Why the Fascination?
I read. A lot. And a lot of a specific genre. I also watch a lot of movies and television shows within this same genre. Yes, I fall in the 10% of Syfy Channel's female viewership. From the time I was old enough to understand sentences, my parents read books to me. From the time I was old enough to really listen, I memorized my favorites and pretended I was really reading (books like Are You my Mother? and The Star Bellied Sneetches by Dr. Seuss were the order of the day back then.) By the time I had my own bed--graduated from the crib--I had my own book shelf as well, full of wonderful picture books, including a Precious Moments illustrated bible, a large-print copy of Hans Christian Andersen's greatest works, an extensive collection of Dr. Seuss and Bill Peet, and, my favorite, Jane and the Dragon. (Yes, I get to blame my parents for my Fantasty/Science Fiction problem. We all know I love it though, so thanks, Mom and Dad!)
While the imaginative minds of Dr. Seuss and Bill Peet might have helped push my desires to the extra fantastic, I am not alone in having a fascination with stories wrought in other worlds. In fact, I think we'd be very hard pressed to find someone who doesn't enjoy at least one of the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars, or the Twilight Saga (yes, even that). Or at the very least, who didn't grow up enjoying fairy tales or knights of the round table, reading comic books or acting out the slaying of evil super villains. And let's be real here, video games--ALL video games--have taken stepping out of our world and into another to a whole new, and mainstream, level. Each of us, in whatever individual capacity, is inexorably drawn to the fantastic and to the otherworldly.
What is that about?
When I was younger my friends and I used to joke about this as our escapist tendencies. We looked around us and found the world boring and cruel (we were very angsty pre-teens and teenagers), so we buried our noses in books that gave us black and white battles between good and evil and watched anime upon anime featuring kids saving their universes in the company of talking cats and giant robots. As we grew up and out of teenage dramas, we came face to face with the fact that while much of our previous aches and pains had been created, the world really wasn't the prettiest place we could be living in. As adults (if we are so lucky to be sheltered this long), we are confronted with real hurt, real pain. Is running from this what drives us to the fantasy of other worlds? Are we really, constantly, living the escapism of my teenage years every time we gather for a midnight showing of Harry Potter?
The problem with calling our inclination to the fantastic escapism is that it suggest a bad habit. Escapism is, can we agree, something not entirely healthy; escapism, a tactic to ignore that which makes us hurt, is something to be avoided. The healthy response to a realization that we are simply tuning out the bad in favor of ignorance of it is to turn off the "distraction" and return to the "real world." Put away your novels, turn off the television, come back from your daydreams of a better place, and sink your teeth into the gritty reality, whatever yours may be. And once you have identified what it is that is making you run away, confront it, and then, well... then, be happy. Be happy in the materialism, the bitter sniping comments, the wars going on around the globe, the children being sold into slavery, the high schoolers selling drugs to each other in a desperate attempt to forget how much life sucks at home. Escapism suggest we are just running away from all of this. Escapism suggests that we are supposed to somehow be okay living in this mess.
It just isn't true.
And, don't get me wrong; this world is full of beautiful things and beautiful people. I will be the first person to tell you that every situation has a gleam of hope and every person has a light and a beauty just waiting to burst forth. Most of my writing will center around these things, because I believe there is far too much concentration on the dark and far too few lighthouses in the midst of all of it. But think carefully: in any of those glorious moments, those good and joyful things, is there not still a longing, a something left unfulfilled? A something that, after the initial joy (be it a moment, a week, or a year) we calm down into the day-to-day and again are seeking something else? We run after whatever things seem to raise a positive flare in our lives, seeking to fill some hole we didn't notice growing along with our bodies and our minds.
This hole, this desire that we cannot quite name... I believe it is this, not escapism, that attracts us to the fantastic. It is not a running away from the bad, but a running towards the good that we know deep within us we were created for. I think C.S. Lewis, and after him Brooke Fraser, put what I am trying to say best: "If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, I can only conclude that I was not made for here." (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Brooke Fraser, "CS Lewis Song.) We were not made for the world as we know it.
When we dive into Rivendell, into epic tales of knights rescuing damsels and mages destroying demons, we may be ignoring reality for a minute, but instead of running away, what we are doing is seeking to feed our souls with little glimpses of another world we know we were built for. Our hearts know in their depths the purpose and the glory that the creator of the universe intended for us and they know that this, even in the beautiful moments of joy and love and friendship, is just a shadow of the real world that we are destined for. Our souls long for, cry out for, the kingdom that is to come.
We were created to be in a place of perfect communion with God, walking, as Adam and Eve were initially, in simple friendship with our Father. Cast out of the garden, after the first fatal choice made between something of the world and God, we attempted to make of the world the same home that God had crafted for us, but can never achieve the same end. And once God found a people willing to choose him once again, in Abraham and Sarah, in their children, His people "lived like strangers in a foreign country... For they were looking forward to the city with foundations whose architect and builder is God... And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If what they had been thinking of was the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country--a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them." (Hebrews 11:6-16)
And our deeper eternal purpose has been expanded into the multitudes by Christ's coming, death, and resurrection. Through him, even though we still walk on this planet, interact with and have the opportunity to be a part of all the doings of the people of the world, we no longer simply yearn for a heavenly place, but now we are not even a part of the same world. In John 17:14-16, Jesus prays "I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it." We are not made of the same stuff as the earth and we are not made for the purpose of being here. We are pilgrims and aliens, living within but not becoming of, a foreign land. There is a city built by God that beckons us; our hearts wait eagerly for the opportunity to reside there.
But until then, we seek encouragement that the kingdom is here, now, even amidst the evil that runs rampant in our world. Until then, we continually seek out glimpses in the form of other things. I do not believe that any author or screenwriter has come close to capturing the kingdom of God, even those who have tried. But what I do know is that more than in any other genre I have read, authors of fairy tales, fantasy, and science fiction use their invented worlds, their grandiose imaginative prefaces, to reveal the inner spirit of what it means to be human and what it means to truly love, both of which are rooted in God. Its almost ironic that in order to catch glimpses of the true nobility of humanity we turn to stories that weave elves and aliens as our counterparts, to be reminded of how much love really matters we read about robots who may or may not feel at all, to satisfy, for a moment, the longing in our soul for real immediate relationship with our God we laugh at the impertinent relationships characters have with their created gods. I do not claim that any novel can bring us closer to the Lord than He can himself. Neither through this do I mean that in response to the pain of the world we should hide in fiction to bolster our bleeding souls. I simply theorize the why of our attraction and preface my forthcoming "Finding God in Flights of Fancy" posts with these thoughts.
For "now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face." (1 Corinthians 13:12)
[Possible Finding God in Flights of Fancy things to expect in the future: Things to expect from the future: understanding kingship, being a lady--strong but gentle, standing up against the powers and principalities without Jesus (aka, how much that would suck), and... whatever else God reads to me!]
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