Fractured Fairy Tale
I suppose anybody my age will remember the kids cartoon Rocky & Bullwinkle. The show was originally titled Rocky and His Friendsand originally wasn’t on Saturday morning as I remember it.
In order to attract a kid audience Rocky and His Friends was broadcast on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons on ABC just prior to American Bandstand and after the kids got home from school. Folks under forty are probably totally lost with what I’m saying here; wondering “what the heck is American Bandstand.”
Rocky and Bullwinkle were okay, but what I really liked as a kid was the other short cartoons that were part of the show; Peabody’s Improbable History, Dudley Do-Right Of The Mounties, Aesop And Son and my favorite–Fractured Fairy Tale.
As a kid I never realized that Fractured Fairy Tale episodes lasted only 5-6 minutes; I guess 5-6 minutes seems long for the same reason that a back yard seems like the length of a football field and an adult seems like a giant to a 6-year-old.
I’m sitting at the beach in North Carolina writing this; my wife and I had a conversation yesterday that prompted it. We’re staying at my brother’s beach home. My brother and all my siblings (6 of us) have sort of lived the opposite of Fractured Fairy Tale.
My siblings and I were pretty much raised in poverty; my dad was disabled from a work accident and my mom worked as a housekeeper in a hospital making a dollar an hour to support our family. The eight of us lived in an 850 square foot, 3 bedroom house in which my parents occupied one bedroom, my sister another and my three older brothers and myself occupied the third.
My 3 brothers and I shared a set of bunk beds; my oldest brother, who was 11 years older than me took the top bunk, and I and my two older brothers shared the bottom bunk. Our house sat within spitting distance of a railroad track where lumbering locomotives rolled day and night assaulting our ears with loud whistle blasts.
Today, my brother has this beach house, and its twin, each is valued at about a million dollars. I have brothers who had careers in the Navy, are attorneys, college professors and businessmen. We’re living the opposite of Fractured Fairy Tale.
I recently watched an episode of Fractured Fairy Tale on Youtube; it was the story of the Three Little Pigs. As with all Fractured Fairy Tale episodes there was a comedic, genius, demented twist from what the original kid’s fairy tale was. And this was no exception.
The story unfolded with 3 pig sisters; Portland, Penelope, Alice—with pig spelled Pigg. The three sisters receive a singing telegram that their rich uncle had died and left them a million bucks. So the 3 Pigg sisters buy 3 mansions; of course one is made of straw, one of sticks and a third of bricks.
Next, Henry Q. Wolf learns of the sisters’ windfall; being the greedy wolf he is he wants to live in a mansion so he begins to pursue the 3 Pigg sisters. Though the cartoon was written in the 60s, Henry is like much of our culture today—he wants to get rich, and as the cartoon narrator says “he would never think of working a job to get rich.” Rather, Henry wanted to marry one of the rich Pigg sisters.
To Portland Henry takes the Continental approach and attempts to woo Portland by speaking with a French accent, recites poetry and is seen playing the piano while holding sheet music to GAY BOY ANNUAL. My how things have changed since the early 60s; that same sheet music today would likely be the theme music to a Gay Pride Parade.
Henry fails at the Continental approach with Portland, and then tries the Cave Man approach with Penelope. He first reads “how to marry a pig” book, then rushes into Penelope’s house saying “You’re gonna marry me baby” and other lines in which he insists that she will do as he says. Needless to say, that doesn’t happen, so Henry moves on to Alice’s house.
Henry Q. Wolf takes the All-Out approach with Alice; he rushes into her house and says, “I love you, I adore you, I can’t live without you” and all the while the pig tries to interrupt Henry but he’s having none of it. He proposes to the pig, marries her, sweeps her off to Niagara Falls and returns to live in the brick mansion.
A few seconds later an off-screen voices calls out “Cassandra;” and you discover that Henry has married, as the character says, Alice’s poverty-stricken maid Cassandra. The story ends with the narrator saying that Henry did get to live in the brick mansion, but we see him being the doorman as the doorbell rings to end the cartoon.
The phrase Fractured Fairy Tales prompted me to think about life in the Family of God. Just prior to leaving for vacation I spent five nights talking about God’s purposes for our lives and his purposes for his Family, the Body of Christ.
Having now spent 37 years in the Family of God, the Church, I can say with some confidence that many times peoples’ idea of what a Family is seems rather odd. In fact, it might remind you of a fairy tale.
There seems to be some strange notion that family only gets together on Sunday morning for an hour or two. My family had a reunion at this same beach house 5 years ago and we spent virtually every minute we had with one another. We all wanted to hear what was going on in one another’s lives and we wanted to reminisce.
