The Hamilton Gospel: Notes in "Alexander Hamilton"
In the musical Hamilton, the hero's future wife, then the wealthy debutante Eliza Schuyler recalls meeting him. Despite the differences in social station between her and the hungry-looking immigrant officer, she baubles charmingly in, "Helpless," that she looked across the room into his eyes and her heart went, "BOOM!"
I can relate, even being late. I'm not a natural fit for a musical. I at least purport to be a sophisticated history major. I've known Alexander Hamilton's story arc for 30 years, and I'm the type to roll my eyes at singing or rapping one's way through it. It didn't happen. Read the hefty Ron Chernow biography on which it was based. I did, and it was good for me.
From the fact that I'm quoting Eliza's surrender, you know something's changed. After a week with the musical's songs wafting through a good portion of my affections and conscious memory, I decided to explore what. I'm aware on another front of a friend's caginess toward the possibility of falling for a false gospel, so I want to consider carefully what I'm giving my heart to.
To what extent do the lyrics seem rooted there because they resonate with the supremacy of Christ, consciously or not? To what extent are the values championed in Hamilton offering to replace a Christ-centered worldview? What do these words tell us about the signs of the times which Scripture tells us Daniel and his friends understood at court?
With my previous exposure to musicals in The Sound of Music, I find the beginning is a very fine place to start. Let's take a look at the opening title number, "Alexander Hamilton." You can see the original lyrics here: https://atlanticrecords.com/HamiltonMusic/
1. No spot is forgotten.
If any character strives to be an impartial theologian, and that's debatable, it's not Aaron Burr. It is he who frames Hamilton's story as one of a boy, "dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot of the Caribbean by Providence." Here he is existentialism's champion, begrudgingly admiring Hamilton because he made his own meaning in a world without it.
Noting that, finding it true to Burr's historical reputation, and in line with many of the assumptions of today's culture, I don't think the Christian is especially in danger of adopting the worldview. Hearing Burr stated so openly, I think, is a grace.
Burr's confession of his gospel gives us a chance to pivot to the real one. We don't retreat there without some repentance, either.
We've called circumstances godforsaken even when we don't mean it. We have referred to the uninvolved Man upstairs without realizing we are drifting into idolatry. We find it hard, as a matter of fact, to encourage the Hamiltons of the world for what they accomplish, as we biblically should do, without diminishing God's glory in our customary speech.
With a chance to re-examine, then, we celebrate Psalm 139's comprehensive theology. Wherever we go in our minds or our experience, God has been there. However unpromising our demographics in the eyes of men, Christ our Savior, Christian, has made Himself of no reputation in precisely that way. He is the affirmative answer to the sarcastic inquiry whether anything good can come from "forgotten" spots like Nazareth.
2. We learn early to sell our identity to our stuff and our function.
Helping with the exposition of Hamilton's childhood, James Madison narrates that when a hurricane came and wiped out the business our 14-year-old prodigy was in charge of that Hamilton saw his future, "drip, dripping down the drain."
Again, this is another false worldview helpfully rinsed of the trappings that obscure it. At work, we might hustle like young Hamilton, ready to project a promising future if the latest transactions went well, and ready to project disaster if the morning or the minute's verdict is ominous. The entertainment of the musical, along with the dramatic irony of knowing that all was not lost for Alexander, helps us examine our own assumptions.
We are not, the Gospel says, what we do. The sparrow and the lily have the value the Father assigns them. He provides for them, confides Jesus in Matthew 6 with first-hand knowledge, because He is good and not because they meet some lack in Him. Humans, made in the Divine image, Jesus renders plainly, are ever so much more valuable.
3. There is Gospel in pain honestly expressed.
Although the assumptions that get our protagonist Alexander to the point of despondency are false, God's sovereignty is evident in what he does there. The character of James Madison continues, "Put a pencil to his temple, connected it to his brain And he wrote his first refrain, a testament to his pain."
Where is the Good News in this? It's manifold. Older Alex will over-employ his writing skills to cover up trouble. At 14, he still has something like child-like faith that if he expresses pain and devastation eloquently, someone will hear.
He has plenty biblical company whether he was aware of this or not. The prompting that opens many of the Psalms is pain. Men expressed to God and to the world around them that the world as far as they could see it was not as it should be.
Better than company in commiseration is God's response to it. He is confident in his legacy and need not edit out our cries in order that the historical record reflects better on Him. He preserved these psalms just as one of them says He preserves our tears. He uses our confessions of our myopia and real limitations in one another's hearing to show Himself mighty on our behalf.
Lyricist Lynn Miranda is especially perceptive on the power of writing here. By writing, Alex gain perspective on his circumstances and emotional experience, even as Miranda pointed out that a subsequent idol for the writer can be to prioritize the written record over faithfulness in the here and now. That, though, is fodder for a subsequent entry.
