Look at the Heart: Lessons from the Phantom, part I

Sometimes a book captures more than your imagination – sometimes it captures your mind and heart, speaking so clearly to your world that the themes in it stick with you long after you’ve forgotten the little twists and turns of the story.  That happened to me when I read Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera.

I devoured it in two and a half days, thoroughly enjoying the literary style, the depth of the characters, and the suspenseful plot.

Just as a side note, if you have seen a film/stage version of The Phantom of the Opera, you do not know the real story.  Every adaptation I have investigated has changed major aspects of the story and lost the things in the book that made me love the story.

Now, don’t worry, I shan’t make you listen to the whole plot and meet every character.  And, though I think it is a wonderful book – one that everyone should read – my goal here isn’t to give you a book review.  (Just take my advice and read it!)  What I would like to do it share the three themes I found in the book. 

Today, I’d like to share the first of these with you.  But first, a short background on the story:

The Phantom of the Opera is the story of, Erik, a masked man, horribly disfigured from birth, and yet a genius, living hidden away in the cellars of the Paris Opera House; his tragic love of the beautiful opera singer, Christine Daae; his intense jealousy of the man Christine loves; and his desperate desire “to be ‘some one,’ like everybody else.”

The Phantom has many lessons to teach our world, a world so taken with appearances.  First, the flesh is truly a mask over our real self and has no bearing on who we really are.  Second, often, the emotions we appear to have and the person we appear to be, are nothing but a mask over what we truly feel and are.  And third, our needs and value as human beings remain, no matter what outer masks we may wear.

Today we’ll look at the first.  To the world, Erik appeared a monster.  Leroux describes his face as, “…Red Death’s mask suddenly coming to life in order to express, with the four black holes of its eyes, its nose, and its mouth, the extreme anger, the mighty fury of a demon…”  Elsewhere, he is described as a living man in a corpse’s body.  These physical characteristics made him revolting to look upon and, as a result, people rejected him, drove him away, and called him a monster.  And yet, Leroux goes on to say that Erik was able to do “things no other man could do; he [knew] things which nobody in the world [knew].” He had “extraordinary gifts of dexterity and imagination which he had received by way of compensation for his extraordinary ugliness.”  And his voice!  His voice was such that, when he himself was unseen, it was thought to belong to the “Angel of Music”.  But despite these gifts, “…he was too ugly!  And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind!  He had a heart that could have held the empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar.”

Is this tragedy not a trademark of mankind?  We so often judge based on outward appearances, failing to see the true person behind the ugly or beautiful face.  Even Samuel, a prophet and man of God, made the same mistake.  In I Samuel 16, we find the account of David’s anointing as king of Israel by Samuel.  When God sends Samuel to the home of David’s father, Jesse, to anoint the next king, He does not tell Samuel which of the sons of Jesse He has chosen.  He simply tells Samuel that He will show him which is to be anointed king.  When Samuel meets the oldest son of Jesse and, finding him a splendid young man, he thinks, “‘Surely the LORD’s anointed is before [me].’ ” But God says to Samuel, “‘Do not look on his outward appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him.  For man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.’ ” (Scripture from the ESV.)

According to God, it is the inner man that truly matters.  God isn’t picky about the appearances of people.  He doesn’t choose people based on a handsome face or reject them based on what might commonly be considered an ugly appearance. 

But, so often, we do just the opposite.  The Phantom was repeatedly rejected by the people who saw him.  A moment in the story of the Phantom particularly stood out to me.  At the point of this episode, Christine has been kidnapped by the Phantom and taken to his domain in the cellars of the Paris Opera House, where he hopes to make her love him.  Christine recounts her experiences: “‘After lunch, he rose and gave me the tips of his fingers, saying he would like to show me over his flat; but I snatched away my hand and gave a cry.  What I had touched was cold and, at the same time, bony; and I remembered that his hands smelt of death. “Oh, forgive me!” he moaned.’”  Even the kind-hearted Christine is unable to bring herself to touch Erik because of his flesh.  

I think this seemingly insignificant moment stood out to me because of its stark contrast to the conduct of Jesus.  During His ministry on earth, Jesus encountered countless sick people, including many with leprosy, a disease that slowly eats away at the body.  The Gospel of Mark recounts Jesus interaction with one of these lepers: “And a leper came to Him, imploring Him, and kneeling said to Him, ‘If You will, You can make me clean.’  Moved with pity, He stretched out His hand and touched him and said to him, ‘I will; be clean.’  And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.” (ESV, emphasis mine)  In the time of Jesus, it was considered very dangerous to touch a leper, because there was the danger of contracting the disease yourself.  Beyond that, it couldn’t have been a very pleasant prospect touch a man whose body was being eaten away, even as he lived.  But Jesus touched him.  Regardless of the danger of disease, regardless of the appearance of the man, He touched him and healed him.

What can we learn from the Phantom’s mask of the flesh?  First, hidden beneath a less-than-ideal appearance may be an incredibly talented person, with gifts we will never know of unless we make ourselves go beyond the person’s appearance.  Erik is not the only one whose ugliness conceals an unknown genius and brilliance.  Second, hidden under the mask of a pretty or ugly face is a heart that is the true determiner of who each person is.  And just as God judges based on the heart, we must do the same or else risk completely mistaking the people we meet.  And last, we must be willing to care for the person beneath the mask of the flesh.  Just as Jesus was willing to reach out to, touch, and heal the leper, we must be willing to touch the people in our lives whom we may not consider to be physically perfect.

To be continued…