I Don't Believe in Fairy Tales Anymore

I was saved in July. It was the summer of 1975, and I was celebrating Christmas at a GA Camp. (GA's is an organization that was in the Southern Baptist churchI grew up in where girls met with girls while boys met with boys--they were called RA's. The G stood for "Girls" and the A stood for "Action." We were, Girls in Action.)

GA's was a great program in the church where I grew up. Every month we learned about missionaries serving in different parts of the world. We got to experience a bit of the culture, learn how the missionaries went there to tell the people about Jesus, and how Jesus' kingdom is literally spreading across the globe.

I am getting side-tracked but GA's gets me a little excited. My first full-time professional ministry career was as the GA Director for the state of Tennessee, and my first publishing opportunities were to write curriculum for GA's. I love GA's. And perhaps I love them most because they had camps. In Georgia those camps take place at Camp Pinnacle. I just looked it up, and to this day, Camp Pinnacle still hosts girls camps, how great it that?! 

Anyway, in July, 1975 we celebrated Christmas in July. During our week of girls camp we pretended it was Christmas. And when a missionary sang, "O Holy Night" I surrendered my life to Jesus.

To this day, Christmas out of season tugs on my spiritual heart strings. That's why, this billboard I saw in 2015, struck a cord with me.

It read, "Dear Santa, all I want for Christmas is to SKIP CHURCH! I'm too old for fairy tales." It was advertising an upcoming Atheist National Convention taking place in Memphis, TN the next year in April. I'm not sure how many attended, I think they were expecting 1000.

When I first saw that sign, this is what I wrote...

I’m Too Old for Fairy Tales

  When I saw this billboard pop up on my newsfeed on Facebook, I had the same reaction as my friend who posted it, “Uggh…this makes me so sad.”

  But then I got to thinking. If church delivered fairy tales, I wouldn’t attend either.

  So, skip church!

  Especially if all you’re getting is a good song and a happy ending.

  In fact, the problem with many people is that they have allowed their theology to be sprinkled with pixy dust and they are not anchored on solid truth.  The atheists are wrong about our faith being “fairy tales" and here are 2 reasons why: 

In Fairy Tales everyone lives “happily ever after.”

  Those of us who attend church know that a fairy tale's “happily ever after” is where most life begins.

  We grow up and get married after we've kissed our share of frogs, and discovered that the only true prince was born in a barn. He laid in a manger when he got here, and hung on a cross when he left. But today the Prince of Peace reigns on high at the right hand of God. His rule is supreme and His kingdom is forever.

  But only those who receive the extravagant free gift of love and grace He has to offer will live with him forever.

Those that don’t….won’t.

  For some of us, we will live “happily” in the “ever-after.”

Until we get there we will experience hardships, the effects of sin in a fallen world, and perhaps even persecution. But when we take our final breath we will go to a place where all that God created us to be will be realized and we will experience life—real life—life that has no end and isn’t shadowed by sin.

  For those who don’t receive the gift of grace God offers through Jesus Christ, they will have to miss the “happily” in their “ever-after.” They will live forever, but it won’t be in heaven with God. Hell is a real place and real people will not be partying there. For when this life is over every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is LORD.

  The 2nd reason is this:

Unlike the fairy tales, the kind and gentle don’t always win in the end.

  We who worship do so in spite of the injustices and the heartaches of life.

We lift our hands in praise out of sheer determination that we will praise the God who knows best even when we are wounded the worst.

We worship when we bury our babies...

we worship when we bury those babies mommas...

We worship when we bury each other!

We worship because we know that this world is not our home.

  Bad people don’t always lose and good people don’t always win. Sometimes bad people win and good people lose.

But for those of us who attend church, we learn to make sense of our suffering.  We don’t try to understand it all, rather we look for the wonder of God in it all, and choose to let Him use the platform of our lives to demonstrate His power and His love.

 So, my dear atheist friend, you apparently haven’t met my Jesus.

If you had you would know he is more real than your confusion and people go to church because they meet Him there.