Suffice it now to celebrate that God enables us to cry out to men, moved step at His pleasure to respond, and through human agency shows His pleasure to exult the weak and dismissible.
I can relate, even being late. I'm not a natural fit for a musical. I at least purport to be a sophisticated history major. I've known Alexander Hamilton's story arc for 30 years, and I'm the type to roll my eyes at singing or rapping one's way through it. It didn't happen. Read the hefty Ron Chernow biography on which it was based. I did, and it was good for me.
From the fact that I'm quoting Eliza's surrender, you know something's changed. After a week with the musical's songs wafting through a good portion of my affections and conscious memory, I decided to explore what. I'm aware on another front of a friend's caginess toward the possibility of falling for a false gospel, so I want to consider carefully what I'm giving my heart to.
To what extent do the lyrics seem rooted there because they resonate with the supremacy of Christ, consciously or not? To what extent are the values championed in Hamilton offering to replace a Christ-centered worldview? What do these words tell us about the signs of the times which Scripture tells us Daniel and his friends understood at court?
With my previous exposure to musicals in The Sound of Music, I find the beginning is a very fine place to start. Let's take a look at the opening title number, "Alexander Hamilton." You can see the original lyrics here: https://atlanticrecords.com/HamiltonMusic/
1. No spot is forgotten.
If any character strives to be an impartial theologian, and that's debatable, it's not Aaron Burr. It is he who frames Hamilton's story as one of a boy, "dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot of the Caribbean by Providence." Here he is existentialism's champion, begrudgingly admiring Hamilton because he made his own meaning in a world without it.
Noting that, finding it true to Burr's historical reputation, and in line with many of the assumptions of today's culture, I don't think the Christian is especially in danger of adopting the worldview. Hearing Burr stated so openly, I think, is a grace.
Burr's confession of his gospel gives us a chance to pivot to the real one. We don't retreat there without some repentance, either.
We've called circumstances godforsaken even when we don't mean it. We have referred to the uninvolved Man upstairs without realizing we are drifting into idolatry. We find it hard, as a matter of fact, to encourage the Hamiltons of the world for what they accomplish, as we biblically should do, without diminishing God's glory in our customary speech.
With a chance to re-examine, then, we celebrate Psalm 139's comprehensive theology. Wherever we go in our minds or our experience, God has been there. However unpromising our demographics in the eyes of men, Christ our Savior, Christian, has made Himself of no reputation in precisely that way. He is the affirmative answer to the sarcastic inquiry whether anything good can come from "forgotten" spots like Nazareth.
2. We learn early to sell our identity to our stuff and our function.
Helping with the exposition of Hamilton's childhood, James Madison narrates that when a hurricane came and wiped out the business our 14-year-old prodigy was in charge of that Hamilton saw his future, "drip, dripping down the drain."
Again, this is another false worldview helpfully rinsed of the trappings that obscure it. At work, we might hustle like young Hamilton, ready to project a promising future if the latest transactions went well, and ready to project disaster if the morning or the minute's verdict is ominous. The entertainment of the musical, along with the dramatic irony of knowing that all was not lost for Alexander, helps us examine our own assumptions.
We are not, the Gospel says, what we do. The sparrow and the lily have the value the Father assigns them. He provides for them, confides Jesus in Matthew 6 with first-hand knowledge, because He is good and not because they meet some lack in Him. Humans, made in the Divine image, Jesus renders plainly, are ever so much more valuable.
3. There is Gospel in pain honestly expressed.
Although the assumptions that get our protagonist Alexander to the point of despondency are false, God's sovereignty is evident in what he does there. The character of James Madison continues, "Put a pencil to his temple, connected it to his brain And he wrote his first refrain, a testament to his pain."
Where is the Good News in this? It's manifold. Older Alex will over-employ his writing skills to cover up trouble. At 14, he still has something like child-like faith that if he expresses pain and devastation eloquently, someone will hear.
He has plenty biblical company whether he was aware of this or not. The prompting that opens many of the Psalms is pain. Men expressed to God and to the world around them that the world as far as they could see it was not as it should be.
Better than company in commiseration is God's response to it. He is confident in his legacy and need not edit out our cries in order that the historical record reflects better on Him. He preserved these psalms just as one of them says He preserves our tears. He uses our confessions of our myopia and real limitations in one another's hearing to show Himself mighty on our behalf.
Lyricist Lynn Miranda is especially perceptive on the power of writing here. By writing, Alex gain perspective on his circumstances and emotional experience, even as Miranda pointed out that a subsequent idol for the writer can be to prioritize the written record over faithfulness in the here and now. That, though, is fodder for a subsequent entry.
Suffice it now to celebrate that God enables us to cry out to men, moved step at His pleasure to respond, and through human agency shows His pleasure to exult the weak and dismissible.
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