What Fairy Tales Know

“Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” — Matthew 18:3 (KJV)

Chesterton says his first and last philosophy, the one he still believed as a grown man, he learned in the nursery from fairy tales.

He loved the moral lessons in them. Jack the Giant Killer teaches that giants should be beaten because they are proud and huge. Cinderella teaches the same lesson as Mary’s song in the Bible: God lifts up the humble. And then there is a lesson Chesterton thought was wonderful:

“There is the great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast”; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable.”

That is exactly what God does with us. He doesn’t wait for us to become lovable before he loves us. He loves us first, and his love makes us beautiful.

But the biggest thing fairy tales taught Chesterton was a way of looking at the world: with wonder. In fairy tales, nobody treats strange things as boring. A tree that grows golden apples is amazing. Chesterton says real trees are just as amazing. Apples growing on trees, grass being green, the sun coming up: none of these had to happen. They are gifts.

Scientists in his day talked as if nature’s patterns were “laws” that couldn’t possibly be otherwise. Chesterton said: we observe that apples fall, but there’s no reason they must. We can imagine trees growing candlesticks. The fact that the world works the way it does is a wonder.

He also gives a famous definition of tradition:

“Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead.”

His point is that we shouldn’t ignore the wisdom of people just because they happened to live before us. The faith of millions of ordinary people over many centuries deserves a vote too.

Jesus said that unless we become like little children, we will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Part of that is being able to wonder again, to look at the world and say, “Wow.”

One thing to do this week: this week, look at one ordinary thing each day as if you were seeing it for the first time: an apple, a sunrise, rain, your own hand. Write down what is amazing about it, and thank God for it.