Is God Dead? (Is God the substance of fairytales?)

Is God the Substance of Fairytales?

"We Brights don’t believe in ghosts or elves or the Easter Bunny – or God."
— Daniel Dennett

When I first encountered this thought, the character of Tinker Bell instantly came to mind—the mischievous little fairy from Peter Pan. Her world is one where you never have to grow up and, importantly, never have to take responsibility. Tinker Bell, in my view, embodies the ultimate mischievous brat. But rather than focusing on her personality, let’s take a step back and consider the larger, mythological idea she represents.

Tinker Bell, like many mythical creatures, exists only if you believe in her. Every time someone says they don’t believe in fairies, another one dies. It’s a simple idea: belief sustains existence. But what if this idea mirrors our relationship with God? As faith in Him fades, so too does our awareness of His presence. And just like the fairies, if belief dies, so does the God we once knew. Slowly, He fades into the background of our lives, and before we know it, He’s been forgotten entirely.

Growing up, one of my favorite Christmas movies was The Santa Clause with Tim Allen. In the second movie, there’s this watch that shows how much "Christmas magic" is left in the world. The magic is directly tied to the amount of faith people have in Santa. The more faith, the more magic remains. My mother also insisted that we watch The Polar Expressevery year. In this story, there’s a bell that rings, but only those who truly believe in Santa can hear it. As long as faith in Santa exists, the bell rings.

The overarching idea behind most of these fairy tales is this: If you believe in it, it exists. But if you don’t believe, it ceases to be. It’s a convenient way to make sense of the world and to explain things that seem beyond our grasp. But what happens when the object of our belief isn’t a fairy or a fictional character, but something far more significant—like God?

Could it be that our perceived enlightenment, our advancement in knowledge and technology, has led to a widespread loss of faith in God? And in turn, has this caused a disconnection from Him? When we lose faith in God, we lose the ability to hear Him, to experience Him. We no longer recognize His voice or sense His presence in our lives. Faith is the bridge that connects us to God, and when that bridge is weakened or broken, we find ourselves spiritually adrift.

As a society, we have arrived at an unprecedented point of spiritual crisis, where faith in God is waning. The once vibrant belief in a personal, living God has been replaced by a distant, impersonal force—if it is even acknowledged at all. In many ways, we’ve reduced God to a mere fairytale, a mythical figure who occupies a space in the stories of our lives but has little bearing on our actual existence.

In this modern fairytale, God’s role varies depending on how we were raised. If you grew up in a strict, authoritarian household, your image of God might resemble a cruel stepmother or the ever-watchful Elf on the Shelf, just waiting for you to slip up so He can punish you. On the other hand, if you were raised with love and kindness, your God might resemble a benevolent Santa Claus or a fairy godmother—someone who loves you unconditionally and grants your wishes.

We have a tendency to mold God into an image that fits our own personal narrative. He becomes the idealized characterwe need to suit our circumstances, desires, and views. This is where we begin to see the danger: God becomes whatever we want Him to be—a reflection of our own expectations, rather than the all-powerful, eternal Creator He truly is.

This idea is rampant in our culture. People live lives that blatantly contradict what the Bible teaches, yet they still claim to believe in God. How is this possible? It’s because they’ve fashioned a version of God that conveniently accepts them as they are, without demanding real change or accountability. When they say, "Well, my God is loving and accepting," what they’re really saying is that they've created a God who agrees with them. They've made Him a fairy tale—a convenient deity who doesn’t challenge their choices or transform their lives.

Even if you believe in the God of Scripture, there’s a temptation to shape Him according to your own needs. We tend to create a version of God that reflects our strengths and accommodates our weaknesses. We prefer a God who understands our flaws but doesn’t demand that we confront them. We want a God who sympathizes with our shortcomings without calling us to change. In other words, instead of being transformed by God, we remake God to reflect our image, not His.

This approach undermines the very nature of God. By reimagining God as a being who serves our purposes and validates our desires, we strip away His sovereignty. We reduce Him to a figment of our imagination, a puppet that dances to our tune. And in doing so, we kill God—not in the literal sense, but in the sense that we eliminate His true nature from our lives.

The tragedy is that, for many people, God is nothing more than a fairytale—an idea that sounds nice, but holds no real power or influence. It’s easy to believe in a storybook version of God—a God who fits neatly into our narratives and doesn’t disrupt our comfortable lives. But is the real, living, breathing God, the One who calls us to holiness, to transformation, to surrender, dead?

When we remake God into our own image, we remove Him from His rightful place as Creator and Lord. We replace Him with a distorted, false version that fits our whims and preferences. We may still call this version "God," but in reality, it’s nothing more than a fairytale deity—a fiction designed to make us feel better about our choices, but powerless to change our lives.

So, we must ask ourselves the question: Is God the substance of fairytales? Have we made Him a fictional character in our own personal story, or is He the living God, worthy of our faith, reverence, and obedience? We must confront the reality that, for many, God has been reduced to a story—a nice, comforting fairytale that requires no real faith and no real change.

But here’s the truth: God is not a fairytale. He is the Creator of the universe, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. He is alive, and He is calling us to believe in Him—not as a figment of our imagination, but as the sovereign, eternal God who demands our faith and transforms our lives.

So, the question remains: To most of us, is God just a fairytale? Or is He the real, living God, whose presence and power can change everything?