Salieri and Mozart

In Timothy Keller’s book, Every Good Endeavor, he writes about the story of Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as told in Peter Shaffer’s play, Amadeus. Keller recounts how Antonio Salieri was a court composer to the Hapsburg emperor in Vienna and wrote many successful operas. He had wealth and position but sensed that his music was mediocre. When he met Mozart, his underlying suspicions were confirmed and Salieri realized that compared to the work of Mozart, his own works were very inferior. Salieri aspired to create extraordinary music but knew that he had only been given modest talents. He asked God to give him the ability to write music like Mozart but soon discovered that God would not give him the desired response to that prayer. He became angry at God and jealous of Amadeus Mozart, and worked to destroy this man whom he saw as God’s instrument of beauty.

Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon reaction. I have known men and women who pray to God for something and when they do not receive it are bitter and angry toward God. They covet what someone else has and become enemies of God. They feel that God should have known their great need and should have responded if he was indeed a loving father. They begin to see God as unjust, unkind, and unfair. I have known some who have lost all faith in God because they demanded an answer from God and felt that his non-responsiveness was equivalent to his non-existence.

Such behaviour is actually unfair toward God. If God is someone from whom we can demand an answer, then he would not be a God of faith. I might say, “God, I am really struggling with believing in you, please prove to me that you exist.” If God, out of his love for us, must answer this prayer and show up in some form that proves he exists, then we will forever know that he exists. If I know, without a doubt that there is a God who created me and will be my ultimate judge, then I must live in the manner in which he asks me to live or suffer the consequences. In this scenario, we would be enslaved to this God and unable to live in any fashion other than what he says. Instead, without an unequivocal knowledge that God exists, we must live by faith, trusting that what he has revealed to us is sufficient to allow us to trust that he is there and he is worthy of our trust.

There is one more lesson to be learned from the life of Salieri and Mozart and that is that we can trust God with the person he has made us to be. The gifts people receive from God, musical or otherwise, do not seem to be evenly distributed into all the population of the world. There are many examples of people as young as two years of age who show great musical prowess that is simply built into them at birth. Indeed, such prodigies are often compared to the great Amadeus Mozart. Does this make God unfair or does this make him creative? The world would be a much poorer place if everyone was given the same personality, the same abilities, and the same gifts. The key to success for each of us is largely connected with a healthy self-knowledge of who we are and who we are not. The Peter Shaffer play has highly fictionalized the two characters of Mozart and Salieri and it is likely that the real Salieri was much more comfortable with his musical gifts than his character in the play. He likely had a healthy respect for Mozart. The reality is that each of us must spend a good portion of our lives seeking to find our way in this world and finding the places in which we fit the best. It is no good to try to be something we are not. Instead, we seek to find our place in the grander scheme of things.

Of Cats and Bells

Today, I saw a house-cat hunting a squirrel. The cat crept up on the unsuspecting creature, carefully trying to get within range of a giant leap and an unleashing of claws and teeth. One could see thousands of years of instincts and intuition, passed down from ancient ancestors, coiled up in the body of this domesticated cat. Something told me this cat was exceptionally good at hunting. Even the fact that he would set his sights on a squirrel was laudable. A squirrel that is capable of quickly climbing fences and trees in a flash is not easy prey. What made this vignette sad was the fact that the cat wore a bell. No matter how hard the cat might try to creep up on its target, a slight movement of the bell would give away the position of the cat and alert its quarry. The owner was likely tired of the cat bringing home fresh kills to the house. Cats will do that you know. They are proud of their accomplishments and seek approval from those that love them. The cat may not be hungry, but some ancient instinct stirs in its mind and calls the cat to hunt. Some would accuse the cat of killing for sport. I do not think we should readily jump to that conclusion. Who knows what rare minerals or amino acids may be lacking in the body of this cat. Perhaps it is a specific hunger that drives it to crave this most ancient meat. Or perhaps it is the “call of the wild” inside this cat – a wild side that cannot be tamed – that calls to its nose and nervous system.

How sad to be caged without a cage. How sad to feel the pull toward something for which it has been made, with barriers that work against the fulfillment of purpose. There is a bigger story here.

How many people may be living a similarly caged life - caged by an almost imperceptible bell that seeks to keep them from their true calling? I do not speak of selfish goals or desires that enhance the individual. I speak of the person that each of us was designed to be. Those who think there is no design should stop reading here. Those who believe we are a product of chance driven by internal cravings for personal profit will be disappointed by the conclusion of this post. I speak instead of the very design of each person, the gifts and talents placed in our bodies and minds by one who has known us before we were conceived (Jeremiah 1:5; Psalm 139:15, 16; Isaiah 49:5). I speak of the thousands of years that have come and gone before, leading to a moment in history for which God has ordained us for the collective purposes of the world as it is today. Without a picture of who God made each of us to be, we will forever be pacing the cage; forever battling the barriers that keep us from our true calling. Even the cat is driven by a will to enhance the fortunes of his family that carry its genes into the generations to come, how much more has God made each of us for improving the future of humans and the welfare of others around us? How many of us might agree with the sentiments of Bruce Cockburn’s song when he says,

I've proven who I am so many times
The magnetic strip's worn thin
And each time I was someone else
And every one was taken in[1]

I pray that each of us might seek our true calling and not an image we wish others would believe. May the barriers that keep us from the things to which our God calls us be shattered and torn away - like the bell I removed from a cat’s collar.

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[1] “Pacing the Cage;” Bruce Cockburn, The Charity of the Night, http://cockburnproject.net/songs&music/ptc.html