This Christmas I saw HOGFATHER (based on the wonderful novel by Terry Pratchett) for the first time.

It's set in another world, the enchanted Discworld, where so many of Pratchett's stories are set. The story (for those unfamiliar) is kind of Macabre. In this world there is a being remarkably like Santa Claus called the Hogfather. Every Hogswatch Night he flies around the world in a sleigh drawn by hogs delivering presents.

There are a group of supernatural beings called the auditors who find that belief in the Hogfather (or in anything that infolves faith) upsets the nice, logical scheme of the way things are...or at least the way they want things to be. They hire an assassin to kill the Hogfather and it's up to an unlikely group of heroes to stop them.

In the midst of some very strange, funny, and pointedly insightful goings on, the core of the story emerges. it's about faith. This shows up most powerfully in an exchange between two of the good guys: Death, and his granddaughter, Susan.
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SUSAN: You're saying humans need...fantasies to make life bearable.
DEATH: Really? As if it was some king of pink pill? No. Humans need fantasies to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
SUSAN: Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little--
DEATH: Yes. As practice. You have to start out learning to believe the little lies.
SUSAN: So we can believe the big ones?
DEATH: Yes. Justice. Mercy. Duty. That sort of thing.
SUSAN: They're not the same at all.
DEATH: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder, and sieve it through the finest sieve, and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet, you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some, some rightness in the universe, by which it may be judged.
SUSAN: But people have got to believe that, or what's the point?
DEATH: You need to believe in things that aren't true. How else can they become?
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Wise words.

I'd phrase things a little differently. While I'm not a big believer in the tooth fairy, I do believe in a lot of things that the character would refer to as "lies". I believe in God, and in Jesus, and in redemption, and in Grace, and in truth, compassion, justice, duty, and so many other things which there is no way to measure, prove, or quantify.

I don't think of them as 'lies'. I think these are some truths that are so deep and powerful that they cannot be domonstrated by mere facts. They are the kind of thing that only prophets, poets, and storytellers can effectively communicate.

They are no less true than all od the demonstrable facts of the universe, in fact they are more true in some important ways. I don't believe that we manufacture them either. Rather, I believe that faith allows us to discover them.

And I agree with Pratchett that believing makes us more human. In fact, I believe that it is an essential part of being human. I'd add, that when we are truly human in our belief in the things that are unprovable but absolutely essential, this is also the time when we are closest to God.

Deep stuff from a Christmas special about a man with a bunch of flying pige, eh?