Les Misérables: Valjean or Javert?

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Posted Jan 24 2013 by Katelin Hansen with 9 Comments

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If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed.
The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.
~Monseigneur Bienvenu, Les Misérables

The story of Les Misérables follows Jean Valjean who, having spent 19 years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread, is released on parole. Met with severe discrimination as a convict, Valjean breaks his parole and begins a new life under an assumed name.

After a life-altering encounter with a priest, Valjean gives his life to God. He becomes a gentle and respected man, eventually running a business and becoming a town mayor. He offers kindness and aid to those around him because he remembers what it was like to be hungry But his legalistic prison guard Javert is always in close pursuit, threatening to destroy everything Valjean has worked so hard for.

It is easy for we in the audience to champion and sympathize with Jean Valjean as we watch the most recent film adaptation of this old story. But what about when we leave the theater?

Both Javert and Valjean are Christian men, acting in the name of God. But as Morgan Guyton notes, they represent two different Christianities and “Javert’s Christianity is winning big time in today’s America.”

When we leave the movie theater, we return to world where sentencing is harsh and biased (see post: Incarceration: The New Jim Crow). Laws allow 150-year sentences for ancillary criminal involvement, and the Javerts among us are happy to seek maximum punishments.

After serving their time, former-prisoners often have no jobs and no homes to which to go, and are faced with sharp discrimination when seeking either:

“Convicted felons need to find a place to sleep, but can’t get access to public housing because of their felony conviction. If their families live in public housing, the families can get evicted from their homes for housing a felon. They need to find a job, but employers can legally discriminate against them. They need to eat, but felons can be denied food stamps for the rest of their lives.”

With no job, no house, no food, and no allies it’s no wonder that there is a 70% recidivism rate. Valjean too would have returned to jail but for a grace that is too often denied in our modern world.

But hear what Isaiah 61:1 says: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, Because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, To proclaim liberty to the captives, And the opening of the prison to those who are bound.” Do we take that scripture seriously?

Audiences also sympathize with Fantine, the working girl whose life we watch crumble, eventually leading to her prostitution and death. But if we knew she was turning tricks on our own street corners would we in reality treat her with the same scorn as Javert does?

Fantine is a teen mom who, having refused the sexual advances of her employer, is fired and is unable to get a new job. Her cries for help are unheeded and she struggles to make ends meet, bit-by-bit selling everything she has to stay current on her child-support payments. Having played the role in the the recent film, Ann Hathaway notes that Fantine is “living in New York City right now; she’s probably less than a block away.”

When we see someone digging through a trash dump, or sleeping on the park bench, we’re not humming “Do you hear the people sing?” Instead, we’re averting our eyes and clutching our purses.

Donald Heinz at Sojourners asserts that

“Javert speaks for all self-made men who believe in the infallibility of the economic order and of the law that sanctifies it. Who know they deserve their fortune, who are quick to judge, who are suspicious of mercy, who enforce the arrangements that keep people in their proper place.”

In Javert’s world, it is “more unjust to steal bread to feed a starving child [than] to starve children with an economic system that makes bread unaffordable to their mothers, even if it’s perfectly legal. “ Likewise in our world, ”default and amnesty are the twin unforgivable sins of modern capitalism and the penal court.”

Guyton poses an interesting question that I will rephrase: if the police were to pick up a kid (with sagging jeans and an attitude) who had stolen your car, would you pretend you had actually given it to him, and remind him he forgot to take your MacBook?

Christ’s death lavished God’s grace upon us to a magnitude that we can hardly comprehend. Yet we are so stingy with it in return. We cling to our own accomplishments as though we could take credit for even a single breath we draw (see post: Saved from Meritocracy). We dismiss our won shortcomings as innocent mistakes, and scorn the downfall of others. Praise God for His mercy on Javert and Valjean.

Have no fear of robbers or murderers. They are external dangers, petty dangers.
We should fear ourselves. Prejudices are the real robbers; vices the real murderers.
~Monseigneur Bienvenu, Les Misérables

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Katelin Hansen (@strngefruit) is the editor of By Their Strange Fruit (BTSF), an online ministry facilitating justice and understanding across racial divides for the sake of the Gospel. BTSF explores how Christianity’s often-bungled relationship with race and racism affects modern ministry and justice. Recognizing that racial brokenness hinders our witness to the world, BTSF strives to increase the visibly of healthy and holy racial discussion by approaching justice and reconciliation from a Christ-minded perspective.

