For the First Time in Forever

Spoiler Alert: Disney’s Frozen, J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard

So, over the past few months I’ve been off getting married and settling into a new life and apartment with my wife, and blogging has fallen by the wayside. I was reflecting on this a few weeks ago, and I realized that the next time I posted on Jesus Geek I would be blogging “for the first time in forever.” This gave me a topic to reboot with, and everything was right with the universe. I realize that I’m awfully late to jump on the writing-about-Frozen bandwagon, so late that even the eternal winter brought on by the film’s release (nothing will convince me otherwise) has past. Nevertheless, here are some Christ-centered reflections on a few of the movie’s most memorable songs:

“For the First Time in Forever”

In this parallel account of how the sisters are coping with the prospect of the coronation, we see Elsa reciting the litany her parents taught her: “Don’t let them in / Don’t let them see / Be the good girl / You always have to be / Conceal, don’t feel / Put on a show…” One consequence of Elsa’s repression and self-enforced isolation is being deliberately cut off from others, even those whom she would be apt to love, namely her sister. This is the “frozen heart” spoken of in the film: one that is cut off from love and care for others, purposefully cold, indifferent, and isolated.

I’m reminded of “The Warlock’s Hairy Heart,” one of the fairy tales in J.K. Rowling’s The Tales of Beedle the Bard. The eponymous warlock, observing the foolishness of his friends in love, decides to employ the Dark Arts to keep himself invulnerable. As the years pass he forgoes courtship, marriage, and parenthood, and he doesn’t seem to have any friends, either. When his parents die, he feels secure in his lack of grief. It is only out of jealousy that he eventually determines to find himself a wife, and when the woman he is courting mentions his lack of a heart, the warlock reveals his secret: he removed it from his chest long ago. Now shrunken and hairy, “it had grown strange during its long exile, blind and savage in the darkness to which it had been condemned, and its appetites had grown powerful and perverse.” Needless to say, this date does not go well, and the warlock’s decision to divorce himself from his own heart leads to both their deaths.

Of course, Elsa’s frozen heart differs from the warlock’s hairy one in that she does feel affection for others—she merely hides it out of misplaced fear for their safety. The warlock, on the other hand, effectively kills and buries his affections out of a selfish fear of vulnerability. Fortunately for Elsa, she is saved from having her heart irredeemably corrupted when she learns to overcome her fear and express love for her sister. But it is a close thing.

The two stories make one important point: Whether out of selfless or selfish fear, cutting off our hearts from others will not benefit them or us—it will rob them of the blessings of our love, or worse, cut them deeply, and it will progressively twist our own hearts until they are beyond repair. C.S. Lewis made this point far better than I ever could in The Four Loves:

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

I would only add that to love is also to accept the risk of the beloved’s vulnerability, as Elsa had to learn to do. When we do we discover, as Elsa did, that uninhibited love benefits the beloved as much or more than it puts them at risk, and that active love helps us to avoid hurting people more than avoiding them does.

I think that if we’re honest, all of us can sympathize with either Elsa or the warlock, or perhaps both. For me it’s the warlock. In the past I have been very quick to point out the foolishness of others in love, and it is still my tendency if I’m not careful. Admittedly, this is not all bad—some, even many, people are quite foolish in the way they handle romantic (and other) relationships, and I’m not referring to some cutesy, “Oh look, aren’t they fools for love” type of foolishness—I’m talking about honest-to-goodness, destructive, stupid, sometimes sinful foolishness. We should absolutely avoid being fools and show discretion in love of all kinds.

But we can’t let others’ foolishness, or the fear of our own potential for foolishness or hurting others, keep us from stepping out and being wise in love. We must be both cautious and bold to avoid being foolish or hurting others as well as paralysis or coldness. Submitting to Christ in this regard works wonders. In the past I’ve been the sort of person who scoffs at romantic love and has difficulty showing affection to friends; today I’m married and submitting my difficulties to the Lord and relying on him to help me invest in relationships. Loving Christ, the redeemer and sanctifier of our hearts, is the surest (read: only) way to completely avoid the trap our two unfortunate magic users fell into.

To sum things up, even though we must be prudent about what we feel and how we express our feelings, “Conceal, don’t feel” is terrible advice. The king and queen or Arendelle: bad parents, or the worst parents?

“Let It Go”

Elsa’s royally bad parents keep her boxed in with rules and restrictions, making sure she’s well aware of everything she must not do so she won’t hurt anyone. Deprived of the opportunity to express her feelings or powers, the princess goes a little bit crazy once the cat is out of the bag:

The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside
Couldn’t keep it in, heaven knows I tried…

It’s funny how some distance
Makes everything seem small
And the fears that once controlled me
Can’t get to me at all

It’s time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong, no rules for me
I’m free

Sound familiar? I don’t think it’s a stretch to compare Elsa to kids who leave repressive Christian homes for the freedom of college. Constantly told what not to do, many decide to reject their parents’ and church’s rules, sometimes in an extravagant manner. As with Elsa, this doesn’t benefit them, and it may result in the rejection of the community that imposed the rules. Note the people of Arendelle’s (not unjustifiable) fear and loathing of the out-of-control Elsa. The young adult rejects the church/family and its rules, the church/family rejects the rebellious youth, and this in turn feeds their rebellion. It’s all kinds of ugly, even when unseasonable snowstorms aren’t involved. In this interpretation, Elsa’s powers are akin to a young adult’s behavior: she is taught to be demure and repressed and rebels, acting in an extravagant and destructive way instead.

