Fairy Tales

So here’s the thing with fairytales. We spend our childhood loving them, and then, when we grow up, the world convinces us that they don’t exist. That they are merely a fantasy that gives little girls false notions of finding her prince charming. GK Chesterton begs to differ: “Fairy tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” It is so easy for the cynic in me to disregard this quote. Especially lately. There is a cultural war going on, and the dragon called cynicism is feeding it. Especially with all of the politics floating around lately, the Tea Party and the Republicans versus the Democrats, or the Christians versus the Liberals-it is hard to remain an idealist. It is so easy to fall into the trap of cynicism- Well everyone is just going to be at each other’s throats anyway, so why not join a side? Some Christians (not all) are creating crusades against people that don’t fall in line with their beliefs, and the liberal media (not all) retaliate by making martyrs out of the Christians. That seems to be a scenario where no one wins. What if the response when an act of hatred toward a group was: “To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘Throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our houses and threaten our children and we will still love you. Beat us and leave us half dead and we will still love you…One day we shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory” (MLKJ). Rather than pointing fingers and figuring out who the oppressor is, we could always start a revolution that could set both the oppressors and the oppressed free. Allowing us to look at more important issues instead of who is right and who is wrong. There are so many issues go unnoticed. Shane Claiborne puts it in perspective: “The lives of the thirty thousand children who die of starvation EACH DAY is like six 9-11s EVERY SINGLE DAY. A silent tsunami that happens every week.” If we were all to work together, think of the things that could be accomplished. While we were having our Republican Convention and our Democrat Convention, 55 people were kidnapped into a rebel army that uses mostly children as soldiers (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/03/us-centralafrican-uganda-lra-idUSBRE8820J920120903). It almost makes our political debates seem small in comparison, I think. With that in mind…What if we became a society that, like children, sees fairy tales as real? What if we could see cynicism as a dragon that could be slain? What if: The Republicans, Democrats, Christians, Liberals, Homosexuals, Tea Partiers, bullies, the bullied, etc…what if EVERYONE did as Martin Luther King Jr. said? We could all work on unity. On focusing on the goal of loving each other…If we don’t, my big fear is that, in our adult word of cynicism, we are destroying the fairy tale belief system that our next generation has right now. Instead of telling them that dragons exist, our actions are telling them that people who don’t believe the same things they do is the dragon. We should challenge the next generation to stay child-like and idealistic. Because if not, we may lose children to the culture of materialism, hatred, violence and war. Wouldn’t it be an interesting concept to give the kids the power to dream up the kind of world we SHOULD live in, rather than tell them the evils of the one we DO live in? Maybe Jesus had that whole see the world through a child’s eyes right. Children don’t hate anything. They aren’t cynical at all. I’m definitely challenging myself to slay that dragon of cynicism within me, and love everyone…So that I can start focusing on the bigger picture.