Hope from Russell Crowe

I saw Les Miserables last week, and it has been on my mind ever since. Not because I thought it was epic and amazing, as many people have versed. I thoroughly enjoyed it, was very impressed with the singing and acting, and thought it was the best possible screen adaptation of Victor Hugo's captivating story. However, it has been on my mind because of Javert.

I don't believe you are meant to emotionally connect with Javert as much as you are with Jean Valjean or Cosette, or even Marius. He is the bad guy. However, I felt so touched by Javert. His songs were the ones in which I cried most. As much as I like Russell Crowe, I do not believe in the least it was because of him. So, as I have spent time this week, thinking over it, I have come to the conclusion it was because the songs voiced so much of heart of Javert, and the pain and despair in his heart. Here is a man who has been brought up with strict adherence to the rules. He follows them to the letter. His life as a police officer is focused on enforcing that others do the same. The law is so much a part of his life, he believes he is the law. He sees obedience as the only path to salvation, as he so sings in "Stars:"

But mine is the way of the Lord
And those who follow the path of the righteous
Shall have their reward
And if they fall
As Lucifer fell
The flame
The sword!
...And so it must be
And so it is written
On the doorway to paradise
That those who falter and those who fall
Must pay the price!

Forgiveness is not a part of his world. His world revolves around the law. Insomuch that he cannot comprehend what is happening when Valjean lets him go. His world is torn apart. This was not justice. As his world crumbles, he sees no choice but death.

How tragic that is? A world without forgiveness. A world without redemption. A world without change. A world without hope. 

While we see the process of repentance and hope in many other characters, its absence in the life and death of Javert helped me to more fully appreciate the greatest of the gifts of God in my own life: that of hope through the Atonement of Jesus Christ.

I love this quote by Victor Hugo in Les Miserables:

The book which the reader has under his eye at this moment is, from one end to the other, as a whole and in detail, whatever may be its intermittences, exceptions and faults, the march from evil to good, from the unjust to the just, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to life, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God. 

  It is not just what the book is about, it is what life is truly about as well.