The Need for Tragedy

Posted on Thursday, June 21st, 2007 at 10:15 am

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I have a very quirky sense of humor. Those of you that know me find that no surprise. I really enjoyed the movie (though this is not an endorsement on any level for anyone else to watch it) “Little Miss Sunshine.” Please don’t watch it and tell me that it is not suitable for children or perhaps not suitable for some adults. I know that, but it is a profoundly moving film on several levels. In many ways it is a story of redemption in spite of failure and sin.

Toward the end of the movie there is a conversation about the writer Marcel Proust and how he dealt with the extreme difficulty in his life. I won’t spoil the conversation for you, but I will give you a line from Proust that may help you to understand his frame of reference:

“The only paradise is a paradise lost.”

Proust seems to be saying that without tragedy we do not appreciate the comedy. That we never really know about paradise until it is lost from us and we long for it. There is something of that in all of us. We know that the world should not be this way. That there ought not to be schools where students are shot for no reason; towers were planes fly in killing the innocent; and sickness that takes the lives of children before their time. We long for that city, as Plato did, where none of these things happen.

The great news of the Gospel is that there is not only a paradise lost, but that there is a paradise regained. That we are moving toward the city of hope and perfection where there will be no more crying; where the river of gladness will run through the middle to remind us that we are in paradise. We need tragedy to remind us of the coming comedy. Comedy in the truest sense, of the happy ending; of the ultimate wedding; and of living happily ever after.

C. S. Lewis reminded us that we desire that which we know exists: food, water, and the perfect city. We hunger and thirst for a city that is not here yet, but we walk on knowing that the road does not end at a cliff, but at a beautiful celestial city.

Walk on . . .

P.S.  Thanks to Gideon for the question that prompted this blog.