God’s sovereignty and Beauty and the Beast

I watched the live action Beauty and the Beast film yesterday. Initially, I thought I would be very disappointed; I am not a Disney fanatic, also, I am not a big fan of romance stories. However, I found the movie quite enjoyable. I must say though, that I think that the overall acting was mediocre – perhaps with the exception of Gaston (played by Luke Evans, who played Bard in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit) and the singing average. But I definitely enjoyed the score; I thought the arrangements were great, particularly poignant where they needed to be. I really felt like I was being transported into the world of the film just through the music. Nevertheless, I must say that I am no film nor music critic, these are just my personal responses.

But my aim in this post is not so much to talk about the film in general, but about how elements in it help illustrate the doctrines surrounding the sovereignty of God. The context which steered my thoughts towards this direction is that a week ago I attended my student church’s annual Student Conference, and the theme was ‘The Lord Reigns’ taken from Psalm 97. The view of God’s sovereignty taught at this conference unsurprisingly, safely falls under the banner of the Reformed tradition. In other words, God’s sovereignty – His freedom to do whatever He pleases – is the ultimate determining factor for anything that happens in the world. In John Piper’s words, ‘there are no maverick molecules.’ A couple of international students (Singaporeans mostly) disagree with this notion; their objections usually revolve around the issue of evil, and the role of human choice (or ‘free will’) in salvation.

Personally, I have no issue with the compatibilist view (there should be a reference to D. A. Carson here, but I am not sure where exactly. I suspect that he states this in his How Long O Lord.) that God is totally in control, but that human beings are still totally held accountable for our actions. I will admit that there are plenty of philosophical problems with this proposal, but perhaps the philosophical approach is a deficient one. I think that narrative theology is a better heuristic for navigating the issues surrounding this hotly-debated topic. This means that instead of moving away from the Bible into philosophical speculation, it might be more helpful to go into the Bible to see how it holds God’s absolute sovereignty in tension with genuine human choice and responsibility (note that I do not use the phrase ‘free will,’ because the phrase is ill-defined and its usage often leads to further confusion. Also I do not think the Bible teaches it).

Right, that was a long and unexpected preamble, but it sets the scene, and hopefully explains why I think using this version of Beauty and the Beast as an illustration has potential. (There might be spoilers if you have not watched the film; if you have not, what I talk about might not be useful.)  

Issue 1: Someone is in control.

An interesting detail of the plot I noticed was that Maurice (Belle’s father) stumbles upon the castle because a lightning strikes a tree which blocks his path, forcing him to take an alternative route. This might just be coincidence, but later when he tries to lead Gaston to the castle, the tree is back to normal. For me, this suggests that someone is working behind the scenes, allowing or even enabling Maurice to find the castle, but later withholding that ability. This seemingly incidental detail is actually the fulcrum upon which the whole story hinges, and there are definitely hints that someone has ordained incidents to occur in the way they do. One might further add that the rose petals drop dramatically, and suspiciously too quickly with Belle’s appearance. And so the prevailing mood of the story is that of expectancy. I suggest that expectancy is the corollary to someone being shaping events.

Issue 2: Characters make real choices.

Despite this ‘invisible hand,’ the choices the characters make are presented as wholly theirs, in that they bear the responsibility and consequences of their action. There is no recourse to fate or a higher power. Existence is rooted in the everyday decision-making of the characters. It is this real choice to love that drives the focus of the narrative, that we choose to see behind (or beneath) the outward into what is inside. The story is not so much about inner beauty triumphing over external trappings; rather it is about consciously recognising that what we see on the outside is literally only skin-deep.

Synthesis:

The story holds both together. The figure of the enchantress appears at various points of the film, suggesting that events are not as random as they seemed. She is not merely a convenient gap-filler; rather, she quietly, behind-the-scenes arranges events so that they culminate in a happy ending. Nowhere in the film do human choice and the enchantress’ role contradict or erase the other. They certainly conflict, albeit in an implicit, almost unnoticeable manner. This situation is similar to that the picture that the Bible paints of God’s sovereignty working through (or alongside) human choice. Tensions or conflicts exist, but the Bible does not opt for convenient explanations. The genre of narrative allows this silence. It might be unsatisfactory, but I think it is an important element of the Bible.

Issue 3: What about the bad guys?

Gaston, unlike the Beast, is not given a second chance. In the film, he falls to his (assumed) death. I think viewers are meant to see that scene and think to themselves that justice is served. I suspect most viewers would not leave the film saying that it is not fair that he is not given a chance to ‘repent.’ In fact, I think he was given opportunity after opportunity to switch the course of his actions, but he chooses to walk down the path of destruction. I do think that this – however inadequately – captures the biblical depiction of God’s enemies. When they are defeated, we as readers are meant to rejoice that God has triumphed over evil, we are not meant to pity God’s enemies after the sentence has been pronounced and punishment dealt. Before that, yes, we implore people to repent and believe the gospel with genuine compassion. But when judgment comes, God’s enemies will receive their due reward, and God’s people will rejoice at that.

I know that these things can be hard to swallow, and I know that there’s so much more to be said. But what I hope to have done is show how Beauty and the Beast in some way, portrays the biblical picture of God’s sovereignty and human responsibility. Space has not permitted me to delve into Bible passages, knowledge of these have been assumed. Perhaps I will discuss some of those issues in further posts, but for now, I hope this brief reflection has opened some inroads into seeing how narrative theology sometimes ‘explains’ biblical truths in a different, but nevertheless helpful manner for Christians who find this doctrine hard to logically make sense of – the Bible, is after all, a narrative rather than a philosophy textbook.