CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – There is very little that is real or accurate about the hit movie-musical The Greatest Showman, about circus entrepreneur P.T. Barnum.
He was a short, squatty man who looked nothing like Hugh Jackman. In the movie, even the lions and elephants aren’t real. They’re computer generated. And Barnum was not a benevolent man.
Entertainment in the early 1900s was more macabre; Barnum was indeed exploiting people who were different and whose only line of work was displaying themselves as side-show freaks. Barnum’s wife Charity came to see him as an exploiter and wanted him to get out of show business.
There is an authentic moment in the film. Barnum’s American Museum has been destroyed by fire. He appears to be ruined financially. And his biggest public critic, a newspaperman James Gorden Bennett from the New York Evening Herald, wrote this: “I never liked his show. But the people certainly did. Putting people of all shapes, sizes, colors. Putting them on stage together and presenting them as equals; another critic might have even called it a celebration of humanity.”
I’ve always thought that says something about God. There are 8 billion people on earth, all of them created by God, no two are exactly alike. Now most of us are not so different that P.T. Barnum would exhibit us. But as you go out today and interact with others, remember you are unique – different from everyone you will ever meet. If you think God brings order to the universe, yes and no. God is the creator, a word that derives from creativity. Look around you today. Everything you see is a celebration of God’s boundless creativity. Even you and me.
Chris Conley
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