Tuesday, February 02, 2016

Children of Eden and Faith Integration

Here's a little speech I recently gave for the cast of our upcoming musical, Children of Eden. While it was a response to some specific issues a few cast members raised, I think it gives some nice examples of what one might mean by faith integration in the performing arts.


Children of Eden and Faith Integration
Charles J. Hulin IV
February 1, 2016

In what follows, I hope to provide some perspective on how to engage meaningfully with professional work in the arts as a Christian.

Some of you have expressed concerns about the retelling of Genesis in Children of Eden and about ways in which the musical might be misrepresenting the God we Christians say we believe in.

I am here to assure you that your performance of this musical will not be an easily misinterpreted stand-alone event. Instead, it will be introduced in such a way as to make the following points clear to the audience. And by introduced, I mean by speaking and in print . . .

As I share with you tonight, I might become emotional, passionate, and vulnerable because that’s how I am and we’re Pentecostal here.  It’s also because we are trying to preserve the possibility of doing musicals in our community in a way that has the potential for changing people’s lives.

Here are the points we are going to make sure the audience hears and understands before they see the musical.

1. This is not the way the story plays out in Genesis. This musical is a work of historical fiction, which means the authors took their outline from the Bible and created some details of their own to engage the audience. People will understand that and we just need to tell them it’s the case.

2. Not only is this not exactly like Genesis, it does not clearly present the image of God we generally embrace as a community of Christians.

3. No one involved with this production particularly believes that what is seen on the stage is how things actually happened.

4. The people on the stage are acting. They are pretending to be other people with views and experiences and feelings that are not their own.
  
Both our audience and our selves need to be aware of these things and to accept them since they are the basic facts of the situation. Once we establish this foundation, we can move on to real faith integration and get something spiritual out of this work.

So in addition to letting everyone know that what they see on stage is not exactly what’s in the Bible, we will also talk about some of the following in our introduction.

1. We will invite the audience to go home and read Genesis for themselves. A great way to follow up on a performance like this would be for audience members to talk with their Christian and Jewish friends about what they believe. Personally, I think being involved with this musical will be a great opportunity for each of us to witness to our peers and family as the material on stage should get some deep conversations started. I’ll be praying for that to happen. 

2. Regarding those deep conversations I hope you end up having, the art of this musical is the thing that’s going to provoke them. While scripture gives us some answers, art’s role is to raise questions that lead us to think and feel more deeply. 

And the questions this musical raises are classical theological questions. Here are a few of them.

Why do we reject the goodness God intends for us?

How did evil come to be in a world God created and why is it linked to knowledge?

How much is God like us? Is God vengeful? Does God curse his children? Does God get hurt? Does God change?

What does it mean for God to be the father of humanity? In what ways are Adam and Noah fathers of humanity?

How much do we confuse our experience of our earthly fathers with that of our heavenly father? I had a great dad, but before I could truly accept and love him, before there could be some real peace between us, I had to realize that I was expecting things from him that only God could provide. Some of you probably had fathers who it seemed didn’t really know how to love you, and I’m here to tell you that can confuse you about how much God loves you.

And the questions go on:

How do we reconcile the sometimes seemingly genocidal God of the Old Testament with the loving Jesus of the New? And is it okay to wipe out a whole race when you think God tells you to?

How should we respond to violence whether it is a random local act or a global apocalypse? Should we isolate ourselves from those we see as different or should we come together in those situations? 

Those are Christian college-level questions. Those are questions that Seussical would never get us discussing but Children of Eden will. I think that gives the Holy Spirit a lot to work with.

3. The audience needs to know this musical isn’t just about Genesis. As the musical encourages us, we need to look beyond the historical fiction on the stage to its relevance to our living in the here and now. That’s where being alive to God comes into play (and into the play). If we stay engaged all the way through to the climax of Children of Eden, if we stay focused on getting to the real point its creators intended, we will see that it is about both the struggles and the goodness of family. It is about what it describes as the hardest part of love, which is the letting go. When you’re old like me, that means a lot.

And it’s about how we ought to conduct ourselves when it seems like God’s not there. Throughout the musical we literally see that God is there even when the characters don’t feel like it.

And it’s about the “most precious and terrible” gift we have in life: choice.

As the authors write and as you will sing, “Our hands can choose to drop the knife, our hearts can choose to stop the hating. For every moment of our life is a beginning.” And a little later, “There is no journey that has gone so far we cannot stop and change direction.”

I am certain that there are actually thousands of people in Lakeland who need to hear that message who aren’t going to go to a church to hear it, and it might not be preached at the church even if they do go. But some of them will be in your audience.

So I repeat that we will endeavor to get these points across so that the Spirit can use your efforts to bring about redemption in the lives of your audience members. I respectfully request that anyone who is considering dropping out, reconsider, as I believe we are working towards a powerful moment of ministry in our community that can only happen if we stay true to our commitment to the process. I implore you to keep your minds and hearts oriented toward that ultimate goal.  

Finally, if you are personally struggling with any of the material in the musical, I invite you to engage, one on one, with my colleagues or me so that we can work together to grow spiritually and to bring about things God wants to happen.

No comments: