goodness will be restored.

The fiary tale parallels to reality are easy to see:

• The magical kingdom is God's creation.
• The evil enemy is Satan who then tempted Adam and Eve to betrayal.
• The war is the story of God working to redeem humanity since the fall.
• The hero is Christ who has dealt the first blow against Satan and will deal more in days to come.
• The restoration of the kingdom is the new heaven and earth for which we eagerly wait.

            The reason, says Eldredge, that all the great story tellers (even the non-Christian ones) are ultimately telling the one great story is because God has “set eternity in the hearts of men” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Shyamalan follows the pattern well in Lady in the Water:

• A divine (magical) creature comes into our world from a heavenly one.
• She brings a message that will bring salvation to all mankind.
• Her human disciples help her to accomplish her ministry.
• Then she literally ascends on eagle's wings back to her own world.

            The vast difference between Christianity and fairy tales for many people is that they desperately wish for fairy tale lives but think Christianity lifeless and dull (and this is true of many who believe as well as those who don’t). Wonder, magic, beauty and joy—these qualities for which we long in life are those that people see evident in fairy tales but missing from religion. What we need to remember for ourselves as well as for our outreach to others is that Christianity is not, at first, a series of theological principles but a story, and we need to both hear for ourselves and tell others about that story with all the beauty, joy and magical wonder of hearing or telling a fairy tale—and more so, for this is the fairy tale that came true, and “Once upon a time” is the life you and I are living right now.