Musicals

Why, my soul, are you downcast? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God. (Psalm 42:11)

In addition to being a SF geek, I am also a musical theater nerd. I love to see live shows, but since that doesn’t happen very often, I do just fine with soundtracks; I can sing all the parts along with the best Broadway or West End cast, especially when I am in the car or doing some cleaning. Musical theater is traditionally seen as a happy genre - people would not be singing and dancing so much otherwise - so this article listing a number of “Surprisingly Depressing” musicals drew my attention when I came across in my Facebook news feed the other day.

First on the list, not surprisingly at all, is Rent, which is about people dying of AIDS and overdosing on heroin and living in squalid lofts. It is followed closely by Les Miserables, which, just as it says on the tin, depicts the struggles of some miserable people in 19th century Paris. Miss Saigon and its doomed love story in the middle of the Vietnam War, check. Chicago’s cast of homicidal women prisoners, yep, they’re in there too, just as you’d expect.

What I didn’t expect was to see shows like The Sound of Music or Fiddler on the Roof or Annie, all three of which appear on the list as well. While it is true, as the article reminds us, that they involve Nazis, antisemitism, and poor mistreated orphans, respectively, these are never prominent enough themes to label the musicals as blatantly depressing, unless, of course, you’re an internet writer who needs to fill in the gaps in your latest click-bait top 10 list.

It’s the music that makes it better, isn’t it? When the latest in a long line of governesses makes dresses from the drapes, covers for you instead of turning you in when you sneak in after spending time with your boyfriend in the gazebo, and teaches you and your siblings to sing while roaming around Salzburg, you know that everything will be alright even if you do have to sneak away from the Nazis in the middle of the night. When being a poor milkman in a poor Russian village is all you’ve ever known, you may sing about your wish to be a rich man but you also quite contentedly celebrate the ordinary milestones of life with your family and friends. And when you are living a hard knock life, at least you are able to sing about it as you scrub the orphanage floors with the hope that hard knocks aren’t all there is and life will get better one day.

This also holds true in the most depressing shows on the list.  The truly horrid conditions you’re living in don’t seem nearly so bad when you give your lifestyle a French name and sing about the best parts of it while dancing on a restaurant table surrounded by your friends. Likewise, the fact that you most likely won’t survive the night defending the barricade is insignificant next to the strong feelings of camaraderie and friendship between you and your compatriots as you sing with such conviction about the cause you all believe in so deeply.

It’s not a new idea, this desire to sing in order to lessen the effects of an otherwise depressing situation. In the Bible, Psalm after Psalm repeat a theme that goes something along the lines of, “I have enemies on every side and the outlook is really bad right now, but despite that I sing praises to God because I trust him and have hope that he will take care of everything.” It is a good lesson to heed, whether we take it from the Psalmist or our favorite stage actor: even when my soul is downcast and disturbed, I will yet sing, in praise my savior and God and to remind myself that life is never all bad.

Perspective II

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

From the very beginning of Falling Skies, one of the worst things about the invading alien force is the way they kidnap human children and attach “harnesses” (actually creatures from somewhere they had taken over previously) to them in order to control their actions, basically turning them into mindless slaves. In the early episodes of the show, one of the great accomplishments of the human survivors is figuring out how to remove the harnesses without killing the children.

By the third season, the humans have allied themselves with another alien race that had also been enslaved by the invaders, and one benefit of this alliance is the access to technology that lets them remove harnesses completely and safely from children who had been captured. It also allows them to take out the spikes left over in the backs of those who, like Ben Mason, had their harnesses removed before this advanced technology was available.

In the episode “At All Costs,” Ben must decide if he wants those spikes removed or not. On the one hand, he would really like to be a normal teenager again, with nothing that makes him stand out from the crowd. On the other hand, having the harness remnants gives him certain “superpowers” - superhuman strength, for one, and the ability for potential alien allies to speak through him and communicate with the humans. These abilities make him feel needed, like there is something useful he can do. He is no longer just a kid who is in the way and has to follow the directions of the adults. As Ben tells his younger brother, being harnessed was a bad thing, but the harness remnants allow him to do good.

In thinking about this situation, I find myself returning to what I said about Paul in a recent post about perspective in the novel Ender’s Game, but I think Ben's dilemma here is an even better parallel with Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” and how it affected his ministry. I don’t believe God causes bad things to happen to people. I do believe that he gives us the strength to carry on as we walk through those dark valleys, and also the ability to learn from our trials and put that knowledge to use once we reach the other side. Paul learned that weakness made him strong by forcing him to rely on God’s grace, just as Ben has learned that having the spikes gives him a greater purpose in his community.

We all have thorns of one kind or another, and negative circumstances are never easy to deal with. I can only pray that we will let God change our perspectives in these situations and help us to see the good we can do in spite of it all.

The Enemy's Gate Is Down

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13-14)

In last week’s post, I noted that Ender Wiggin found success because his perspective was different, and more effective, than everyone else’s, not only in the Battle Room but also before; it was in the ship that brought them to Battle School from Earth that Ender first realized that directions like “up” and “down” were fluid in a zero-gravity environment.

I find it notable that when Ender’s perspective is different from his peers’, it is because he is already looking ahead toward the goal rather than staying where he was to begin with. Just as in the shuttle to Battle School, where he orients himself towards what is ahead rather than continuing to hold on to “up” as the same direction it was when they entered the ship on Earth, in the Battle Room he thinks of directionality as it relates to his goal - “the enemy’s gate is down” - while others define it relative to the hallway from which their team entered.

 I have heard it said that the “seven last words” of a church are “But we’ve always done it that way.” Yes, by continuing to act as in the past you may in fact win the game, but at what cost? By focusing on the goal instead, and by thinking out of the box when developing a plan for getting there, how many more people could the church reach, with how many fewer burnouts along the way?

The church needs more Enders: the people who look at things from a different perspective and focus on where they are going rather than where they came from. Even more than that, it needs people like Ender’s friends Alai and Bean, the ones who recognize and support outside-the-box thinking and who are willing to listen and learn and give the new ideas a try for the sake of ministry rather than tradition. May we strive to be like them, or at least, not to hold them back.

Perspective

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corninthians 12:9-10)

The first time Ender Wiggin experiences a war game in the Battle Room, he quickly picks up on something that no one else does - perspective is the key to success. He watches everyone else remain oriented to the entry hallway in the zero-gravity environment, then he does something radically different. “The enemy’s gate is down,” becomes Ender’s mantra. Without gravity to define direction, Ender is free to define direction for himself, and by doing this he finds he has an advantage over everyone else.

This was not a change that just occurred suddenly the first time he entered the Battle Room, either. When the spaceship from Earth arrives at the orbiting Battle School, Colonel Graff notices that, unlike the rest of the new recruits who continue to think of “up” and “down” relative to the ship’s position (and their position in it) when it left Earth, Ender has already oriented himself relative to the ladder out of the ship and into the artificial gravity of the space station.

In his letters to various churches, Paul never gives details about the “thorn in the flesh” that he had, but it certainly seems to have impacted his daily life. It wasn't something he wanted to have - “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me,” he tells the Corinthians. He didn't let its continuing presence ruin his ministry, however. Seeing that God wouldn't take it away, he chose instead to change his perspective. God used Paul’s weakness to show His great power, and Paul recognized this and came to accept it.

Changing our perspective isn't something that happens automatically. It is something we have to choose to do. If we make the choice, however, to let God work through us in even the most negative of circumstances, there is no limit to our strength in his power.