Posted on 01/03/2013 4:50:37 PM PST by drewh
The film version of the beloved musical "Les Misérables" boasts plenty of box office-friendly attributes. Name recognition is through the roof, the film's cast features some of today's most charismatic actors and the production is unlike any other film currently playing in theaters.
The minds behind the film's marketing efforts took one extra measure to ensure its success, and its paying off handsomely.
The story in "Les Misérables" is heavy with Christian themes of grace, mercy and redemption. The line everyone seems to remember is "to love another person is to see the face of God.”
NBC Universal looked to capitalize on those components and promoted the film to pastors, Christian radio hosts and influence-makers in the Christian community.
The result? "Les Misérables" has already earned $80 million at the box office since its Christmas Day release, and that's despite massive competition from "Django Unchained," "The Hobbit" and "Jack Reacher."
It's hardly an isolated incident. "The Passion of the Christ" proved faith-friendly fare could yield blockbusters as well as costumed clad avengers. Even small films like "Fireproof" have shown studios the wisdom of appealing to Christian crowds.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Because it is a fundamentally DIFFERENT idea....love another is not anything like doing for those who have less are outcast are the lest....to feed the hungry, help the poor is not the same as loving another. Those acts may come from love of God and a sense of duty but loving another individual is not in and of itself selfless. It is indeed what is taught in Buddhism ...the idea that you should love and honor the ‘god’ that exists within all of us in everything.
I would strongly recommend that you actually read Victor Hugo’s work rather than relying on what b’way and hollyweird have put up there.
AS a Christian trying to show my love as being equivalent to God’s love is an ideal. It may even be the best way to stay married. That is not what Les Mis is talking about nor is that the message of the movie. You have neither read the book nor seen the movie. You comment does not even come close to addressing the actual content and meaning of the movie.
I am glad you do work with couples in pre marital counseling. That is a good thing. I do believe that if more couples had the idea that today I am going to do things to show my partner the love that God has shown me then more marriages would last. That has nothing to do with this movie
Have you actually read Hugo’s work?
Thank you. You are exactly correct. Hugo’s book at least deals with this. The movie/musical does not. And your term Satanic Barbarism is spot on
Not even close to being contextually correct. Please Hugo’s book then we can talk.
I suggest that you look completely at the portion of Genesis....it includes a masculine noun ‘image’ and a feminine noun ‘likeness’. The commentaries are very clear and the explicit...man was created as a semblance as something that was like God but not God. After the fall man’s sin left him separated from his maker....no longer was he ‘in God’s image’ he was fallen and needed restoration.
Not even close to being contextually correct. Please read Hugo’s book then we can talk.
I suggest that you look completely at the portion of Genesis....it includes a masculine noun ‘image’ and a feminine noun ‘likeness’. The commentaries are very clear and the explicit...man was created as a semblance as something that was like God but not God. After the fall man’s sin left him separated from his maker....no longer was he ‘in God’s image’ he was fallen and needed restoration.
From Matthew Henry
“That man was made in God’s image and after his likeness, two words to express the same thing and making each other the more expressive; image and likeness denote the likest image, the nearest resemblance of any of the visible creatures. Man was not made in the likeness of any creature that went before him, but in the likeness of his Creator; yet still between God and man there is an infinite distance. Christ only is the express image of God’s person, as the Son of his Father, having the same nature. It is only some of God’s honour that is put upon man, who is God’s image only as the shadow in the glass, or the king’s impress upon the coin....”
This is why we do not have any true image of The Christ, because (though a human as born possesses not the substance of The God as The Christ did/does), each human is imprinted with the face of The God, as The Christ was. Christ in form and face was accepted by mankind as of their/our kind, not necessarily being particularly 'beautiful' according to worldly standards (Is. 53:2), yet not being deformed by the effects of inborn Sin, as for some of us occurs.
Of course, though unique, certainly His face represented one of a thousand million ways The God chooses to show each of us as being a likeness of Him. Having a face of God does not make one of the substance of God, but it does stamp us as His Special Creation, made for fellowship with and love for/by Him, which no other creature was made to enjoy.
We need to realize that the most noxious, sin-ravaged, God-rejecting fellow creature is less repugnant to the Righteous God than His Only-begotten-in-the-flesh Son was when He bore all our sins in His Body on The Tree, and for which He suffered the eternal burning of Hell and the Lake of Fire in our place.
