When I was a little girl, our family’s acquisition of a VCR coincided with my older sister’s debut in several small town musical productions. This meant that I could watch Annie, The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, and The Fiddler on the Roof to my heart’s content, when not elbowing my brother out of the way when he wanted to watch Star Wars. I watched the Fiddler on the Roof on VHS so many times that the tapes warped. We also had vinyl records of musical soundtracks, and hearing a needle hit the vinyl still makes my throat catch before I start to sing, loudly, “Maybe far awaaaaayyyyy….”
For as much as I watched those musicals, and for as much as conversations about faith were a part of our home life, I never thought to really dig deep into the theology of them. Tevye talks to God about The Good Book in Fiddler on the Roof, and Annie “prays” to her unseen biological parents to come get their baaaaaaaby. While Maria was a problem to be solved, she was still treated (mostly) kindly by the Church and Mother Superior. As a child, I took all of those themes in musicals, along with everything else in musicals, as wholesome and good and true.
It wasn’t until I got to college and attended the ELCA Lutheran Campus Center that I really heard intelligent commentary about the theology in the lyrics of those songs. It might have been around Christmas time, when everybody seems to watch The Sound of Music (why is that?), that the pastor at the campus center mumbled something about “terrible theology.”
“What?” I asked him. “Why?” I tried not to scream “HERETIC!” in his face.
“‘I must’ve done something good,'” he said. “That’s awful.”
I thought about that for a while. He was talking about a scene in the gazebo (not the “I am Sixteen” scene, but same gazebo), when Maria and The Captain gaze into each other’s eyes and sing about how they were terrible people, but they “must have done something good” to deserve the happy ending of each other. Besides the gag-worthy saccharine-ness of it, this really is terrible theology. None of us has “earned” the grace and blessings of this life. And thank God for that, because if I only got what I deserved, I’d be in a sad state indeed. While I was a little irritated at the “Terrible Theology” label stamped on my favorite musical, I could see that my college pastor had a good point.
What’s the harm in feeling that we’ve deserved something that hasn’t been earned? I suppose there’s danger in feeling that if someone else isn’t as lucky in love (or life, or money) as we are, that they must not have done something good. But I also think that it’s a deeper denial of the holy gifts that we’ve all been given. That we run into real danger of treating our spouses and our children and the oxygen we breathe as something we’ve earned, and not as precious gifts from the God who gives us all grace.
Dig a little deeper in The Sound of Music, and you find the Mother Superior saying sagely to a confused Maria, “Where God closes a door, somewhere He opens a window.” This wishful thinking has been confusing audiences ever since, I suppose under the notion that if an actress in a nun’s habit said it, surely it must be in the Psalms…maybe Proverbs? (It’s not.)
The whole musical isn’t a complete theological wasteland, though. Maria re-introduces grace and forgiveness into the rigidly law-based Captain’s home. She dances the Laendler (Be still my heart…) and stages puppet shows and makes clothes out of curtains, God bless her earnest little heart.
Maria also utters one of my very favorite prayers in all of Christendom when she’s overwhelmed. She simply says, “Oh HELP.”
Unfortunately, “Oh HELP” does not look as good on a cross-stitched sampler as doors and windows and “must’ve done something good”s. But it’s our reality, and our great gift, to ask for God’s help, and to know that even if we “must have done something good,” we can’t earn our way into grace. It is a gift that cannot be earned, even by the strapping Captain and lovely Maria. And for that, we can all be grateful.
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6 responses to ““I Must Have Done Something Good””
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Rock! Wonderful!
Thank you!!!!
Great Post,
I too love the original movie, “The Sound of Music.” However, the recent TV live version left a bit to be desired. In defense of the individuals involved in the TV production, I think they were put into an untenable situation. Attempting to recreate this classic was a disastrous idea. Some things just can’t be improved. That said, and trying to be as diplomatic as possible (and I’m sure I will be labeled as stereotyping), it’s interesting to note that the religious/theological background of the writers of most Broadway musicals and their film adaptations were not from a theologically grace-oriented background. (Although, and this is entirely speculation on my part, there are plenty of Christian writers that most likely would have penned words in a similar fashion.)
In my youth I never really paid much attention to this kind of subliminal indoctrination either. But as I have grown older and become more aware of the radical nature of Gospel grace, this type of thing screams out to me all the time now. I’m sure that I become annoying to others when I mention these little nuances, and often hear responses like, “Relax, It’s just a movie, what does it hurt?” But unfortunately this sort of thing is so prevalent throughout our culture it has undermined, and continues to shape the way we understand God’s word and the upside-down nature of Grace.
It reminds me of Lewis’ “Screwtape Letters” in that it is the subtle, allegedly harmless, and often-thought wholesome ideas, that are the most dangerous, because they seem so innocuous. …”How could anything so wonderful, heartfelt and beautiful be so deceptively treacherous?”
Don’t get me wrong, I love “The Sound of Music” and so many other musicals, but I also think posts like yours are necessary to help us all understand that these are just movies and should not be confused with authoritative messages from God.
Thank you!
For years I’ve found the theology in this movie to be deeply empty and actually destructive to faith.
I’ve never felt compelled to comment on any article I read on the web, but this site is one of my favorites and so is musical theatre and I just have to say that I always interpreted the lyric “I must have done something good” to be sung in irony – that the long list of ways in which each individual was lacking actually magnified the grace inherent in the love they’d found for each other. Also, I always felt that it beautifully captured the feeling any of us has when we feel truly seen for the first time, even though we know we don’t “deserve” to be loved. And the lighting…aaahhhhh. Thanks for a great site.
Interesting idea. I had never thought of it that way. I’m letting this percolate in my head for awhile… then I’m going to watch the clip again to see if it resonates.
Hmmm? I still don’t seem to see the irony that shapes your understanding. Maybe it’s the cynic in me.
However, after viewing this clip again I hadn’t noticed just how short it is and that there are essentially two lines that make up this song. The first being the title line and the second which is, “nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could.” It’s interesting (or downright scary) that the title lyric so dominantly overshadows the only other message in the song.
I would love to hear your thinking on the second line. Again, never really paying much attention to it, it too initially comes off as fairly innocuous. But what is the purpose of this line and how does it even fit here. I guess my conditioning toward apologetics is kicking in, but this line, in my opinion, is even more lethal than the first.
Talk about a direct stab in the heart of the biblical narrative. This is what the bible is all about – that everything, and all things actually do come from nothing… they are created out of nothing (ex nihilo) by God. I could write an entire dissertation on this lyric alone, but I have way too much to do today. I would however, like to hear anyone else thoughts on this including Carries.
Sort of weird how such a pleasant little piece of pop culture has created such a stir, but isn’t that the point of the initial post.