BEAUTY & THE BEAST
Down the years many thoughtful people have observed that
no one can free us from our ugliness unless he or she loves us even in
our ugliness . Of course, they learned that from the all-wise Lover of
Humanity.
The Disney screen adaptation of Madame de Villeneuve's story, The Beauty and The Beast,
tells how a selfish and self-centered prince ruthlessly denied shelter
to an old lady on a wintry night because her appearance repulsed him.
When he discovers that the old woman is really a beautiful enchantress
he apologizes; but his loveless apology is rejected and she turns him
into a hideous beast. His outward appearance now reflects his inner
ugliness [which says that the enchantress didn't make him ugly—she only
exposed it].
The horrific appearance would disappear, the curse
said, if he could learn to love and be loved by someone in his ugliness.
Years pass and he falls into despair, losing all hope that anyone could
ever love a beast like him.
When the Beast captures one of the
villagers, the man's beautiful daughter, Belle, offers herself as a
ransom to free her father. If she wants him free, the Beast insists, she
must stay with him forever. Belle falters, asking him to step into the
light where she can see him. He does and she recoils in horror at the
sight of him but for love of her father she gives her word that she will
stay with him.
Moved by Belle's love for her father the Beast
tries to please her and by and by the desire to please her becomes
something deeper. Though he's aware that his rage sometimes drives her
from him, still, it enters his mind—the wish, the half of a broken
hope—that she might be the one who can cure him. But he overhears her
say in a fit of private temper that she wants nothing to do with him.
Dismayed, he rumbles to himself, "I'm just fooling myself; she'll never
see me as anything but a monster. It's hopeless."
Gaston, the
handsome but vain, spiteful and cruel villager who wants Belle, gathers
the villagers and works them into a fever that serves his own selfish
agenda. "Kill the Beast!" He spreads his own inner darkness and the
villagers go out to do just what he wants them to do.
But in the
end, it isn't the villagers or the corrupt-at-heart Gaston that kills
the Beast; it's Belle and the love she comes to have for the Beast. She
doesn't deny his ugliness but she comes to see beyond it. ["Love covers
over a multitude of things," a man of God once said.] In loving him she
kills the inner beast and the visible beast vanishes along with it.
Her
willingness to recognize lovely things about the Beast, to see
possibilities where others, repulsed and fearful of his influence on
their community, try to kill him—that's what saved the monster. And her
commitment worked wonders for the Beast becomes a fine and honorable
young prince. Love not only saved, it transformed!
Yes, yes, all
very romantic, very appealing, very touching—but mere sentimentality,
the Gastons of the world sneer. "Ugliness is ugliness and we need to
save people from it!"
But God nor life allows us to believe that! The Bible is filled with the descriptions of our race and ugly isn't too strong a word for our state; beastly
is not too harsh a description of our condition. That's true, but
there's Someone who moves in the world seeking to save it not only from
visible beastliness but from the handsome and starkly vain,
spitefully jealous and vindictively sly Gastons who compare themselves
too favorably with the beasts. There is one who even now moves about the
earth transforming beasts into kings and queens in a royal priesthood.
One who [so to speak] killed himself rather than rallying support
throughout the community to: "Kill the beast!"
It's at this point,
I'm convinced, that we are most unlike Christ. It isn't that we lack
power—it's that we lack heart, or perhaps our tiny love pools have no
depth and dry up, leaving in their place a little hole where the wind
can stir nothing but the dust that remains. All that's there is the form
of godliness without the heart, words that rattle out of mouths that
speak everywhere to make a convert and when that's accomplished the
convert is twice as heartless and dry and spiteful as the Gaston who
made them [Matthew 23:15].
It didn't seem to enter Gaston's head
that inside he might be as hideously ugly as the Beast was outside. The
Beast deserved nothing but to be mangled and left a bloody wreck. It was
all to save Belle, don't you know! It was holy work, saving work and it
was to be done by gathering a feverish clan and making them feel as
Gaston felt. And there's lies the special danger the Gastons are in!
Though driven by envy and spite that's born out of that envy, they
persuade themselves that their destructive malice is the will of One who
dies for beasts. And because they believe this and fervently embrace
that conviction they can't repent of it—how can you repent of doing the will of One who loves Beasts?
And that's what makes John 9:39-41 a spooky piece of scripture and Christ's love almost incredible.
Love knows no limit to its endurance,
no end to its trust,
no fading of its hope;
it can outlast anything.
It is, in fact, the one thing
that still stands when all else has fallen.
1 Corinthians 13:7-8, J.B. Phillips
no end to its trust,
no fading of its hope;
it can outlast anything.
It is, in fact, the one thing
that still stands when all else has fallen.
1 Corinthians 13:7-8, J.B. Phillips
[Taken by permission from my little book: WHERE THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS.
Howard Publishing/Simon & Schuster, 1999]
Howard Publishing/Simon & Schuster, 1999]