I took my little neighbor, Anna, to see the musical "Children of Eden" for her birthday. With music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz and the story by John Caird, the musical was “freely based” on the creation, the fall of man and the flood in Genesis. The show itself was a nicely directed and choreographed ensemble production by the Fox Valley Youth Theatre. However, I soon began to feel the story and message of the musical were extremely negative. After the glory of creation, God was portrayed as an arbitrary earthly father. And, can you imagine a Noah story with no rainbow?
Two messages disturbed me. First, the musical conveyed the message that creativity belonged only to God and not to curious humans. That seemed to be a major theme and was repeated again and again.
A second message of the musical was that God was a racist – unbiblically portraying God as prejudiced against the children of Cain.
The musical’s final message was that we should love each other. Ironic, since the musical showed human failure to keep every promise made, especially loving your family.
The only thing I could say to Anna at the end of the musical was “thank God for Jesus.”
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Good review. It's sad that there are a lot of writers out there making plays and screen plays which convey this impression of God as unloving or even vindictive, mean, and harsh. There's quite a range. I realize that a lot of it comes from parts of the Old Testament, but again, I don't think these authors have understanding of what was He was doing in the sense of an overall plan, or they wouldn't have that idea. And they probably don't have a sense of what man has caused to come into his own life from his own actions.
ReplyDeleteBut you're totally right. And what were they thinking when they decided, "Hey, let's get rid of that part about the rainbow."?