Aaron Burr, Sir

To the angel of the church in Laodicea write:...I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm — neither hot nor cold — I am about to spit you out of my mouth. (Revelation 3:14-16)

As we have seen before, one of my longtime fandoms is musical theater. Lately, I have been geeking out about the Tony-winning Broadway sensation, Hamilton, in which a racially diverse cast raps their way through a retelling of the early history of the United States with a specific focus on Alexander Hamilton, a Founding Father who tends to be known today only as “that guy on the $10 bill” or “that guy who was killed in a duel with Vice President Aaron Burr.”

Indeed, a major focus of the show is the development of the antagonistic relationship between Hamilton and his “frenemy” Aaron Burr, the narrator and self-proclaimed “damn fool who shot him.” We don’t have to wait long to find out the reason for Hamilton’s frustration, as the the show’s second song reveals Burr’s motto: “Talk less. Smile more. Don’t let them know what you’re against or what you’re for.”

Talk less, smile more. Well, that’s a piece of advice Hamilton, and indeed many of us, should heed more often. We spend so much time running our mouths when so many problems could be averted if we listened instead, and Biblical writers like James and the psalmists provide much evidence in support of this position. But what about the rest of Burr’s statement?

Don’t let them know what you’re against or what you’re for. Now, that’s where Hamilton begs to differ, a complaint against Burr that he makes so often that, as the musical tells it, it ends up getting him killed. From the beginning, Hamilton recognizes the danger of what Burr is doing and calls him on it, using that old adage that I remember hearing countless times in youth Bible studies as a teenager: “If you stand for nothing, Burr, what’ll you fall for?”

It’s one thing to be reticent when deciding whether or not to openly support an uprising that will get you hanged for treason if it fails, but even later on, when Burr is campaigning for public office, his motto has not changed. He seems nice enough — “like you could have a beer with him” — and he’s popular with the ladies (“tell your husbands, vote for Burr”), but we still don’t know where he falls on the critical issues of the day. When it comes to decision time, as portrayed in the show, the thing that ends up swinging the presidential vote to Jefferson is the endorsement of his bitter political opponent Hamilton, who would rather support someone with whom he has “fought on like seventy-five different fronts” than someone who won’t come out and state his position on anything.

The moral of the story, then, is to stand up for what you believe in. We should definitely talk less and smile more — it’s hard to hear the voice of God when we’re constantly running our mouths. But we should never be afraid to let the world know clearly what we stand for, either. Our words, actions, and attitudes should clearly proclaim that what we are for is our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Reputation

Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. (Philippians 3:7-9)

Rarely do people return from long journeys to find they are completely the same as when they left. On his journey There and Back Again, Bilbo Baggins discovers courage, faith, resourcefulness, and friendship. He brings back to Hobbiton a great deal of treasure as well. But after the dust settles and most Hobbits are satisfied that he is not, in fact, dead, and after the auctioned-off furniture is repurchased and his sword is hung over the mantle, there is something else different about him:

Indeed Bilbo found he had lost more than spoons - he had lost his reputation. It is true that for ever after he remained an elf-friend, and had the honour of dwarves, wizards, and all such folk as ever passed that way; but he was no longer quite respectable. He was in fact held by all the hobbits of the neighborhood to be 'queer' - except by his nephews and nieces on the Took side, but even they were not encouraged in their friendship by their elders.

Some people set great store by reputation, both their own and others’. But really, isn’t reputation, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder? Tolkien tells us that in general, Hobbits set great store by being stodgy homebodies, predictable in every way, so by those standards Bilbo has lost his reputation. Yet one Hobbit’s dodgy reputation as one who goes on adventures with dwarves (oh, the horror!) is another person’s set of admirable personality traits, to be admired and emulated.

Paul recognized this as well, and said as much to the Philippians. The things the world values are trash in the eyes of Christ, but if his reputation because of his faith is trashy in the eyes of the world, well, so be it, because the world’s opinion is not the one that really counts. Besides, I rather like the sound of “queer old elf-friend,” don’t you?