Jim Ware - The God of the Fairy Tale: Finding Truth in the Land of Make-Believe

There is Truth woven into the fabric of fairy tales (as indeed there is in all creation). Jim Ware has thoughtfully begun to unravel that Truth. He has listened and heard the echoes of it as they have reverberated throughout the classic childrens stories we all love and thought we knew. He has drawn from his belt the golden goblet and poured the magic, eye-opening potion in our left eye so that, in time, we will begin to see not simply with but through them.

M ICHAEL C ARD , author of A Fragile Stone and Scribbling in the Sand

Truth has always been found in the most unlikely of places. What a fresh, enlightening perspective to the exercise of seeking out the God of the upside-down kingdom! This is a rare look into the magic mirror, a new twist on who the fairest truly is, and a chance to be awed and inspired by the man behind the curtain.

D AN H ASELTINE , songwriter, jars of clay

God of the Fairy Tale is a beautifully written book that treats stories not as an academic exercise but as God-given mysteries to explore. Its a warm, poetic devotional that turns our eyes to God and allows us to find Him in unlikely places and through unlikely characters. Jim is a remarkable worker of words and stories. Families of all ages can make great use of this marvelous book.

P AUL M C C USKER , author of Epiphany and the Adventures in Odyssey Passages series

God of the Fairy Tale is a brilliant blend of art and inspiration from a truly gifted writer. Be prepared to recapture the magic of your faith!

K URT B RUNER , coauthor of Finding God in the Lord of the Rings

This is not a safe book! But it is a very good book. It will open your mind to the great truths behind the classic stories you enjoyed in your youth. Plus it will enrich your family as you reread these stories with your children.

A L J ANSSEN , author of The Marriage Masterpiece

In Wares handling, the classic fairy stories emerge as what C. S. Lewis called good dreams that God sent to the human raceimaginary stories and myths that are analogous to patterns that we find in the Bible and the Christian faith. For Christian readers and parents who have not known what to make of fairy tales, this book provides helpful answers as it sets up a two-way street in which the Christian faith and the genre of the fairy tale reveal the truth and beauty of each other.

D R . L ELAND R YKEN , professor of English at Wheaton College and author of more than two dozen books, including The Christian Imagination: The Practice of Faith in Literature and Writing

Jim Ware offers a compelling explanation of not only how literature transforms the soul, but how traditional stories, myths, and fairy tales have come true in Christ! Especially helpful for the literature-challenged.

H ANK H ANEGRAAFF , host of the Bible Answer Man radio broadcast

God of the Fairy Tale
A S HAW B OOK
P UBLISHED BY W ATER B ROOK P RESS
2375 Telstar Drive, Suite 160
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80920
A division of Random House, Inc.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible ( NASB ). Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org). Scripture quotations marked ( NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked ( NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2003 by Jim Ware

Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc.,
7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

S HAW B OOKS and its aspen leaf logo are trademarks of WaterBrook Press, a division of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ware, Jim.
God of the fairy tale : finding truth in the land of make-believe / Jim Ware1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN: 978-0-307-55269-3
1. Fairy talesHistory and criticism. 2. Fairy talesReligious aspects. I. Title.
PN3437.W37
2003 398.2dc21

2003011252

v3.1

To Kurt, for his encouragement,
and to Ken, who helped make it possible

I suspect that men have sometimes derived more spiritual sustenance from myths they did not believe than from the religion they professed.

C. S. L EWIS

True? This very thing I have been telling you is the truest I could dish out for you, my friends, and belongs to my life too, in a certain sense.

E. T. A. H OFFMAN , T HE G OLDEN F LOWERPOT

S eptember 1931. A dark and stormy night. Windy, at any rate. On the grounds of Magdalen College, Oxford, two tweed-jacketed, pipe-puffing professors go crunching down the gravel path known as Addisons Walk under the deeper shadows of an ancient grove of treesa mysterious, murky wood where, in the blustery darkness, its easy to imagine elves among the branches.

Look! says the tall, long-faced fellow with the furrowed brow and twinkling eyes of a sage or a wizard. There it standsits feet in the earth, its head among the stars. A majestic miracle of creation! And what do we call it? A tree. He laughs. The word falls absurdly short of expressing the thing itself.

Of course it does, responds the other, a round-faced, slightly balding, bespectacled man in his midthirties. Like any word, its just a verbal inventiona symbol of our own poor devising.

Exactly, says the first man. And heres my point: Just as a word is an invention about an object or an idea, so a story can be an invention about Truth.

The other rubs his chin. Ive loved stories since I was a boy, he muses. You know that, Tollers! Especially stories about heroism and sacrifice, death and resurrectionlike the Norse myth of Balder. But when it comes to Christianity well, thats another matter. I simply dont understand how the life and death of someone else (whoever he was) two thousand years ago can help me here and now.

But dont you see, Jack? persists his friend. The Christian story is the greatest story of them all. Because its the real story. The historical event that fulfills the tales and shows us what they mean. The tree itselfnot just a verbal invention.