Now that Arabic is over for the summer, I'm picking up where I left off in going through The Sacred Romance and its workbook. So, I read the chapter about God, the "Ageless Romancer". I've acquired a greater understanding of God's power and love and how the open view helps release all that through my emails with you, but that is head stuff. I found myself having good arguments, but still not feeling comfortable worshipping God again. So, as I began this chapter, I asked God to truly show me his love, not just for fallen humanity in general. I wanted to know that he loved me specially, as an individual, not as part of a collective. (Now I sound like Star Trek!) Well, you'll never guess where his answer came from.
Last Sunday, after returning from church, Becky and I were going to watch "The Last of the Mohicans," but amazingly our video store does not have it. So, I chose "Moulin Rouge" out of our video collection at home. With thoughts of God as the hero and romancer of the Bible (as opposed to being merely the writer), I saw Moulin Rouge in a different light. If you have not seen this movie, you really must, and if you have already, you'd benefit from seeing it again in this new light. Satine is basically a whore, a cortisan who dances and sings in the theatre, the best of all the whores. Christian (I really wonder if biblical imagery was intentional) is a writer who is obsessed with the optimistic ideal of real love (not sexual). Anyway, they connect, and Christian ends up writing a musical for the Moulin Rouge, and Satine plays the heroine. In a powerful scene early on, Christian asks Satine if her confession of love to him was real or not, and she replied that she gets paid to tell men what they want. Yet Christian woos and pursues Satine with real love, and eventually she gives in, commenting, "You're going to be bad for business; I can feel it." Later, Satine is forced to give herself to the Duke who is paying for the whole production, throwing Christian into a jealous rage, which ends with his public humiliation of Satine in paying her for her time with him (the one aspect that ruins Christian as a type of Christ in the movie). Afterwards, one of the Bohemian playwrights shouts his closing line from the show: "The greatest thing is to love and to be loved in return." Satine, still on stage, then apologizes to Christian through song and he returns to her and they sing their secret love song as the climax of the show and the movie.
Seeing the gospel imagery--especially the love of Christian for a whore who doesn't know her true worth--was really neat, but my revelation of sorts came the next morning. After working through some more of the Sacred Romance workbook, I decided to listen to some of the love songs from Moulin Rouge. I played the DVD in three scenes: Christian woos Satine, Christian writes a secret love song for Satine, and Christian and Satine return to each other at the end. In all of these, I noticed that I was feeling drawn to Christian's facial expression. The entire time he sang to Satine, he had a joyfully exhuberant smile on his face. In the last scene, his expression of pure desire is in stark contrast to the Duke's facial expression of envious lust for Satine's body. In the last scene, Satine first sings to Christian, and then he replies in song with the chorus of their secret love song: "Come what may, I will love you until my dying day!"
Suddenly, an image entered my mind of Christ on the cross. His facial expression was not the stoic Christ we see in artwork, but this same expression of exhuberant love for me. And in the background the not-so-secret love song is playing: "Come what may, I will love you until my dying day!" (and beyond, of course) This image has been changing me over the past week. I discovered in California a year and a half ago that one of my greatest emotional needs is the need to be and feel desired by someone. I like to be needed, but I really want to be wanted/desired/pursued. I've known for years that God finds me useful to him, but does he love me? Now, I can recall that picture of his exhuberant expression of love for me. He has been pursuing me all this time, because for some reason he loves me for me, not what I can do for him.
I never thought this kind of revelation would come through a raucous movie like Moulin Rouge, but it did. John Eldredge quotes a story told by C.S. Lewis, in which a young boy wrote to Lewis, confessing that he loved Aslan more than he loved Jesus. (The example pointing to the idea that it often seems easier to love Christ-like figures in stories than Christ himself because the gospel is so often dry in its presentations.) Lewis wrote back to the boy, telling him that all he loved about Aslan IS Jesus. I thank God for using Moulin Rouge to show me a piece of Jesus as well.
-Ben
"doGfood itself is good" Sahid