For Theirs Is the Kingdom of Heaven

 

Can you recognize this princess?

A model essay in a current text begins, I long thought oddly, “Almost everyone knows how the story of Cinderella ends, but do people actually think about how she spent her days before she met the prince? Her daily routine was not glamorous.”

I would have thought everyone knew very well how Cinderella spent her days. It is, after all, in the title, “Cinderella.” It is the story of an abused childhood.

And yet, our writer apparently assumes no one remembers. And, in fact, a grad student who actually specialized in children’s literature once remarked to me, “I wish I could have a life like Cinderella’s.” And isn’t it true that every little girl feels the same; don’t they imagine themselves as a “Disney princess,” either Cinderella or Snow White or Belle or the like?

We seem collectively to take no notice that all, that almost all fairy tales, are primarily stories of child abuse. Which we read lovingly to our children.

All these “Disney princesses” had appalling lives, in the original tales, up until the final happy ending. Snow White was hauled out to the forest to be murdered at age seven, at the command of her mother. She survives; but as a small child abandoned in the wilderness. Like Hansel and Gretel, and many others in these tales. Her mother finally tracks her down and does murder her. 

It turns out okay in an improbable ending, in about the last paragraph. 

So too with Cinderella. She is saved from her private hell only by divine intervention, a “fairy godmother.” And Belle volunteers to be devoured by a beast. Instead she agrees to marry him. Up to the last moment, her future life does not look enviable.

Yet nobody seems to remember most of the story as important. Only the happy ending. This strikes me as a justification for all the evil in the world. These stories may have been written for this purpose, to reconcile suffering children to their fate. These stories show, we can accept and do not care about even extreme suffering, so long as there is a happy ending. In other words, all the sufferings of this world are justified if we end up in a blissful heaven.

Consider the matter for yourself. Would you accept Cinderella’s life? Would you prefer it to your own? Most little girls obviously say yes. They want the suffering, for the same of the happily ever after.

So long as there is a heaven, and it in there we are bound, the suffering does not matter on the way.

Yet why, you may ask, do some people have to suffer more than others? It may be that not everyone is bound for heaven. This is what Matthew, and especially Luke, suggest. Suffering on earth earns us heaven, and is a sign of God’s preference. Woe unto those of us who have it too easy. God is treating us like brute beasts, without a soul to save.

Observe as well in life that those of us who suffer greatly in childhood are generally given a clearer view of heaven in this life; of imagined wonderlands. The world to us is more transparent, as for Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Match Girl. It is for those of us who suffer that the stories are written; we are those who have ears to hear, and eyes to see. We are more engaged by the stories; we are apt to create them. We are apt to come up with new ideas generally to make the world better; because we see how it should be.

And so we have a hope of true happiness.