A Child’s Story of Hope in the Midst of Suffering
I often think about something C.S. Lewis wrote in On Stories: And Other Essays on Literature. He said, “When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
To be an adult often means we become free to embrace our inner child. Jesus may have said it even better when he claimed, “unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Matt. 18:3) Now before you write-off my comments because you think I misquoted Jesus, ask yourself what did he really mean?
Certainly, he didn’t mean that we are to lose all sense of language and begin to vomit on our shirts. He also didn’t mean we start throwing tantrums and make unreasonable demands of others. He didn’t even mean that we should move back into our parent’s house and let them pay for everything. But he must have meant something.
I think, and I very well could be wrong, but I think he meant that we must embrace the world with a sense of wonder. I think he meant that we should look at God as the perfect parent – not the parent we had – but the parent who loves us and wants us to have a sense of joy and marvel in this amazingly wonderful world he created. But I think this means something very different to humanity before and after the fall, but since we live in a fallen world we must realize this world is not always perfect and people are not always children. But in the off chance that you choose to see this imperfect world through the eyes of a child, you might actually gain a glimpse of heaven through the darkness.
Pan’s Labyrinth is a wonderful fairy tale and a movie I most heartily recommend. While I can’t say for certain, I expect that if Lewis or Tolkien were around today they would both have liked this movie. It has all of the elements one has come to expect in fairy tales including monsters, mythology, maniacs, murder, and mayhem. But in the midst of this dark and fallen world, there is a child who sees something beautiful, something greater that the pain and suffering which surrounds her, something that gives her hope. It is the story of such a little girl which Guillermo del Toro tells through the subtitled Pan’s Labyrinth. And while there are certainly a few dark images and scenes that are difficult to watch, but those things are minor and not gratuitous, in
If you want some guidance on how to see the world through the eyes of a little child, I recommend you watch Pan’s Labyrinth with some friends and then plan time to discuss the elements of hope in a dark world that are seen through the eyes of a child.
