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Monday, May 22, 2017

Christians Under the Moonlight: Thoughts on the Movie and More.


[Spoilers Ahead]
While Barry Jenkins' "Moonlight" shoulders a strong message about the complicated realities of queer black male existence in America, the film smartly avoids any sermonizing.

Rather than lead the audience on a guided tour to "discover" what they should want for the characters, the ensemble of souls Jenkins creates are so eminently identifiable and sympathizable in their real human brokenness, we cannot help but want what they want.

And what does the movie's main protagonist want above all else?

Validation.

The story is split into three acts, each centered on Chiron, a black boy growing up in a Florida ghetto at the height of the eighties crack epidemic.

Each act represents a different period in Chiron's life, from socially isolated elementary school aged boy to same-sex attracted teenager and finally conflicted and closeted gay man, over the course of the 111-minute film.

At the mercy of a world he doesn't understand and which clearly doesn't understand him, Chiron's search for validation is borne of necessity.

Chiron's father manifests only in a solitary passing reference, and the young boy is forced to watch his working single mom and only parent transfigure into a one-track minded crack addict whose long days spent hustling for "rocks" leave little time for actual parenting.

This parental void is filled by a surprisingly paternal neighborhood drug dealer, Juan, and his live-in partner, Teresa, an irony not lost on Chiron's juvenile mind.

"Do you sell drugs?", he asks Juan.

"Yeah."

"And my mama...she do drugs, right?"

Neither he nor Juan presses the point any further.

Neither have to.

Chiron's misfit status crystallizes together with his same-sex attraction as he enters his teenage years, leaving him the impossible choice of passing as something he is not or existing on social the margins of his community, a choice familiar to many queer men of color.

Juan teaches young Chiron to swim
For Chiron, the margins are where he gets the tar beat out of him for no other reason than he's an easy, visible target.

The margins are where friends and enemies alike bury him alive under an avalanche of nicknames, slurs, and accompanying identities no young man would choose for himself.

An example of the latter is Chiron's best friend Kevin who simply calls him "Black", referencing his ebony hue in a subtle hat tip by Jenkins to colorism in the African-American community.

This psycho-social torture and physical terrorizing makes Chiron's choice to break out beyond the margins a clear one.

In a violent revenge attempt against a neighborhood bully (sure to jar viewers in its brutishness), Chiron is whisked down the pipeline out of high school and into juvenile detention, his future and outward persona radically altered.

Gone is the old Chiron, and his once lanky shy self retreats into a ripped, hard, drug-dealing body double with a potentially damaging secret burning like a fire shut up in his bones.

That is, as a teenager, Chiron and his buddy Kevin once shared an intimate moment together on the beach that reached well beyond the bounds of platonic friendship.

Despite this, when it's put up time, Kevin betrays Chiron to save his own skin (which leads to the violent episode landing Chiron in juvie) and the two lose contact.

So when Kevin calls Chiron out of the blue years later wanting to apologize for mistakes made and reconnect, the allure of closure proves too strong to resist.

Even in the light of betrayal and the passage of time, Chiron could never shake Kevin.

A symptom of his desperate search for affirmation?

An appreciation of the complexities that led to the broken bonds of friendship?

 Love?

You decide.
Kevin and Chiron on the beach.

Whatever the case, by the final scene, when Chiron rests his head on Kevin's shoulder contentedly, at peace with himself having found peace with the only person (male or otherwise) he'd ever really loved, we the audience want to want what he wants, what he never could have but finally has.

However, this poses a real problem for Bible-believing followers of Jesus who want the happiness of our gay friends and neighbors, but are unwilling to compromise on God's design for sexual relationships displayed in the conjugal marriage union.

Still, it almost seems cruel after all Chiron has endured to roll in like rain on a parade and douse the little spark of happiness he's managed to ignite.

Yet the earnest contention of the Christian faith is not "choose happiness or Christ",  but "choose happiness in Christ."

The choice between Jesus and whatever keeps you from him is a choice between whatever it is you're holding on to and something Infinitely Better.

I cannot go as far as affirming the validation Chiron finds in the arms of another man, not so much as a same-sex attracted person of color (which I am), but as a Christian (which I also am).

But in this broken visage, I see an underlying desire for wholeness all Christians will eagerly affirm as we point the way to Jesus as the summit of what it means to be at home with ourselves and to discover true wholeness at the Source.

Wednesday, May 17, 2017

The God Who Meets Us at the Ledge

I keep wondering where I was the precise moment his body crashed through the roof of the seventh floor.

I couldn't have missed him but by a few minutes, judging by the blood that had barely begun to pool around his head where he slammed into the smooth, solid stone floor.

What was I doing as he made his one-way climb up the elevator?

What was I thinking as he approached the ledge of the city's tallest building and took flight?

"One more hour and I'm out of here"

 Crash--7th floor.

"The weather is gorgeous"

 Crash--6th floor.

"I wish I outside"

 Crash--5th floor.

"Almost done"

 Crash--4th floor.

For the briefest moment, as I rounded the corner and found him crumpled there, it was as if I had entered an alternate reality where Death confronted me to my face and a simple service hallway now doubled as a tomb.

The light let in by the gaping hole in the ceiling made the dust shimmer and dance, coming to rest softly on the body of a man whose life ended 3 floors ago.

He was so still. I have never seen anyone so still. His stillness strangled the prayers in my throat.

"Oh, God, no." "Oh, God, please." "Please, no, God."

There would be no resurrection this time.

No miracle healing.

No happy ending.

Which made me wonder: where God was as he approached the ledge?

I am driven by the deep conviction that the God of Jesus whom we meet in the pages of Scripture does not sit in the heavens above aloof and emotionally detached from our frail human lives.

In stark contrast, God manifests Himself powerfully at the very ledge of our misery.

And while we ask what good is God at the ledge if people still jump, the question subtly reverses His role and ours.

Call me a sheep, but I confess God as the Sovereign Lord of the universe and the supreme Ground of all Good whom no man can gainsay.

His worth does not hang on how often He deals with evil and human suffering to our liking.

Our assurance instead is that He "works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will" (Eph. 1:11; emphasis mine).

He wastes nothing. Nothing is in vain.

And this is God's purpose: "He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death' or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away" (Rev. 21:4).

We know God can accomplish this because He is mighty, wise, and benevolent.

We know he will accomplish this because it's precisely what he did at the cross.

A seemingly insignificant act of human evil, whereby a Jewish peasant died for crimes he didn't commit, became the means by which death was defeated, sin slain, and countless men came to count God as their Heavenly Father.

What man intended for evil, God in His sovereign arrangement and foresight used for ultimate good.

The way God interacts with human evil and suffering is not in stopping every tragedy or wicked act.

Rather, like an artist or a craftsman, He pieces together the good and the bad into a mosaic that will one day reveal His ultimate end: the elimination of all evil and suffering through the victorious return of Jesus to the earth.

Where there is smoke there is fire. Evil and suffering are the smoke alerting us to a world on fire with sin and leaving us asking for a solution.

An old rugged cross and an empty tomb are God's answer.

God meets us at the ledge with nails marks in his hands and feet telling us he died so we don't have to.

God meets us at the ledge in the shadow of a cross victorious over the lies that make men throw themselves off 49-story buildings.

God meets us at the ledge with a promise of a future glory so weighty it makes our worst problems seem light and momentary.

While the Bible itself agrees, "yet at present we do not see everything subject to him", it reminds "we see Jesus...now crowned with glory and honor because He suffered death, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone" (Heb. 2:8-9).

God was with that man on the ledge.

And while he still chose to jump, the cross is my assurance his death will not have the final word but that of Jesus Christ.