Looking at The Daily Wire’s announcement of “Snow White and the Evil Queen”

Today, The Daily Wire announced their new kid focused streaming service Bentkey, and along with it revealed their upcoming movie for the platform “Snow White and the Evil Queen.”  This got me thinking about the fantasy genre in general, and how as a Christian it has been an important part of my life, teaching in tales and parables the difference between good and evil and bringing up questions of morality and faith that no other genre of storytelling can do in the same way.

A century ago, the modern fantasy movement was in its infancy.  God wasn’t blind to the impact this would have on American culture and knew He could further His kingdom by raising up generations of cultural missionaries to further his love and light through the medium.  Today, He has given this mission to The Daily Wire through Co-CEOs Jeremy Boreing and Ben Shapiro, a pastor turned entrepreneur and a devout Orthodox Jew respectively who believe they were given a mission to be God’s cultural warriors in a time when our nation needs to see that there is good and evil in the world – that goodness, love and faith need to be fought for.

A century ago, our nation didn’t need The Daily Wire.  We had a much stronger moral foundation.  We practiced goodness every day by loving our neighbors and understood there was evil trying to warp and destroy everything God builds.  This evil was experienced firsthand with the two World Wars.  What we needed then were people who could shape the future of storytelling and teach generations that this battle is going on in each of us – that there will be choices each of us must make towards one or the other.

God wasn’t blindsided or duped by the forces of evil when modern fantasy began.  Instead, he started molding it through divinely inspired storytellers.  When devout Christian university professor J. R. R. Tolkien began making bedtime stories for his sons largely based on fairy tales, myths, and legends, he would have never believed that he would later be named the father of modern fantasy.  It was “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” which has birthed generations of fantasy and sci-fantasy works such as “Star Wars,” “Dungeons and Dragons,” and “Game of Thrones” – some of the largest, farthest reaching story universes ever to be told in human history.

Furthermore, Tolkien touched the lives of many of his contemporary storytellers, most notably C. S. Lewis whom Tolkien helped bring back to his faith in God after years as an atheist.  Without this transition in Lewis’ life, he would have never become one of the greatest Christian apologists of the 20^th century.  His work “Mere Christianity” was put together from a series of radio broadcasts given during World War II which aimed to help people make sense of what was going on and show them where God was in it all.

If not more important, his work “The Chronicles of Narnia” has certainly had more of an impact, both on God’s early plans for molding cultural missionaries through the fantasy genre, and their long reaching affects.  These books which Lewis meant as a direct allegory of biblical stories have become so popular that Disney began creating movies based on these books in 2005, the same Disney The Daily Wire is culturally up against. 

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

It’s hard to believe that this Chrisitan apologist and storyteller had to hide that he was reading fairy tales from his strict Christian father as a 10-year-old boy.  He believed they were at best frivolous and childish, and at worst tales of evil.  Later in Lewis’ life 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.”  This was in direct reference to 1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.”  Likely Lewis had been quoted this verse directly by his father and saw a wisdom in the verse his father had not.

Through the last century, there have been setbacks in God’s plan to raise up a nation of cultural missionaries using modern fantasy to reach people for Him.  Evil fully understands the power that the story has over people, and its forces are intensely jealous of anything that can bring about God’s goodness.  This was why stories were Jesus primary way of teaching through the parables of the Gospels, and why Satan is constantly fabricating stories to turn us away from good and towards evil.  He even tempted Jesus through these fabrications, “Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.” Matthew 4: 8, 9.  Satan attempted to sway Jesus away from his divine path by telling him a story of what he could have if he were only to turn from good and embrace evil.  Not so ironically, the story of a person ‘making a deal with the devil’ for power, fame or wealth is one the most popular plots in modern fantasy.

“With The Daily Wire’s announcement today of both “Snow White and the Evil Queen,” and “The Pendragon Cycle,” we as Christians have an opportunity to support the cultural missionaries God is raising up in our nation.  More than at any other time in the last century, we need stories that will show people that good and evil exist, and that not only is good worth fighting for, but it can win.

And if you are a Christian who is skeptical that anything good can come from something with similarities to the occult taught against in the Bible, there are two things I feel led to share.  The first is that every genre tells stories of sin and temptation.  Mysteries and crime tell stories of theft, murder, and lies.  Thrillers tell stories of greed, pride, and abuses of power.  Romance tells stories of jealousy, adultery, and sexual immorality.  Some of these stories are used by evil forces to try to tempt people away from God and towards their own immoral ends.  Many others are used to show the justice, love, and moral goodness of God.  Stories are powerful tools that we should not allow Satan to monopolize.

The second thing I would ask of you is to watch “The Lord of the Rings” if you have not already.  Tolkien may not have written it as a direct allegory of Biblical stories as Lewis did with “The Chronicles of Narnia,” but he did fill the books with Biblical metaphors and analogies.  Themes including good versus evil, no one is past saving, and sacrificing your life for another’s make up the core foundation of the modern fantasy genre and universes such as “Dungeons and Dragons.” 

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

When you finish “The Lord of the Rings” watch “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.”  In my opinion, this movie was one of the best morally unambiguous films to come out of Hollywood in the last decade.  At the core of this wonderful story is a man who is faced with the temptation to make the previously mentioned ‘deal with the devil’ to save his wife and protect his family, and what he must sacrifice if he chooses to do so.  Anyone familiar with Tolkien will immediately see the analogies of sacrifice, redemption, and selfless love in this movie.  It’s not surprising that the entirety of Dungeons and Dragons only exists because of Tolkien’s influence, the same influence of a cultural missionary that turned C. S. Lewis from atheism to God.