Get Your Pretense On!

Chapter 1: The Greatest Story in the Word • 21

is evangelium, giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief. 2

While all great hero and fairy stories mirror the Bible’s grand story in reversing the way things appear and turn out, they differ from Scripture in one mighty respect. The biblical tale of redemption and restoration is also absolutely true; as amazing, as remarkable, as awe-inspiring as it is, it is both a grand catastrophe and true to its core. And no other narrative of the world can claim to be both eucatastrophic and true other than the Story of God in Christ. It is not difficult to imagine the peculiar excitement and joy that one would feel, if any specially beautiful fairy-story were found to be “primarily” true, its narrative to be history, without thereby losing the mythical or allegorical significance that it had possessed. It is not difficult, for one is not called upon to try and conceive anything of a quality unknown. The joy would have exactly the same quality . . . as the joy which the “turn” in a fairy story gives: such joy has the very taste of primary truth. . . . It looks forward (or backward: the direction in this regard is unimportant) to the Great Eucatastrophe. The Christian joy, the Gloria, is of the same kind; but it is pre-eminently . . . high and joyous. Because this story is supreme; and it is true. Art has been verified. God is the Lord, of angels, and of men – and of elves. Legend and History have met and fused. 3

You see, in the world of all hero stories and fairy tales (as it is in the biblical tale) nothing truly is as it on the surface appears to be.

To be sure, to read comic books and fairy stories in the right way, you must believe that what you are looking at ain’t all there is out there, because nothing is as it appears to be.