One half of The Barbed Wire and his beloved (completely haaawt, kind, and dedicated) spent a few days in...ahem...Austin to celebrate said union, recently. The main reason we found ourselves in...ahem...Austin was to see the show, Les Miserables.
Les Miserables is, without a doubt, a piercingly sad show
(The Barbed Wire takes this opportunity to acknowledge to our more literary readers...have mercy reading us must be your guilty pleasure...that the show was first a novel by Victor Hugo. The Barbed Wire just has not had the chance to read it quite yet. “Why?!” you ask. College (one of us was busy attempting to create University Wide domination, the other one actually majored in something where he had to study), girlfriend/fiance/wife (almost there other side of The Barbed Wire, almost there), baby (one of us), job, campaign, life, etc...I digress).
There is tragedy at every turn. The music, moreover, is beautiful, serving to highlight the characters' sad state of affairs. The Barbed Wire and his wife commented to each other their wonder about how anyone who is not a Christian (the Christian influence upon the story is undeniable) handle even watching that show, because the bottom line is this story underscores that, in this life, not everyone ends up happy, not everyone gets their desire, not everyone realizes the love they want. For some, joy is a life of sacrifice to the point of heartbreak. Unlike most other musicals (of which The Barbed Wire on most occasions can not stand), life is presented in its more accurate form: ugly.
Ugly, which goes for those of us who call ourselves Christians as well. Perhaps, particularly Christians. A line of this show stood out to The Barbed Wire:
“I dreamed a dream in time gone by,
When hope was high,
And worth living,
I dreamed that love would never die,
I dreamed God would be forgiving...
I had a dream my life would be,
So different from this hell I’m living,
So different now from what it seemed,
Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.
The Barbed Wire is not ashamed or afraid to admit, state boldly, that we have found ourselves there. We here at The Barbed Wire live our lives passionately. Life is a gift to celebrate in the best, and in the worst we push through because life is what we have been given and our obligation is to never give up. There have been times when the forgiveness of God felt so far away it seemed as though it was an unrealized, silly dream. Life has been so hard, rejection so brazen, it seemed that what dreams we had were cruelly killed.
In addition to hilarious commentary on sports, entertainment, politics, and other things (tell your friends about us! spread the word! post us on facebook! tweet us! shamelessly promote us so that we don’t have to shamelessly promote ourselves!), The Barbed Wire was created with the intention that we would honestly say those things that we know to be truth, but have always felt constrained by those more righteous that us to say (in addition to our own insecurities...yes, even we have them). The Barbed Wire is consistently frustrated by the illusion our brethren in our faith put forth that belief in Jesus Christ makes life pretty. We are frustrated by the idea that our convictions make the world a more clear cut, easy place for us to live.
No, faith in Jesus does not remove the ugly stain from life (which, well, lol, ya know is pretty much what the Bible says). I know some clowns, I’ve even worked for some, who formally believe this to be true. When it doesn’t functionally work, they withdraw into their special Christian place where everyone runs around insulating themselves from the harsh reality of life.
All this to say: The Barbed Wire acknowledges that hope never puts us to shame. The Barbed Wire has this hope, we live it everyday. This hope is literally how we are able to live our lives (and watch certain musicals). But, it is foolishness to believe that hope is realized in this life. In hope, we do our best to live our lives commensurate with the convictions we have received from Jesus. Doing so only makes our lives more complicated, more ugly. But, we live for the hope of a greater glory, a peace which will never end and a communion that is beyond doubt. The Barbed Wire believes that if we live only for what can be done for us in our lives now, ya’ll should pity us. Cause we’re in la-la land.
The Barbed Wire figures there are some other folks out there, who know Jesus or have considered getting to know Him, who just can’t reconcile the sugary sweet, ultra-optimistic, deluded belief system so many of our brethren espouse. We want you to know, that’s okay. We think they are missing the point too. The point of our relationship with Jesus is not that suddenly the only news on Fox News and CNN is good news. Nope. The point is that Jesus gives us hope in spite of the fact that when we chose to follow Him, nothing in the world changed. The Barbed Wire doubts, and those doubts express themselves in ways that make many Christians we know very uncomfortable.
So, The Barbed Wire suggests that somewhere between the dancing, beer drinking, and choosing a Kevin Fowler concert instead of seeing some bad-ass Christian rock/worship star, our faith isn’t all that weak. Judge or join us, if you will. Its not easy, and we have the courage to say it.
No comments:
Post a Comment