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otrotierra

Thank you Katelin Hansen for putting Jesus first, no matter how politically unsettling it is to do so.
- Frank
  
  Putting Jesus first would mean protecting the unborn and protecting The Fathers created order for sexuality and marriage as well.
  - bluecenterlight
    
    Jesus was silent on the political issues of His day. He chose to address the core issue which is man’s relationship with God. Not to belittle the issues you brought up, but the truth is the Jewish people faced very real political dilemmas with very real consequences, and yet He was silent. It was because He knew 2,000 years later the Roman empire would be a distant memory. We have to have the same mind, 2,000 years from now no one will remember our political debates. But when you change lives by introducing people to Christ you not only have an immediate impact on the world ( one less person likely to get an abortion for example), but it has eternal consequences not temporal. When you are in a spiritual battle, which the bible makes clear we are, we should not get distracted by the temporal. A nation that acts like Christians by rule of law is a poor substitute for a nation that truly follows Him.
  - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003507967305 Neal Lindberg
    
    Ugh…this article doesn’t say it’s a zero-sum game, Frank. Abortion and homosexuality are simply not the topics of this article and that would be to go off-tangent. RLC has posted plenty of articles on those issues. While you can say anything in this site wherever you want, I hope you realize that there is such thing as an appropriate platform for a given topic. Plus, I’ve said this to you before in other posts, conservative Christians in this country don’t have any issues speaking the truth, but they’re horrible at doing it with love. Jesus told us to repent and I know He is the same God who condemned those who call evil good, and good evil, but He also died for us when we were still His enemies. That should tell us a thing or two about how to treat those who we’ve fashioned in our minds as our enemies.
http://www.facebook.com/peter.fodera.1 Peter Fodera

Once again the egregious error of conflating a personal Kingdom of God ethic with a civil and just non-theocratic society’s need to enforce laws largely predicated upon the 10 Commandments rears its head.

To suggest a Holy wo/man pretend s/he had actually freely given her stolen car and her MacBook unnoticed in the back seat to a kid with sagging jeans and an attitude who had stolen her car is noble, merciful and full of grace; but it is NOT an ethic that God insists the Church project unto secular non-theocratic governments who are ordained to protect her citizens from the ravages of evil including, “Thou shalt not steal,” committed by a kid in sagging jeans or a rich jewel thief attired in silk gowns and Jimmy Choos.

The Church should indeed preach Jesus’ ethic to her Kingdom of God citizens and beseech non-citizens come, but it is a bullhorn too far to insist a civil and just society not enforce just laws with a decidedly Judeo-Christian ethic and finally abandon them in favor of anarchy and resultant chaos.

A disciple of Jesus should be taught to forgive, whether s/he had an apple stolen from her/his apple tree or was brutally raped or sodomized, but to suggest that the laws against theft and rape be removed from society’s penal code is NOT something God is commanding.

And compared with the Fantine’s of the world the Fantine’s in New York City have choices and options; some would argue too many, up to and including Filicide with impunity. Should she wisely and righteously refrain from Filicide she has the choice to give her precious daughter up for adoption to one of the 2,000,000 loving American couples waiting to adopt who find themselves increasingly having to travel overseas at great expense to adopt Chinese, Russian, Vietnamese and other nations’ babies because American Filicide has made far too few babies available to adopt here.

The Javerts of the world, like the Prodigal son’s obedient older brother, have been ordained by God to perform a much needed role even though they are often despised by egregious sinners and law-breakers for doing so. Javerts are never at the top of the totem pole; they take their marching orders from fathers and kings who task them with obeying and enforcing the rules and laws of a civil and just society, irrespective of how corrupt their superiors behave. They can either abuse their limited authority and power or faithfully discharge it. We may despise their attitude while they’re being obedient and subservient but we cannot dispute their fealty, loyalty and obedience to their superiors. Fathers and Kings may forgive prodigal sons and Jean Valjeans but it is to the older sons and Javerts that they say,

“. . . you are always with me, and everything I have is yours.”

Older brothers and Javerts are not disowned nor disinherited for their obedience and subservience with attitude. One of the points of the Prodigal son is that he was PRODIGAL and therefore sinful. Only sins can be forgiven; we do not speak of forgiving obedience and subservience. A poor attitude coupled with righteous obedience is as readily forgiven by God as a horrific attitude coupled with disrespectful disobedience and debauchery.

The Church would do well to model mercy and forgiveness within her hallowed, rectangular stain-glassed walls and subjugate herself outside them to the laws, statutes and torts of civil, secular society EXCEPT where they contradict God’s commandments such as Filicide, for then we must obey God rather than man.
- http://snommelp.tumblr.com/ Snommelp
  
  “To suggest a Holy wo/man pretend s/he had actually freely given her stolen car and her MacBook unnoticed in the back seat to a kid with sagging jeans and an attitude who had stolen her car is noble, merciful and full of grace; but it is NOT an ethic that God insists the Church project unto secular non-theocratic governments….” A very odd criticism to make, since Katelin is not talking about what the government should do, but what we as Christians should do.
  
  “A disciple of Jesus should be taught to forgive, whether s/he had an apple stolen from her/his apple tree or was brutally raped or sodomized, but to suggest that the laws against theft and rape be removed from society’s penal code is NOT something God is commanding.” Then it’s a very good thing no one is suggesting it here, yes? Let us be done with straw men and worry instead about what is actually said.
  