There is a tendency in some Christian families and churches to emphasize rules in a legalistic way, teaching teenagers to repress their questions and emotions and implying that a child’s value to God and the community is based on how well they follow the rules. Don’t drink, don’t party, don’t do drugs, don’t have sex, don’t listen to that music, don’t watch that movie, etc., etc., and you’ll be a “good kid.” Parents and church leaders generally mean well in trying to steer the youth away from sin, but too often the gradually-learned righteousness of a sanctified life is exchanged for being “the good girl (or boy) you always have to be.” Of course, our salvation is not by works, and our value is given by God, not acquired through obedience, but this is not the message that is coming across. Few authorities would subject children to a life of fear on purpose, but it happens.

I’m not a parent or church leader, and I have no right to throw stones; I’m only making observations and reflecting on how we might do better as the Church. And I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have rules or that teaching children to avoid sin is a bad thing—quite the contrary. We should teach kids to avoid sin like the plague, but not through shame, fear, or legalism, since we are under grace, not the law. We can’t keep saying “no” without saying “yes” even more, and we have to give young people excellent reasons for our prohibitions. We have to explain what to do, how to do it, and why, not just what not to do. If we don’t, then their faith will be built on a foundation of meaningless rules taught by men rather than understanding and trust in God, and faith that is intellectually or emotionally dishonest will not sustain anyone. I’ve seen some of my fellow young adults question or even abandon their faith in Christ for this very reason. It was never their faith—it was their parents’ rulebook.

If I wanted you to build a bookshelf correctly, I would tell you what steps to follow, not what steps to avoid—that would be hopelessly inefficient and downright silly. You’d struggle until you got frustrated with me and gave up. Likewise, you can’t build a life on prohibitions. “Don’t do X, Y, and Z” isn’t a lifestyle most people can get behind, but “Don’t do X, Y, and Z, because you really should be doing A, B, and C” is much more compelling. Prohibitions help keep us on track, but affirmations provide firm foundations. Paul sets an excellent example in Ephesians 5:18-20: “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another with psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit. Sing and make music from your heart to the Lord, always giving thanks to God the Father for everything, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” He gives a prohibition accompanied by a reason and immediately followed by an affirmation: say “no” to drunkenness because it leads to debauched behavior, but say “yes” all the more to the Spirit through music, fellowship, and thanksgiving.

On a related note, other critics have made this song about sexuality, so I feel justified in giving my take. I think “Let It Go” illustrates the way that some Christian churches and families unwittingly teach children to repress their sexuality and see it as a shameful or dirty thing, something that everybody has and is technically OK, but really just has the potential to get you into a lot of trouble. This is an inherently unsatisfying teaching, and many teenagers and young adults rebel against it to some extent. I think we could avoid a lot of hassle and heartbreak if we were more deliberate about affirming the goodness of sexuality within marriage and celibacy outside of it, explaining why these boundaries make sense and encouraging young people to be pure and self-controlled as they figure out which of the two paths God is calling them to. If Elsa had been offered a choice between using her powers in a controlled way that would benefit the people of Arendelle or deliberately not using her powers, but without being afraid of them, a lot of trouble could have been prevented.

Of course, rebellion isn’t the only option for a young adult who was raised this way; another is internalizing fear and repression and living with it indefinitely. This is the path Elsa was on prior to the coronation. Thankfully, when they are not prevented, both situations can be redeemed; Elsa realizes that her rebellious behavior is harmful to herself and others and learns self-control.

“Fixer Upper”

There’s not a ton to say about this song, but I enjoy it and wanted to end this post on a lighter note. I like “Fixer Upper” because, buried beneath the Disney Princess Gospel of “true love,” there are teensy-weensy traces of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, with it’s truly true love.

We aren’t saying you can change him
‘Cause people don’t really change
We’re only saying that love’s a force that’s powerful and strange
People make bad choices if they’re mad or scared or stressed
But throw a little love their way, and you’ll bring out their best
True love brings out the best

Underneath some self-helpy thinking, we have a nod to the idea that people can’t really change themselves, and that other people can’t do it, either. There’s also a hint that love, coming from the outside, is the key to personal transformation.

Everyone’s a bit of a fixer upper
That’s what it’s all about
Father, sister, brother
We need each other
To raise us up and round us out

I love a good recognition of the value of community; it reminds me of the critical role of the Church, our fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters in Christ, in our spiritual development. But the money quote here is “Everyone’s a bit of a fixer upper.” All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23), and we’re powerless to change ourselves or each other. The solution is love. The song doesn’t bring it this far, obviously, but specifically the solution is God’s love, extended to us in his Son. Only his love has the power to transform us, putting to death our old selves and raising up new creations in Christ that have his righteousness (Galatians 2:20-21, Romans 6). In Frozen shorthand: we’re all fixer-uppers, and Christ’s true love is what fixes us up.

Everyone’s a bit of a fixer upper
But when push comes to shove
The only fixer upper fixer
That can fix a fixer upper is
True
True
True
True
Love

Am I fishing for stuff here? Absolutely. But I think fishing for the Gospel in strange waters is an extremely worthwhile pastime every now and again. I know that the theology of a Disney movie is sketchy at best. If this lighthearted analysis bugs you, I recommend you just… let it go.