The following blog is an excerpt from Tim Keller’s latest book, concerning the natural desires of mankind and the gospel of Christ:
Tolkien’s famous essay “On Fairy Stories” argues that there are indelible, deep longings in the human heart that realistic fiction cannot satisfy. Fantasy fiction—fairy tales and science fiction and similar literature—depict characters who…
- get outside of time altogether;
- escape death;
- hold communion with nonhuman beings;
- find a perfect love from which they never part;
- triumph finally over evil.
Of course readers and viewers know that fairy stories are fiction, but when the story is well told and these things are depicted vividly, it provides a peculiar kind of comfort and satisfaction. What we call “fantasy fiction” is massively popular and continues to be consumed by audiences numbering in the billions. The enduring appeal of stories that represent these conditions is unquestionable. But why? As a Christian, Tolkien believed that these stories resonate so deeply because they bear witness to an underlying reality.
Even if we do not intellectually believe that there is a God or life after death, our hearts (in the Christian view) sense somehow that these things characterize life as it was and should be and eventually will be again. We are so deeply interested in these stories because we have intuitions of the creation/fall/redemption/restoration plotline of the Bible. Even if we repress the knowledge of that plotline intellectually, we can’t not know it imaginatively, and our hearts are stirred by any stories that evoke it.
The English word “gospel” comes from the Middle English word Godspell which derives from two Old English words: good and spell (story). In Old English “to tell a story” was “to cast a spell.” Stories capture the heart and imagination and give us deep joy. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the Goodspell. It is the story that all other joy-bringing, spell-casting, heart-shaping stories only point to. What’s special about this one? It is the one story that satisfies all these longings—yet is historically true.
If Jesus Christ was really raised from the dead—if he is really the Son of God and you believe in him—all those things that you long for most desperately are real and will come true. We will escape time and death. We will know love without parting, we will even communicate with nonhuman beings, and we will see evil defeated forever. In fairy stories, especially the best and most well-told ones, we get a temporary reprieve from a life in which our deepest desires are all violently rebuffed. However, if the gospel is true—and it is—all those longings will be fulfilled.
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Timothy Keller, Preaching, Chapter 5.