His Blood shed there was sufficient to wash away any fault in a human's flesh, soul, and spirit that would prevent The God from offering again his friendship, the Love of God in Christ Jesus. Would Christ loving a human wreck not be His seeing His own face and form imprinted on that poor creature? Were/are you not one of those? Is not loving another with the sovereign love of God the same as discerning the face of The God stamped upon another human?
For that is exactly what taking forth The Gospel of Christ to bring the news of reconciliation really is. Without it, you have no Gospel.
This is why we do not have any true image of The Christ, because (though a human as born possesses not the substance of The God as The Christ did/does), each human is imprinted with the face of The God, as The Christ was. Christ in form and face was accepted by mankind as of their/our kind, not necessarily being particularly 'beautiful' according to worldly standards (Is. 53:2), yet not being deformed by the effects of inborn Sin, as for some of us occurs.
Of course, though unique, certainly His face represented one of a thousand million ways The God chooses to show each of us as being a likeness of Him. Having a face of God does not make one of the substance of God, but it does stamp us as His Special Creation, made for fellowship with and love for/by Him, which no other creature was made to enjoy.
We need to realize that the most noxious, sin-ravaged, God-rejecting fellow creature is less repugnant to the Righteous God than His Only-begotten-in-the-flesh Son was when He bore all our sins in His Body on The Tree, and for which He suffered the eternal burning of Hell and the Lake of Fire in our place.
His Blood shed there was sufficient to wash away any fault in a human's flesh, soul, and spirit that would prevent The God from offering again his friendship, the Love of God in Christ Jesus. Would Christ loving a human wreck not be His seeing His own face and form imprinted on that poor creature? Were/are you not one of those? Is not loving another with the sovereign love of God the same as discerning the face of The God stamped upon another human?
For that is exactly what taking forth The Gospel of Christ to bring the news of reconciliation really is. Without it, you have no Gospel.
But the movie "Les Miserables" (haven't seen it, probably won't) may perhaps not be exactly out of Victor Hugo's fingertips (have read that several times), but the Christian theme of sovereign preference for another, over self and others, is what seeing the face of God in another is all about. N'est ce pas?
I have seen the movie. Of course it was a complicated story, but there were Christian themes that were pivotal and better depicted in the film than in the stage version which I have also seen.
We’re not going to see much better treatment from Hollywood in today’s culture.
I have seen the movie. Of course it was a complicated story, but there were Christian themes that were pivotal and better depicted in the film than in the stage version which I have also seen.
We’re not going to see much better treatment from Hollywood in today’s culture.
I have seen the movie. Of course it was a complicated story, but there were Christian themes that were pivotal and better depicted in the film than in the stage version which I have also seen.
We’re not going to see much better treatment from Hollywood in today’s culture.
RE: I would strongly recommend that you actually read Victor Hugo’s work rather than relying on what b’way and hollyweird have put up there.
We’re talking about the movie and the MUSICAL in this thread. How many people out there bother to read the book anyway?
If you want to discuss the book, I suggest we open another thread.
RE: .to feed the hungry, help the poor is not the same as loving another.
Let me modify that, .to feed the hungry, help the poor is not NECESSARILY the same as loving another. However it CAN BE a manifestation of true love that exists in one’s heart.
How do you judge if what a person does comes out of love of God or comes from some sense of duty? Only God knows that.
As for the ‘god’ existing within all of us, methinks you are projecting too much of Buddhism and your own way of thinking into Jean Valjean.
All indicators in the story tell us that he was moved by the kindness of a CHRISTIAN Bishop, not some Buddhist monk from the Far East.
This has turned ridiculous. This thread started out as a movie thread not a religion thread . I am officially done with this thread
Read the book. Then you will see the difference. I do not look to hollyweird or b’way to get ‘Christian’ treatments. All I want from a movie is some amusement and entertainment. Neither of which may I point out are offered by this particular work. I go to fewer and fewer movies. IF I want to see a movie I tend to watch older movies. On the whole I find most of what is available out there today is repugnant and I act accordingly
Well, you originally kicked off that slant by inferring that "to love another person is to see the face of God" is drivel, not at all Christian or Biblical in nature. Then you wrote me that my comment was not contextual, when that phrase is a direct quote from the translation of what Victor Hugo wrote. What are you trying to prove in filmography or theology?
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