Lessons from Little Red

I was reading Little Red Riding Hood to my daughter this morning and couldn't help but make a couple of spiritual connections I thought might be worth sharing (nerdy, I know).  I am going to assume most of us know the gist of the story of this little girl who goes to visit her sick Grandmother and instead finds a talking wolf in her Grandmother's bed (side note: no one died in the version I read my little girl today - very different from the original, I believe).  The story was obviously intended to teach a moral or two, but I think there are some biblical truths buried in the story worth pointing out.

1.)  We all wander off the path.  In the story I read, Little Red's mother tells her to stay on the path and not talk to strangers.  Yet, when Red comes to a clearing of flowers, she decides to pick some for her grandmother.  This is a choice made with good intentions, and we might even argue it's a good choice.  It's made out of the goodness of her heart and is doing something nice for somebody else.  It can certainly be justified.  However, this good thing leads to her taking too long, letting the sun set, and running into the cunning wolf.  A good person getting caught in darkness, simply because she wandered off the path.

In our post-modern thinking, we get really agitated by all the dos and don'ts of the Old Testament and of sacrosanct religion.  We'd prefer to just focus on the love and do-good-ness of the Gospel and skip over all the rules and regulations.  But the rules are there for a reason.  God knows us and our ability to make the wrong choice and rationalize it until it sounds good.  So He put in place a set of rules to remind us that we are not invincible and need boundaries.  He also knows that darkness can be delivered wrapped in beautiful sunsets and evil lurks behind even the prettiest flowers.  The rules are there for a reason.  How many people get ensnared in bad things simply because they lost their bearings and wandered off?  Which brings up point number two...

2.)  We get ensnared when we don't recognize evil.  As Little Red Riding Hood enters her Grandmother's cottage, she is probably tired and a little scared from her travails through the now dark forest, but is otherwise unharmed.  In Grandmother's bed lies the wolf in Granny's nightie, a paltry disguise for such a different looking creature.  Yet the story says that Red had never seen her Grandmother sick before and thought illness had drastically changed her appearance. The famous conversation "What big eyes you have," "the better to see you with, my dear," etc. ensues.  With each proceeding piece of conversation, Little Red walks closer and closer to the wolf, taking the bait as the wolf intended.  Eventually, if it were not for the heroics of a woodcutter who happened to be passing by, Red would have become the wolf's dinner.  At the door to the cottage she had the opportunity to turn around and run, but she fell into the trap because she didn't recognize the evil she had met just hours earlier.

As we justify and rationalize our wanderings and wrong-choices, we convince ourselves that what is happening around us "isn't that bad."  Worshiping the idols of food, sex, cars, and houses is what everyone is doing, so it can't be all bad, right?  Ignoring our families, taking shortcuts at work, and gossiping (or "venting") are all done in the name of our "sanity," a way to make the ends justify the means.   Ignoring the homeless, health-less, and hopeless because we're too busy or too distracted becomes easier each time we close our eyes and our ears.  One day, we wake up and find ourselves feeling far from God, like the world has chewed us up and spit us and out, and we have no idea how we got here.  Like Little Red, we have choices to make: We have to see that evil must be recognized, named, and abandoned before its kills us with our own curiosity.