We talked about our families, ate pretty much every meal together, laughed together, played cards and Beyond Balderdash together. We rode boogie boards together, tossed grandkids and nephews into waves together, went to dinner together, watched TV together and took a family picture together on the beach before we all left. That’s kind of what family does. And, this doesn’t just happen during reunions. Healthy families do this all the time, day in day out, week in week out.
I’ve discovered that families are generous toward each other, weep with each other, care for each other, and entrust their kids to each other. Often, those in the Family of God do just the opposite. So often we don’t trust those in the family of God, and I wonder if that is so because we don’t trust ourselves. We don’t trust how people would react if we told them a deep struggle, because we know we wouldn’t react well if somebody told us of a deep struggle.
In the few churches I’ve been a part of over the years I’ve observed something in the Family of God that I only observe in dysfunctional families, or, families that are headed toward a breakup.
I’ve watched over the years as individuals and families have left the church for another church. What I mean is that they’ve left the particular meeting to go to a different meeting. What has saddened me in so many instances is when those families and individuals leave without saying a word.
The only families I see that happen in are dysfunctional families and families headed toward a breakup. And it causes me to ask, “Is this really how families treat one another.” Jesus said, “They will know you are my disciples by your love.” I don’t believe leaving a family this way is much of a loving thing to do. I know it hasn’t been in my family. I have one sibling whose kind of done that—one day he and his family just decided to stop being part of the family and never really told anybody why. In fact, they were the only ones missing 5 years ago when we had our reunion at the beach.
When I read the New Testament I see a different kind of Family; I see a family that loved and cared for one another, sold their possessions to help those in need, they built each other up, they loved and they wept for one another when it came time to part. Along with the weeping there was hugging and kissing and well-wishing and an all-around blessing. But that’s not been my observation in the church, the Family of God.
The Family of God more often resembles Fractured Fairy Tale. The original story is convoluted; love become anger, goodness becomes resentment, humility becomes pride and arrogance, and giving becomes taking. The convoluted story of Jesus and his disciples becomes one in which self-sacrifice is replaced with self-serving; the thought being “If I can’t have things my way I’m outta here.”
I’m certain that’s what happens most of the time; there is something going on in the Body that an individual or family doesn’t like, and, instead of sticking together as family and working through differences, the offended individual or family takes off.
Without saying it, the individual or family that leaves is saying “I’m more important than you! You can’t give me what I want or need! You’re not worth the trouble! There’s got to be a better Family somewhere else.”
The only member of the Family of Jesus that I ever read of doing something like that went out and hung himself.
The sad reality is, those who want, expect or demand the most from the Family just aren’t as committed to the Family as they think they are. And, the reason for that kind of thinking comes only from spiritual immaturity.
I can recall my brothers who are 2 and 5 years older than me fighting as teenagers. I never saw anything quite as frighteningly peculiar as the two of them starting on our front porch—it was a fist fight. They would fight on the porch, into the living room, throwing punches and yelling, cussing and screaming; then they would continue through our dining room and into the kitchen with violence. They’d exit the back door and continue the slugfest in our back yard. I cannot tell you how many times I witnessed this—I think that’s why I prefer to be a writer, not a fighter.
Even though my brothers were combatants as teenagers they somehow managed to move beyond it and have had great affection and respect for each other the rest of their lives. I wonder why those in the Family of God have such a difficult time of doing that.
Since becoming a pastor I’ve had numerous occasions in which individuals and families have left the Family without ever saying a word. I’ve always wanted to ask them, “Who taught you how to do that? Who ever told you that the right thing to do? You certainly didn’t get that from knowing Jesus and how he lived.” That’s fairy tale thinking.
In essence, what those individuals are revealing about themselves is that they were never really part of the Family, never really committed to the Body of Christ. Like in marriage, real commitment means I’m going to be just as concerned for the other as I am myself. Real commitment means I’ll do whatever it takes to work through the problems—and I do that because I love Jesus more than I love myself.
Which leads me back to Fractured Fairy Tales and the episode I watched on YouTube. Henry Q. Wolf didn’t love Portland Pigg and he didn’t love Penelope Pigg and he didn’t love Alice Pigg and he didn’t even love Cassandra the pig. Henry loved himself. He loved himself so much that he was willing to sacrifice the feelings and lives of others on the alter of himself. And that’s where most spiritually immature Christians find themselves when it comes to the Family of God that they are leaving—they’re willing to sacrifice the Family on the alter of self.
Henry Q. Wolf got what he wanted, it just wasn’t in the form he thought he would get it. He was never willing to work to make a million bucks as the cartoon narrator said; he wanted something easy, something that wouldn’t cost him anything, something that was just for him just as he liked it.
But because Henry Q. Wolf failed to listen to Cassandra as she was attempting to tell him she wasn’t Alice Pigg, Henry wrote his own Fractured Fairy Tale.
