What’s Still Wrong With This Picture?

This topic is worth reviewing.

The above picture was taken at the front entrance of Disneyland and looks down Main Street USA toward Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.

The layout for this slightly miniaturized Main Street was styled after Walt’s boyhood town of Marceline, Missouri and is intended to bring up a nostalgic feeling of what it was like growing up in the earliest years of the twentieth century - back with Mark Twain and Henry Ford, when Walt was a little boy.

But something is missing that would have been very prominent in the little midwestern towns of that time.

There is no church building with its steeple rising as the tallest man-made structure displayed above all the other buildings of commerce, calling town folk to gather every Sunday.

And why is this important?

Because it is the church that holds the sacred and provides men and women their true identities as creatures made in God’s image, not Mickey’s.

Photo by Taha on Unsplash

Society at that time was centered on church life. It was the church that provided a context for lives of hardship to include death from diseases and wars. It was built by their hands to administer sacred oaths and rituals like holy communion, baptisms, marriages, and funerals. It aided the people in the raising and protecting of children until they grew to adulthood when they too would carry on the meaningful traditions of their forefathers and mothers.

Sadly, I believe this omission by Disneyland is intentional. It is replacing the steeple with the pointed towers of a make believe castle.

And what is the message?

You don’t need God to make your dreams come true. Your highest calling in life is to yourself.

It is the sirens’ call to lose one’s self in myth and fantasy and never really come to see the deeper true story upon which myths, fables, and video games are built. It is to disconnect you from meaning and weaken your courage to oppose a culture designed, not for your and future generations best lives, but for someone else’s.

It is to tear down the sacred and replace it with a man made utopia.

Photo by Austrian National Library on Unsplash