The Gospel According to Disney (Part 1)

I recently was blessed with the opportunity to spend a day with my family at Walt Disney World. I have been there twice before and enjoyed it each time. This time though, it struck me more than ever how much of what Disney does resounds with echoes of the Gospel.

It’s not a completely foreign thought to me, I actually preached a sermon once on Ephesians 2:1-10 entitled “Fairy Tale Grace.” In it I recounted the tale of Snow White’s encounter with the wicked queen. This evil monarch, filled with envy and pride and murderous thoughts deceived Snow White into eating a deadly fruit. And having eaten, as she lay there dead, it did not matter what good works she had done, she was utterly incapable of doing anything to save herself. After all, she was dead.

But then along came her prince. He kissed her, and because his love for her was so great, she was brought back to life. Our story is not all that different from hers. We too once laid helpless, having been deceived by an evil monarch to eat of a deadly fruit. As we read in Ephesians 2:1-2, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air…”

Even so, Christ Jesus is our prince, who has loved us though there was not a thing we could offer him. He has revived us by his love though we truly could do nothing to deserve it, and he has taken us to be his bride, to reign with him forever.

J.R.R. Tolkien once made the point that the reason every culture has so many fairy tales (or as he called them, “fairy stories”) is because they are an echo of the one true story, that of a loving, redeeming God and his people who are the object of his affection. This is the reason Snow White’s story so resonates with us.

Over the next week or so I will be posting some other observations of how my trip to Disney World similarly reminded me of the Gospel. I hope you will be following along, and if you are, that you will be blessed by the beauty of the Gospel.

Other Posts in This Series:
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4