Risk

With Elai around for a few weeks (don’t know how many more times I’ll have the privilege), we introduced her to some classic movies that our hosts have laying around: I Am Sam, which shows how fiercely people can love no matter what are the differences between them (my favorite part is when Sean Penn makes that “O” with his mouth when he first sees his baby daughter as a newborn: you know right there what the whole movie is about). That was the first, and then last night, Shawshank Redemption. Anything with the word “redemption” in it has to have something intriguing, is my guess.

I’m not a risk taker. So of course what gets to me about this movie every time is the risks that Andy takes, knowing what is coming.  I don’t mean the calculated risk when he bargains with the evil guard to get beer for his friends and almost gets himself thrown off a building. This was a risk to get ahead in the game, and it pays off. No, I mean when he locks the guard in the bathroom, and sits back in the warden’s chair, and plays Italian opera for the whole prison camp until the guards break in and stop him. He pays dreadfully for this moment of freedom, but you get the impression he doesn’t regret it. It’s almost exactly the same scene in It’s a Beautiful Life. And there is a scene in one of Ayn Rand’s stories like that, too, that I can never forget: A couple is pursued by the police (can’t remember why) and she is shot, and he stays with her, holding her, even after she dies, and the police get him. Ayn Rand is all about knowing how to value things and being willing to pay, even with your life, for what you really want.

She’s an atheist, but she gets some things really well, for example, this whole “What does it profit a man to save his life and lose his soul,” idea, even though she doesn’t believe in souls. She doesn’t believe in heaven, either, but she has the best picture of heaven in Atlas Shrugged that I’ve ever read. She paints people’s gifts building on each other, and everyone adding value to what everyone else does, so that the community soars together as a body into achievements none could reach alone. And near the end, the hero comes out of hiding to spend a few minutes with the heroine and then pays for it with his life (almost—Rand cheats and practically resurrects him; she just can’t get away from Jesus, no matter how hard she tries, which is why it’s so much fun to read her)

Do you know Rand brought Robert and me together for the first time 25 years ago? We were at a church conference, and at the end of the day I found him in a chair outside his hotel door, reading C S Lewis (my favorite). He asked me what other books I liked, and I mentioned Ayn Rand (his favorite; there is a whole story there, but that’s for another time), and he had never met a Christian who would admit to liking her, and so the conversation began.

Jesus’ whole life was like Shawshank Redemption, was what inspired Shawshank Redemption, as well as Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (isn’t she in for a surprise!) . He prepped for 30 years to get it right. Then he threw his life away so he could spend three short years with us, the love of his life, knowing what was coming, the torture, the death, the consequences he’d pay for what he’d dreamed of and hoped for all those years: us, coming to him, recognizing him. He played his three years like a forbidden opera in a prison camp, and we looked up at him whom we’d pierced, and we tasted freedom for the first time, and we fell in love.