Don't let a lie ruin a great summer movie

Cultivating affections

Dateline August 8th, in the Year of our Lord 2022

Some family traditions are just fun.  All traditions cultivate affections.  Our family has long watched musical films as an annual tradition.  Filmed Broadway productions like Les Miserables and Phantom of the Opera are occasional choices.   Two musicals in particular have become annual traditions that enliven the calendar and give us an experience that we can share as a family– one we watch at Christmas and the other in July-ish.  

Like many families, our family started watching The Sound of Music during the Christmas season.  My kids are mostly in their 20's now, and we still carry this on.  Musicals make good traditions because they are a higher art, and they don't get old with repetition.    

No show is perfect, but The Sound of Music reflects truth, goodness, and beauty.  This should be the goal any time you engage art or entertainment.  The real Maria von Trapp took issue with the film because it depicted her husband as a strict disciplinarian-- he was not. He was always nurturing to his children.  And, “Edelweiss” is not an Austrian folk song-- it's pure Rodgers and Hammerstein.    Aside from these types of inaccuracies, the film scores high on the transcendent index. It holds many true virtues — it displays goodness in the sacrificial leadership of Captain von Trapp, and beauty through music, theater (puppets), scenery, dance, and architecture.  Old-world virtues are on rare display.  Your children will absorb these values over repeated years of watching the film.

For the summer, we watch The Greatest Showman -- a much more modern piece (2017).  As such, it has some underlying messages of our time.  But, surprisingly, it breaks the mold.   On a truth scale, it's inspired by the story of P.T. Barnum, and reflects that story and his imaginative view of the world probably as well as an artistic musical can.  On the beauty scale, its score, performance, dance, and songwriting are very good.  Goodness is a bit tainted with modern sensibilities.  But, if watched carefully, it actually upholds many Christian virtues.  Barnum's wife sings "Tightrope," a song that celebrates the best of feminine qualities.  She follows and supports her husband as an encourager, and the lyrics resist many messages that would normally be in a song between a husband and wife in our modern age.  

As a response, P.T. Barnum sings "From Now On," a ballad of repentance:

A man learns who is there for him

When the glitter fades and the walls won't hold

'Cause from that rubble, what remains

Can only be what's true

If all was lost there's more I gained

'Cause it led me back to you

From now on

These eyes will not be blinded by the lights

From now on

What's waited 'til tomorrow starts tonight

Let this promise in me start

Like an anthem in my heart

From now on

From now on

I drank champagne with kings and queens

The politicians praised my name

But those are someone else's dreams

The pitfalls of the man I became…

My son tells me a Christian leader took issue with the song, "This is Me" as an approval of accepting people as they are presumably in the modern context of sexual sin.  I think this misreads the song.  It's sung by one of the many misfits who make up Barnum's show-- Keala Settle, who plays the Bearded Lady.   To the contrary, I think the Chorus' use of "I am who I'm meant to be" reflects a very different message-- God made us with a purpose.  Rather than "I'm who I want to be" or "who I think I am," the song's message fits nicely into a Christian worldview-- God meant something when He made you. 

Hide away, they say

'Cause we don't want your broken parts

I've learned to be ashamed of all my scars

Run away, they say

No one'll love you as you are

But I won't let them break me down to dust

I know that there's a place for us

For we are glorious

In the context of unchangeable characteristics, like so many of the show's characters have, this is a beautiful message.

Now, the LGBT crowd has tried to preempt the message to redefine sexual perversion or mental disorders as "Identity."  In doing so, they change their sin into "who God made them."  This is foolishness and a lie that we must not let our children absorb.  But, we must not lose the underlying value in loving those who are unlovely.  Using a semantic trick, today’s cultural elites leverage the remnants of the "Western Christian Paideia," felt by most Americans, to gain acceptance as the “downtrodden and oppressed.”  We must not let this lie preempt the truth!  Christ calls us to love those made in His image (which we all are), without mocking "misfits."  At the same time, we must never let them redefine their sin as "how God made them."  Homosexuality is no more an identity than adultery.  God is not the author of sin.  

It's important that we rightly divide the truth and teach our children to understand the subtle tricks of the evil one's rhetoric. 

They may want to turn this song into acceptance of sin, but we cannot let them take away its central Christian message:  Love the unlovely.  In its proper context, this song can be very instructive.

Which leads me to one last thing:  Dad, lead a discussion after the movie, and mom, support him doing this!  If you start young enough, the eye rolling will give way to resignation when they become teens.  Talk about the truth, goodness, and beauty in the film.  Help your kids understand that we can reclaim the high ground and not be fooled by linguistic trickery.