"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!