"Rent" and Christian Love

The musical "Rent," live on stage and on film, can be seen as a testament to Christian love — even though it seems not to be very "Christian" at all. None of its seven principal characters are religious. They are, in fact, bohemians who reject religious values. Their lives are, by religious standards, sinful. They use drugs. They have unmarried sex, in some cases of the gay variety. Many suffer from AIDS. Yet they are all characters that we fall in love with, willy nilly.

To see why I say "Rent" is a Christian story, you need to understand love as not just the primary Christian virtue but the central attribute of God himself, in Christian tradition: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).

The important point here is to understand what "believeth in him" means. It means elevating love, which is at the core of God's identity, to live at the core of our own identity. We need to approach the "Rent" protagonists, and all who are like them in real life, in a spirit of love.

That's quite hard to do, I personally find. Too often, I can't manage it. But my own problems with making Christian love the centerpiece of my life don't necessary mean the entire Christian belief system is wrong about there being a God of Love.

Yet my church, the Catholic Church, teaches and preaches that many of the things the "Rent" bohemians do are sins. True, they love and stand by one another when the chips are down. But they're still sinners, in the Church's eyes.

I think the Church is stuck in a time warp on matters having to do with sex and drugs. Yet I think I understand why. The Catholic Church and the other Christian denominations want to preserve the good order of society. They think libertine sex and recreational drug use — among other "sins" — bring on societal chaos. If society is in chaos, everybody gets harmed. The first duty of Christian love is to do no harm.

But, I'd offer, our society has evolved well past the unmitigated harm that a libertine lifestyle could do, say, five centuries back. We live in a society today where large numbers of people use marijuana, for instance. According to this recent New York Times op-ed piece, "Almost half of pregnancies in America are unintended. And almost one-third of American girls will become pregnant as teenagers."

Yet we are not in a state of chaos. Instead, what we find ourselves in is a state where inveterate pot smokers and pregnant teens need our help and understanding, not religious condemnation. Love needs to trump censure today, as at all times! That's the true message of Christ!

The Message of "Rent"?

"Rent" is a legendary off-Broadway musical that made it first to Broadway and then to the silver screen. I've just watched the 2005 movie version for maybe the third time over the course of the last half-dozen years. Every time I've seen it, I've felt spiritually elevated.

As a Catholic, I think the "message" of the movie is Christian-to-the-max: the primacy of love. The main characters are seven in number. All of them are young people living "la vie bohème" in New York City's East Village in 1990. They have no money or economic support, but they do have each other for life support. Some of them are non-heterosexual, and even some of the heterosexual ones have AIDS. They use drugs. They don't observe the niceties of "decent moral behavior." And, even so, they ought to serve as an inspiration to all of us. Pushed to the brink, they will make every sacrifice for their comrades.

Their solidarity comes not from any teaching of religion but from what might be called the inner urging of their "love instinct." Not that that instinct shapes their every action. They can be as fallible, as misguided, and even as selfish as the rest of us schlepps. They have fallings out and makings up. They get jealous. They get angry. They get depressed. They get spiritually out of whack.

Yet when the chips are down, they are right there — one for all, all for one — every time.

I've been thinking about this ever since I watched the movie for the third time, all told, a few days ago. I'm coming to believe that the primacy of love is the main message of my religion, and indeed of all religion. I'm also coming to realize how difficult a message it is to uphold, 24/7. Even when I wish I were feeling love for this person or that, I'm usually not. As a feeling, love is ephemeral. When it does put in an occasional appearance in the soul, the feeling is the greatest on earth. We desperately wish we could hold onto it permanently. But we never can. How strange it is that the thing we need the most in life is so damned elusive!