I am a musical theater and drama teacher at a non-profit organization called the Foundation of Arts. I absolutely love my job! Love it so much in fact that I started doing private drama lessons for kids who are interested. The way I set up my private lessons is getting kids to display a variety of emotion and explore the behavior patterns of different types of characters.
One of my kids, miss Caroline, decided to pick a Princess song and a Villain song, in order to best learn about the characterization that goes into each part! The first song we learned was from the movie Enchanted, and it was a breeze! The song is fun and light and cheery! And princess characterization came very simple to her. We talked about princess hands, and princess voice, and different types of princess emotion (and showing them on our face in a princess-like way of course!). We learned how to float around the room like a cartoon princess, and dance with our invisible prince! We did exercises in our minds to explore what it feels like to be somewhere fun and exciting and familiar and then be lost and lonely and somewhere you didn't recognize (to truly deepen the understanding of this particular character!) All of which was a success!
Next it was time to move on to the VILLAN song. We learned about villain faces, villain mannerisms, down to villain-like gestures. We worked on an evil laugh and evil walking and evil dancing! Lastly, I had Caroline come up with her villain. What the villain would look like and sound like. It's magic powers and menions. Down to an even deeper level of WHY is this villain so evil, what happened to him/her in their past to make them so angry and evil and all other sorts of villain emotions. When it was time to deliver her villain, I noticed some very interesting things mentioned. Caroline talked alot and used alot of the allotted time to talk about the things SURROUNDING her villain. Crystal ball, evil menions, magic door, evil sounds, magic mirror, evil cloak--things like that! And it hit me, villains are surrounded by evil--but without their magic gadgets and sidekicks and spellbooks and cauldrons and fill in the blank--they would have no power....and in fact, might not even be evil at all.
I have wanted to write a blog about this for the past several weeks, since it happened. But wasn't sure where it was going until now. It has been heavy on my mind tonight and went off like a lightbulb DING! SPIRITUAL WARFARE!
If you have never read Frank Peretti's books This Present Darkness and Piercing the Darkness, then oh man...you should! He writes these books from the perspectives of his human characters, his demon characters, and his angel characters. The way he portrays spiritual warfare is by naming these demons sinful chains we as humans cannot let go of. For example, one demon might be called Jealousy and the Jealousy demon might link herself around the ankle of some woman. Of course, we as humans don't see them but often times we know they are there, because we enter into contracts with them which is why they are allowed to stay. Does that make sense? Of course there are things we can do to break these contracts, one being prayer and crying out to God to give us strength to release us from bondage-only then do the angel characters get to come in and rid us of all these little demons hanging around! This book reminds me of Caroline's villain lessons!
What if we were to compare and contrast cartoon villains to real life spiritual warfare. It might look something like this. In the Little Mermaid, Ursula had two menions )which enabled her to carry out her dirty work): Flotsom and Jetsom. In real life, those menions might look something like Materialism and Greed. In Tangled, the witch's only true power lie in Rapunzel's glowing hair. Without it, she was nothing. In real life, the magic hair that gives power might look something like Addiction, which leaves those it attaches to feeling very powerful. In Snow White, the witch had to rely on a mirror to gain all of her wisdom and insight. Just like in real life how we might have, Dependency or Approval Seeking demons hanging around us so that we might seek what we think is truth, but is really just other people's opinions about us.
If you recall in Genesis, Eve was decieved by a serpent and ate the apple, and sin entered the world. But she wasn't the only one to eat an apple was she? Literally speaking Snow White also ate of an apple, because she was decieved by a witch who was evil because of the things that she had which made her that way (mirror, cauldron, menions). Figuratively speaking, Ariel "ate an apple" when she believed in Ursula's power and went to the sea witch to become a human. Little Red Ridinghood "ate an apple" so to speak, when she let the wolf persuade her into breaking her mother's rules, rules that very clearly stated not to stop and talk to strangers.
When we break rules or stray off the marked path, we are so much easier decieved by the evil in this world. And sometimes, when we get decieved so many times, we enter into these spiritual contracts with "villain things" in another world we can not see. And after entering into those contracts then WE become the villains, who are manipulated and controlled by evil. Then we start decieving others and throwing out apples at people around us and the horrible cycle never ends! This is what happens in, divorces, abortions, premarital sex, drug addiction, stealing, murder, adultry, and the list goes on and on and on and on. Someone takes an apple, bites an apple, then becomes the apple giver.
So what do we do to stop the cycle? I feel like we pray for God to give us strength so we stop waking up everyday and accepting the apple. We instead wakeup and seek His face. We immerse ourselves in His holy Word so that we learn the character of Him and His holy angels, so we recognize when something is of Him and when it is not. We study those who have gone before us and screwed up, and when we find out what apples they took and ate we commit to making better choices. And finally, we stop giving others our apples too--meaning, we stop pressuring our girlfriend to have sex with us, we stop blaming all of our marital problems on our husbands/wives, we stop using guilt as a motivator in our relationships, we stop selling drugs to people we see floundering in drug addiction, we stop asking our alcoholic friends to go out for drinks on the weekends, we stop and think for a minute before every action we take--"what would I feel like if someone was treating me this way? or doing THIS to me? Or what if I were in their shoes?"
It is so easy to get bogged down in the Jealousy, Hatred, Anger, Lust, Seduction, Complacency, Greedy, (and so many more) demons that satan uses to attack us. But we belong to a Heavenly father who has already won the battler of good and evil for us. So, you just have to wakeup and make the choice. Are you going to be a villain? Are you going to give an apple? Are you going to be a victim and make the choice to take an apple? Or are you going to break free from the cycle, and decide to walk in the light as the true prince or princess that God has created you to be?
In Him,
Meg
