I suppose whether you agree with this or not depends on your definition of what makes a fairy tale. Is it void of any true hardship or suffering? Then that’s not a true fairy tale. Does it need fantastical creatures? That’s debatable, but I think not.

What a fairy tale needs is a happy ending. You know going in that the main character is going to live happily ever after.

If you look at life strictly from this side of heaven, then it’s not a fairy tale. There’s so much suffering and evil that goes unresolved and unpunished. There are so many wrongs that never get put right.

But if you look through the lens of the resurrection, then you see the fairy tale. In fact, you could see the whole Bible story as a sort of true fairy tale where the King comes to rescue His beloved from imminent danger.

It all depends on perspective. If you see your life through the eyes of faith, you know that the happy ending is coming, even if you might not see it this side of eternity. But it is coming.

“It is a world of magic and mystery, of deep darkness and flickering starlight. It is a world where terrible things happen and wonderful things too. It is a world where goodness is pitted against evil, love against hate, order against chaos, in a great struggle where often it is hard to be sure who belongs to which side because appearances are endlessly deceptive. Yet for all its confusion and wildness, it is a world where the battle goes ultimately to the good, who live happily ever after, and where in the long run everybody, good and evil alike, becomes known by his true name….That is the fairy tale of the Gospel with, of course, one crucial difference from all other fairy tales, which is that the claim made for it is that it is true, that it not only happened once upon a time but has kept on happening ever since and is happening still”(Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale).