You likely heard of the witch trials J. K. Rowling endured several years ago when a satirical news website wrote that her Harry Potter series caused children to believe in and practice witchcraft — and that children taking up witchcraft was Rowling’s intention. This satire was shared so widely as truth that Rowling had to make a public announcement assuring the world that she had no intentions of indoctrinating young children in occult practices.
Harry Potter isn’t the first or last fantasy series to be attacked by well-meaning Christians for its magic systems or fantastical elements. Discernment bloggers abound who discredit books and movies simply because they contain magic or mythical creatures. Parents become indignant that their children must learn about the Greek and Roman mythology in school, books like The Iliad or The Odyssey.
But perhaps you’re not like those parents. You don’t necessarily want to ban all magical books from church libraries or forbid your child from watching Narnia or the Lord of the Rings adaptations. Rather, maybe you’re more apathetic. You don’t see the point or purpose.
It’s all made up anyway. And all it does is leave my children peering down every rabbit hole wondering if there’s a mad hatter and bunny running to tea inside. If you’re going to invest time in reading to your children, there are truer stories. Right?
Yet what if there’s a world of truth that you’re missing out on — the kind that will last an entire lifetime?
Fantasy Won’t Help You Escape Reality
Stories of magical worlds and mythical creatures can illuminate truth in a way that, say, a Christian nonfiction story may not — for children and adults, too.
By taking the struggles and questions we know so personally in our ordinary lives and tossing them into a world completely unlike ours, our gaze is brightened, and we see ideas we might have missed otherwise. A new perspective can bend the common workings of our world and enliven abstract truths.
How many of us felt ourselves convicted of a lack of selfless courage when Sam courageously and selflessly crossed into Mordor alone to save Frodo? Or, in beholding Aslan’s mighty roar in The Magician’s Nephew, were awed at the power of God in creation?
Reading fantasy isn’t just about escaping reality — it’s about facing the shadows of life.
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s day, critics scorned readers for using fairy stories to retreat from reality. Yet Tolkien said those critics confused “the escape of the prisoner with the flight of the deserter.”
Tolkien wrote in On Fairy-Stories, “Fairy-stories deal largely … with simple or fundamental things, untouched by fantasy, but these simplicities are made all the more luminous by their setting.” Readers and writers of fantasy aren’t escaping real life. They are trying to see reality at another angle, to break free of despair and grasp hope again.
As Chesterton said in Orthodoxy, “I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been merely ratified by mere facts.”
Writing on the importance of fairy tales for instructing the moral imagination of children, Vigen Guroian furthers this point in Tending the Heart of Virtue:
Mere instruction in morality is not sufficient to nurture the virtues. It might even backfire, especially when the presentation is heavily exhortative and the pupil feels coerced. Instead, a compelling vision of the goodness of goodness itself needs to be presented in such a way that it is attractive and stirs the imagination. A good moral education addresses both the cognitive and affective dimensions of human nature. And stories are an irreplaceable medium for this kind of moral education.
Our children need stories to turn their hearts towards what is true, beautiful, good, and true. Will we supply this education for them? To meet this end, as Guroian says, stories are irreplaceable.
An Invitation to Build Imaginations for the Glory of God
We don’t need to fear fantasy. I believe we should do our best to not become apathetic towards it either. Readers young and old need works that instruct them in the way that they should go, so that when we bring these ideas to them from Scripture, an inkling of that truth has already taken root in their hearts through the beloved books they read.
How to Choose the Right Fantasy Fiction
Just as every book is not a good book, not every fairy tale or piece of fantasy fiction will not enlighten or educate. Just because a book is imaginative doesn’t mean it’s the right kind of imaginative; books can be used to desert reality, as Tolkien’s critics warned. We need living books — books that transcend time and place and offer right and noble ideas.
What kind of story, then, should you find? If you weren’t the type to read fantasy books growing up, you may not know of any fantasy books or how to discern a beautifully true one from a twaddle. While there is some subjectivity in what we consider beautiful and interesting, here are a few questions I pose of fantasy books.
Is it an allegory? If so, what does it teach us about God, humanity, and creation?
In stories of the Christian fantasy genre, there’s a difficult line to walk when it comes to interpreting the stories and characters allegorically. On one hand, we must be discerning that the story isn’t communicating false theology. On the other, I’ve seen Christians tear down books like The Chronicles of Narnia for its “bad” theology, because a reviewer took an allegory a bit too far. We must remember that fiction will never be able to be a direct parallel, just as Jesus’ own parables couldn’t be taken too literally. While fiction may never be able to perfectly explain the perfect nature of God, it can be a good reflection of him.
What themes are being drawn?
This is a question we should ask of any piece of fiction. Many books written for children often focus on chasing your desires and dreams above all reason or wisdom or shirking responsibilities. Some stories become far too focused on “believing in yourself,” on one’s own feelings more than the aged wisdom of others. Many modern fantasy books celebrate the very vices that The Picture of Dorian Gray sought to speak out against. As Jessica Hooten Wilson writes in The Scandal of Holiness:
As Christians, we are sensitive to obvious worldliness—explicit language, pornography, superfluous violence—but we often miss vicious philosophy. We’re concerned when our children see violent zombie movies, but less so when their princess coloring books proclaim, “Choose your own destiny!” We are not meant to be the heroes of our story, we are not meant to be anything we desire, and we are definitely not meant to be the author of our tale.
We don’t need to content ourselves with stories that promote worldly truths that we will later need to re-teach to our children. Beautifully created fantasy lends itself to the possibility of nobler, more enduring themes such as courage, honor, sacrifice, and loyalty. These are the kinds of stories we should seek.
What does the story say about love?
Author K. B. Hoyle rightly declares in the first Owl’s Nest Podcast episode that most books marketed towards teenagers are written by adult women trying to relive their high school years, which creates teenage characters who actually act like adults. Likewise, Christian Leithart writes in Wild Things and Castles in the Sky:
It will come as no surprise that YA fiction almost exclusively panders to teenage obsessions: violence, sex, vanity, etc. Even when one of these YA books has a subtle lesson to teach, the “total effect” is lost in the thrill of romance, violence, and self-expression. Those who sell YA know this. It’s the lifeblood of their market. If I, in my teenage years, had lapped up novels designed for my immature tastes, I may have never tasted anything else. I would have had all the easy, unearned adulthood I wanted: independence, sex, and self-expression galore.
In the fantasy genre, this has become such an issue that groups have formed online for fantasy readers who want “low spice” books. It does matter what fiction says about love and romance.
Is it necessary that this be set in a fantastical setting?
Good fantasy ties setting and storyline together, making them inseparable. As C.S. Lewis wrote concerning science fiction in On Stories:
In this sub-species the author leaps forward into an imagined future when planetary, sidereal, or even galactic travel has become common. Against this huge backcloth he then proceeds to develop an ordinary love story, spy-story, or crime-story. This seems to me tasteless. Whatever in a work of art is not used is doing much harm. The faintly imagined, and sometimes strictly unimaginable, scenes and properties, only blur the real theme and distract us from any interest it might have had.
Anything unnecessary to a piece of writing is only distracting the reader from the greater truths and artful work that the author first set out to accomplish. Rather, every element a writer includes in a story should turn readers to themes that embody truth, beauty, and goodness, rather than unimportant details.