“All the months of planning and weeks of installation are substantiated in that eleven minute show. It takes a lot to get there and just a moment to execute. But, when it is executed properly and you hear the roar of the crowd being genuinely entertained…you are…happy.”

Really?  Is this what all the technical aspects of a production should go toward?  The roar of the crowd being genuinely entertained?  Is that what should make the technical guy happy?  Is that what should make anyone happy?

This quote is from one of the largest, most prominent audio production companies.  It is referencing one of the largest shows put on every year…the Super Bowl Half-Time Show.  This show is complicated, it takes monumental effort, technical expertise of the highest caliber, and the exertion of thousands of man-hours.  And is it all really for the eleven minute show and the audience being entertained?  I believe for these men it is…and there’s something right within our humanness to give others joy and a common experience and for hard work to be effective.  But entertainment is cheap, excellence is overrated, and effort is vain…apart form one thing…All that is meaningless apart from an end…apart from an over-arching purpose that defines these good particulars within a whole that adds there ultimate meaning to them.  And that whole has to be God’s glory found in Himself and the redemption work of His Son.

So many thoughts go through my head when I see such a tragic statement on happiness that tries to express what all of us in our humanness are longing for.  I think to the beatitudes that Jesus said, that the poor in spirit, the humble, the pure in heart…they are happy.  But ultimately without a right ordering before our God the only happiness left is an ethereal, mystic, fleeting optimism that is detached and broken and stomped on by the harsh, fallen, sinful reality around us.  Who cares about the roar of the crowd?  It fades like a wisp of breath on a cold morning.  As John Piper might say, there is only one happiness, and that is Jesus Christ has brought us to God by offering substitutionary atonement for our sins…that’s the gospel, the good news of Christianity.

I think the harder question for those like me Christians involved with productions and who help with artistic endevors, and place cultural artifacts before a group of people–is do we keep that view ever before us?  That everything is only rightly placed when it is under the whole of God’s gospel?  It is hard to keep that perspective….but it is absolutely necessary in order to seperate what we do as Christians from what all the other workers on all the other productions do.

Does my planning or God’s sovereignty bring securtiy…and bring happiness?

Does my work or my identity in Christ substantiate my efforts…and bring happiness?

Does eleven minutes or a sure eternity make all the difference..and bring happiness?

Does my execution or God’s strength get me through…and bring happiness?

Does the roar of entertainment or God’s redemption story thrill my heart…and bring happiness?