Tears swell up in the eyes of little girls as they watch Prince Charming chase after Cinderella, Prince Phillip awaken Sleeping Beauty with a kiss, and Prince Ferdinand sweep Snow White off her feet and onto his white horse. These are the quintessential moments when a girl first begins to craft her own love story in her imagination. It’s both beautiful and tragic.
Yet, in an attempt to portray true love as a union that overcomes all obstacles and endures forever, Disney inadvertently distorted it.
I’m no Disney hater. I played the roles of Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and Wendy in productions of these magical stories growing up. As a singer myself, I love the classic songs like “Someday My Prince Will Come” and “Once Upon a Dream.” As a girl, I love the idea of being a princess. And as a conservative, I love the traditional masculine guy protecting a feminine woman.
But alongside the good came a generation of women who believe true love will arrive as a climactic feeling, a perfect trope, and a prince on a white horse. Whether we admit it or not, many women subconsciously expect just that. We’re indirectly taught to hold out for this idealized version of love. And the plummeting marriage rates show that young people are delaying marriage or avoiding it altogether.
To be fair, there are certainly more blatant and objectionable ways culture has redefined love – consider the “love is love” mantra popularized by the LGBTQ+ movement. But Disney’s damage is far more subtle; it isn’t inherently evil or disordered. It’s just truncated, yet its impact on society is undeniable.
When we let Disney – or anyone else, for that matter – set the tone for how our culture defines true love, we risk forgetting the One who is love: Yahweh. God Himself is the fullness of love. There is no greater love than the perfect union of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the mystical Trinity.
As the Gospel of John proclaims: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Love is the motif of our Redemption in Christ.
Paul also gives a rich understanding of true love in the well-known passage read at Christian and non-Christian weddings alike. In 1 Corinthians 13, he writes:
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”
While Disney princess movies don’t contradict the Word (the prince protects, the princesses are kind, and both honor one another), they miss the defining truth of love.
Love is not just a feeling. Love is also a choice.
Butterflies and romantic feelings are like a drug – addictive, causing us to chase the high. If we’re not grounded in the dual nature of love as both a feeling and an action, we risk being swept away by fleeting emotions.
We don’t always feel like being patient and kind. Yet true love perseveres; it chooses to be patient and kind, even when affection and desire aren’t present. True love takes work. And far greater than our own work, it takes fixing our eyes on the cross, where the greatest act of love was ever committed.
The Gospel of John tells us, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”
God isn’t just loving, He is love. Love cannot be defined apart from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. What greater love is there than the One descending from heaven to become His creation, living a sinless life, bearing a crown of thorns, dying a painful death on the cross, bearing the wrath of God, and defeating evil when He rose from the grave?
God’s love for us shows that true love is hard. It requires sacrifice.
This true love has implications for a generation conditioned by a Disney-type love.
First, we must acknowledge that we’re imperfect individuals – and so is everyone else. We should have standards, of course, but we must also balance them with a healthy dose of reality. Our story may be slow-moving, uncertain for a time, or perhaps even a bit awkward. Maybe the feeling we’ve come to expect from the movies will take time to grow.
I’m not saying that feelings are bad. We should feel affection toward the person we date or marry. But we can’t let feelings, which come and go, be the final arbiter of who would make a godly spouse.
Along with removing the rose-colored Disney glasses when searching for our “soulmate,” we should remind ourselves that we’re already part of the greatest love story ever known.
Christ died for those who repent and believe in His name, the only name that can save. As the world attempts to define love in various ways, let’s keep our eyes fixed on Jesus.
And here’s the best part: when we put our faith in Him, we will get our fairytale ending. Because he’s coming back on a white horse.
