Swords or Plowshares?

[Originally published June 8, 2020]

I spent much of Sunday afternoon weeping. I’d come downstairs from studying and intermittent dozing to find Dale watching the 25th anniversary of Les Mis on a PBS beg-a-thon, with Alfie Boe.

I have loved Les Mis since I first read the Cosette and Marius love story in 9th grade French, which compelled me to plow through the unabridged edition the next summer. The musical just added to my love of this story. Particularly, Dale has sung “Bring Him Home” and brought me to tears, at the piano, as his accompanist. But Alfie Boe’s rendition completely undoes me. THAT’S the way God gave this perfect piece of music to the inspired composer. Parenthetically: in an interview after Boe was a guest of the Tabernacle Choir, he called the piece a “diamond in his pocket.” Indeed. If I close my eyes, it’s 2012, and I’m in the Conference Center again, hearing Boe perform this priceless piece of art, which only exists in time. The only year of Dale’s 16-year tenure in the choir when I selfishly kept tickets for all 4 performances of the annual Christmas concert for myself. What can I say? I like diamonds.

I’ve finally been able to embrace this embarrassing fact: I cry at beautiful things. I’m not embarrassed that I love beauty, but rather, that my tear ducts just can’t stay out of it anymore. Tears streamed down my face as I made dinner during the beg-a-thon break, as I considered the timeless and timely themes of this magnificent novel, and the beautiful adaptation as an opera. And Jared and Denise Carman - I continue to mourn not teaching this novel to your students this spring.

Les Miserables is the kind of novel that makes me say there is no such thing as fiction. Good fiction, well-written - a story, well-told - is simply a fresh new way of telling the truth about the human condition and eternal principles. Sunday afternoon, the timeless and timely themes caught in my throat, and flowed down my face. But because of current events, they won’t leave me.

A hardened man is told for so long that he’s irredeemable, that he believes it - until a Christ-like man points him to THE Redeemer, and he is redeemed. From desperately stealing bread to save loved ones, to years as a hardened convict, this man manages to sink even lower with one more petty theft. Finally, at rock bottom, he finds THE Rock, realizes he owes a debt for his redemption, and begins to build a worthwhile life again - one of service, sacrifice, and love.

Meanwhile, a young girl callowly gives her innocence to the man she thinks she’ll spend her life with, only to discover she’s been toyed with for sport. She’s left an unwed mother, and eventually sells herself to provide for a child who is neglected and abused by the lowest of humanity. The fruit of repentance from the hardened criminal is real and poignant, as he gives his life to becoming a father to the broken women’s little girl. Years later, he saves the life of the man she loves. This is the man he prays over, begging God, “If I die, let me die... let him live.” This prayer - the original name of “Bring Him Home” was “The Prayer” - signifies the beautiful fruit of repentance - of conversion - in spite of the miseries of the man’s life.

But apparently, I’m not finished weeping. Angry young men prepare to die to have their voices heard, the injustices of life filling the cup of their indignation to overflowing - with violence. They’re almost innocently surprised that any of their militant number would actually lose their lives in their uprising, and tenderly consider each fallen man as a martyr to a holy cause. Am I watching the news? Or an artistic performance?

And finally, the penitent man, who has born sorrows his entire life, is finished. The young woman whose child he raised returns from death, to take him in death. And these are the words that I will never stop weeping over, truth and beauty combined in this one nearly perfect lyrical, musical passage: “To love another person is to see the face of God.”

As the show concludes, the same stirring music from the end of the first half is reprised. In the first half, the lyrics speak of angry men changing the world by demanding blood for injustice. Now, the lyrics set to the same music speak of “climbing to the light,” and promise that “even the darkest nights will end and the sun will rise.” There is allusion to this beautiful Millennial verse in Isaiah 2:4:

“And he [Jesus Christ] will judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”

The message is unmistakable. The first half of the story seems to imply that only fighting the injustice that IS mortality is the only power which will change the world and create a utopia. The beautiful conclusion corrects - brilliantly, artistically, with the same stirring melody, and this message: the only power that will change this world is the pure love of Jesus Christ.

Whittaker Chambers wrote an incredible autobiography, “Witness,” recounting his life as a Soviet communist spy in the U.S. State Department during the 1920’s and 1930’s. He read and reread “Les Miserables” as a child - as young as 8 or 10! - and his exquisite writing is a brilliant illustration of his repeated exposure to such high literature.

In his book, Chambers bears witness of his journey from the darkness of communism into the light of faith. He asserts that “Les Miserables” was the book that convinced him communism was the only way to change the world: an ideology of division, force, and the promised lie of a utopia that could never be achieved, because it can’t bear to acknowledge the only perfect Bearer of Peace the world has ever had.

Then, incredibly, Chambers also writes that “Les Miserables” was also the book that convinced him communism was not just wrong, but evil - and that only in a world with freedom and free will, could humanity ever CHOOSE to love their neighbors as themselves.

Considering this beautiful story of humanity, on Sunday afternoon, I tearfully concluded that Victor Hugo agrees with Whittaker Chambers. For the record - so do I.