The World is Rooting for Queen Elsa

Why? Because she’s just like you and me

Ok, so my anger doesn’t literally crystallize into an icy blast, and I can’t turn a fjord into a giant ice skating rink with the force of my finger, but this I know is true:

“For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.” –Romans 7:19 NIV

In Disney’s 2013 record-breaking release of Frozen, we find a unique main character in Queen Elsa. Despite the fact that she could arguably be considered either the protagonist or the antagonist, it didn’t take long for Queen Elsa to join the esteemed canon of Disney princesses, an elite category of characters whose popularity transcends the era in which they were created. Elsa brings pain and suffering to many of the characters in the movie. Yet, we find ourselves liking her and wanting things to work out for her. Perhaps we know her story all too well: the trying to be good.

In her rebel anthem “Let It Go,” Elsa bellows out the “storm” that rages on inside her. It’s a storm that reminds me of the good and evil at war in us, the unanimated version of humanity. Oh, how I want to do good, but I often fall short. Sometimes, I downright fail.

Even Paul, who is responsible for writing nearly half of all the books of the New Testament, knows the struggle of living in the flesh all too well, when he writes in Romans, “For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”

We try to be righteous, but our flesh fails over and over again. It starts with anger, bitterness, idolatry, fear, jealousy or a tendency to be judgmental. We let it grip us and before you know it, it’s controlling our actions rather than allowing the Holy Spirit to have the final say within us. Elsa, similarly, struggles to keep her emotions in check. When she gets angry, there is no controlling what her icy fingers will do. With fear and guilt mixed in, she unintentionally hurts those around her.

Paul explains the universal reason for all this: our human condition. “For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with one another so that you do not do what you want.” (Galatians 5:17) And we know because of Romans 3: 10, 23, there is not one person who does not share in this experience because we are all under the curse of sin.

The Bible compares our struggle with sin as being under a yoke of slavery (Galatians 5:1). A yoke is a device used to keep an ox or another working animal under the control of a farmer. We see, also, that Elsa’s biggest struggle is that she is in bondage. Her magical power to create snow is controlling her, when she should be controlling it. And so, she is, for all intentional purposes, imprisoned inside her own bedroom to keep her magical powers from hurting anyone else.

Knocking on Elsa’s door daily singing, “Do you want to build a snowman?”, her sister, Princess Anna, desperately wants her childhood companion back. Elsa also wants to be freed, rather than being held captive by the chains of this “sin,” but she does not know how. With this trajectory, she cannot live joyfully nor live the life she was called to live—the life of a queen, shining in her majesty. She struggles to care for the people of her land and to be the older sister whom her younger sister so desperately wants and needs her to be. It will take an incredible act of love to show Elsa the way to true freedom.

Reflection:

Elsa is haunted by her past mistakes. It is a glorious unfolding when we become more and more the person God created in His master plan for us to be. But, it is our chains that hold us back—the lies we believe, that turn into sin in our lives. They often prevent us from experiencing the joy that God has in store for us, from becoming all that He would have us be, and from walking into all that He would have us do. I write about the remedy to our seemingly dire situation in the prequel to this post, Love Changes Everything.

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POSTED BY

Jenna

Jenna Kruse is a teacher but not in a classroom. She loves to think outside the box and inside the Word and is daily in need of an attitude adjustment. She is a wife to Justin, a mother to three school-aged children, and a mentor to teenagers and young adults. You can learn more about the heart behind her blog HERE.

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