Derek
and I went to see the new West Side Story movie recently. It made me think deeply about life and
love and purpose and meaning. It’s such
a tragic story and betrays so well the way the human heart responds to extreme stimuli
such as great love and great loss. *Spoilers alert in case you don't know the story.
“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit.” Matthew 12:33
The story seems to imply, in a subtle, below the surface type of way, that love and relationship is the chief fuel for life—the compelling reason to live. When Tony thinks that Maria is dead, he no longer wants to live himself (I won’t get into the ridiculousness that he had only just met her the day before…. Elsa would have a thing or two to say). And then the same thing happens to Maria after Tony dies in her arms. In anger she lashes out against those who she sees as the culprits to His death, and she expresses a desire to also kill herself.
This message springs not only from these two main characters, but also from the gang members. These boys are presented as street urchins whose primary fuel for life is their participation in their group. They do what they do for the sake of the group and demonstrate their loyalty to their group at great cost, seemingly considering morality, comfort, and life itself as less important than commitment to the group.
It's interesting to me to think about this message, and how true it rings in my own human heart, because, of course, God DID create us for relationship, commitment, and loyalty. We were created with a predisposition for all-consuming passion toward one compelling and completely worthy Entity. And I think God created man, in the beginning, with not only the instinct for that, but also with full knowledge and experience of it in every sense possible. Adam and Eve knew nothing of life fueled by anything other than passionate relationship with God. Until the serpent subtly suggested that perhaps God was not worthy of that blind faith and affection.
Now, life MUST have purpose and meaning, and if that which provides these is removed (or rather, considered unworthy) a vacuum is created and something else springs forward to take its place. Finding oneself in that vacuum is quite jarring and uncomfortable and, indeed, one cannot remain there for very long as life without purpose is in itself a contradiction. (This transition period is what we call an existential crisis).
That simple suggestion put forward by the serpent must have rocked Adam and Eve to the core, as their conception of life shifted from one that made total sense and offered full security to one in which all bets were off and all of their previous assumptions about reality demanded re-examination.
“If my fuel for life is potentially not worthy, then what am I doing here? What am I for, if not Him? Does life apart from Him exist? If so, what makes it up? If my own worth is not found in Him, then where?
When life makes no sense it’s hard to function at all. The sudden need to run and hide and, were it possible, to STOP the succession of time comes over us, because existence without purpose and security is agony.
So there was life as it was intended to be, life with perfect purpose and security—abundant life. But the life of a human spirit, as Adam and Eve discovered, is a sacred thing which persists even when it is shifted into this inferior plane of existence--life fueled by something else. And, of course, when one arrives at a place like Maria and Tony, even that inferior plane of reality no longer serves. Having lost that fuel for life and finding no other, the desire to exist departs. Life without purpose and security cannot be and we suddenly prefer death to the prospect of unending existence in that vacuum of purposelessness.
Once humanity became aware of existence in that inferior plane, we could not un-know it. And so even though we may give intellectual ascent to the original way of life—abundant life for and in God—our hearts cannot, as finite beings, get back to a 100% embrace of that reality. In our guts we will always be aware of, tempted by, and sometimes enticed by other entities which sprang onto the alters of our hearts when that worship vacuum was created by the suggestion of God’s potential unworthiness. Always, that is, until ultimate consummation when everything wrong becomes untrue.
And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” And he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son. Revelation 21:5-7
And so the Christian life is a soul’s pursuit of God, and pursuit of that original plane of existence fueled entirely by Him. It begins with intellectual ascent that there is such a plane of existence—that He IS the ultimate fuel for life and perfect security. And, even though the heart cannot yet fully embrace this reality, it proceeds in day to day choosing to live as though that it really does. And ever so slowly, through immersion in truth and rejection of lies, we come to experience more and more of life as it was meant to be, and we feel less and less the allure of inferior ways of life—inferior objects of our affection.
Sing with me,
and,
Hallelujah! All I have is Christ
Hallelujah! Jesus is my life
Hallelujah! All I have is Christ
Hallelujah! Jesus is my life
