The Disney film Frozen was huge hit back in 2013. So this hardly cutting edge cultural analysis!
Elsa is not exactly the heroine, but the whole story focuses on her magical powers to make ice and snow (and clothes and living snowmen!). This power causes harm to those around her at various points in the film. I want to suggest that Elsa’s magic is a bit like our desires. When our desires are directed wrongly and not under control, they can be terribly destructive. When properly ordered, our desires help us to live as we should, bless others, and rule the world well. Sin is our desires wrongly ordered- away from God, and towards self, and then towards created things in wrong proportion.
So how does Elsa deal with her magic (and how do we deal with our disordered desires)?
1) Legalism
Her parents teach her to cover up her magic, and try to supress it. They can see the powers are dangerous (and the troll tells them it needs to be controlled). Elsa sums up the approach as she faces the coronation day:
Don’t let them in
Don’t let them see
Be the good girl you always have to be
Conceal
Don’t feel
Put on a show
But of course it doesn’t work- the magic comes out under stress, and Elsa flees in fear and shame. And this is a great picture of a legalistic approach to sin. Make rules and try to keep them to stop sin. Legalism tries to suppress the wrong desires. It tries to hide them. It uses fear of what others will think as a motivator, and so failure is shameful. And it does not work. That is the argument of Romans 2 -3 and 7. Trying to fight sin with the law cannot ultimately deal with disordered desires.
2) Do what you want
So Elsa decides not conform to what others want, but instead to do what she wants, to let out the magic and use it. As she storms up the mountain releasing the ice and snow, the pent up magic, she sings the famous “Let it go” song:
It’s time to see what I can do
To test the limits and break through
No right, no wrong, no rules for me
I’m free
Let it go
This is treating the rules as simply a cage to be escaped from. Life comes from ignoring the rules and following your own desires. The popularity of the “Let it go” song suggests that our culture likes this message of personal freedom, of doing what you want, and not letting others stop you. Elsa seems happier. But her magic unleashed is freezing her kingdom to death, and in her anger she harms her sister. Following our desires feels good for a time. But our desires are disordered and so following them leads to harm to others, and sooner or later we find we can’t get everything we want.
3) Let your desires be reordered and controlled by love
This bit is less clear in the film. But we are told that “only an act of true love will thaw a frozen heart.” And in what was a bit of a twist, it was sisterly love that saved the literally frozen Anna. But it is also sisterly love that enable Elsa to control her powers, releasing the freeze while still sustaining the friendly snowman, and creating an ice rink when it is convenient. Love enables her to control her magic.
And that is an echo of the Bible’s teaching on how you defeat sin, desire that is out of control. Sin is defeated as we receive the love of God for us in Jesus, are filled with love by the Holy Spirit, and so have our desires reordered towards love of God first, and then love of neighbour. We cannot simply suppress our desires, or simply follow our desires. But we can be transformed by God’s love to have desires that line up with him, that will be satisfied forever, and that will be good for those around us.
Jots and Scribbles 