  “Older brothers and Javerts are not disowned nor disinherited for their obedience and subservience with attitude. One of the points of the Prodigal son is that he was PRODIGAL and therefore sinful. Only sins can be forgiven; we do not speak of forgiving obedience and subservience. A poor attitude coupled with righteous obedience is as readily forgiven by God as a horrific attitude coupled with disrespectful disobedience and debauchery.” Methinks thou dost protest too much… and you miss the lesson of the older brother entirely, in suggesting that he was not sinful, even as you point out the need for his poor attitude to be forgiven. Or have you forgotten the lesson of the Sermon on the Mount regarding anger and hatred?
- bluecenterlight
  
  Wow. I find your take on this article fascinating. I did not get a call to erase civil laws in this article and really haven’t heard anyone call for that, maybe a few anarchists. This is a heart issue. Proverbs says that a thief should restore seven times what he stole, that is his responsibility, God is a God of order. But, our responsibility is laid out in the preceding verse, ” do not despise a thief if he steals to satisfy his soul when he is hungry”. That is the point. The church has grown to despise them. The felon, the prostitute, the illegal immigrant, the church’s attitude towards them is no different than that of the world. When Christ said, “I was in prison and you visited me”, what does that mean to you? Surely He wasn’t calling on us to only visit the wrongly imprisoned. Your take on the prodigal son is equally interesting. It smacks of being born righteous, and never straying from the path. The point of the parable is that we are all prodigals, we were born in sin, we have all fallen prey to it, and God in His infinite mercy accepts all those who come home with loving, open arms. The self righteous show a lack of understanding of their own depravity, that they were bound to spend an eternity separated from Him and in His grace He reached down and rescued us. That is why we do not despise them, because we were them. Maybe varying degrees, but it is deceit to believe our sins were not “that” bad. They still separated us from God. It culminates in what I find the most beautiful line in all of scripture, ” you do not understand, my son was dead and now he is alive”.
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003507967305 Neal Lindberg
  
  After the Scripture says, “…you are always with me, and everything I have is yours,” the Father continued, “We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!”
  
  I know Jesus said to the people to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and the apostle Paul spoke of obeying the authority. You’ve said it yourself in Acts 5:29, “We must obey God rather than ANY human authority.” I’m sure we know why that verse is there, because human authority can be flawed, but God is perfect. Filicide is not the only instance when we should obey God over men, mind you.
  
  The author does not suggest that we remove laws that regulate crime and rightly punish wrongdoers. Jesus said that we should visit those in prison, not break them out of it. In the context of Javert and Valjean’s story, it’s obvious how misguided both the law and Javert were. Valjean’s punishment simply did not fit his crime of stealing from a loaf of bread for his starving nephew. That parole papers that condemned him for the REST OF HIS LIFE is also unjust. Given the context of why he stole, it’s clear that he wasn’t one who liked to gleefully steal other people’s belongings for fun. He’s done the time, he’s repentant, why not give him grace?
  
  Jesus died of us when we were His enemies and it was His kindness, love, grace, and mercy led us to repentance (pictured by the bishop’s mercy over Valjean) not our own works of righteousness, or the legalistic attitude of the older brother. Read Romans 2:1-4 plus Isaiah 64:6, brother. Javert could not see how the unjustly broken, punitive laws of his country violate God’s commandment of mercy and care for the poor. If we are to obey God over men, then we should obey Him consistently on a WIDE RANGE OF ISSUES even when it clashes with the government. This means that it is not limited to abortion, no matter how defining this issue is. Perfect obedience on one commandment does not make up disobedience on other commandments.
  
  Javert and the older brother are like the Pharisees, despised by egregious sinners and law-breakers, but also chastised by Jesus repeatedly throughout the Gospel. In fact, these sort of people were the ones who plotted Jesus’ death on the cross. If Jesus walks again among us, the Javerts of this contemporary society would be the ones who want to put him in prison, perhaps. You are right that Jesus readily forgives the Javerts and the Valjeans equally…if you notice though, the Valjeans are the ones repentant of their “egregious sins” while the legalistic, self-righteous Javerts and older brothers of this world are not…they think they are doing the works of God in their self-righteousness and legalism. Is that not the same as calling evil good, and good evil? Would God not condemn that?
  
  In the story, Javert’s mistake was his blind obedience to a flawed justice system, whose sense of right and wrong are far UNDERDEVELOPED compared to God’s. Human-invented laws and systems are flawed because the people legislating them are flawed and sinful human beings. It can be just on some crimes and not on others…so if we want to obey God over men, we have got to do something with ALL of the unjust parts of the human government, not just SOME of them. From what I understand of the Bible, Jesus said if we love God, we obey His commandments, and we are to love God with all that we have….if we only obey some of His commandments, then we’ve failed that 1st Commandment, because we don’t completely obey Him. Javert unwittingly equated that flawed system of human-made governmental law with that of God’s…that is actually sinful.
http://fitzgeraldthomas.com/ Fitzgerald Thomas

I agree with Javert that grace for other people is extremely inconvenient. I tend to do anything I can to convince myself that they don’t deserve it. The problem, of course, is that I don’t deserve grace, either. That’s sort of the definition of grace. For Javert, when he received mercy himself, it tore him up, because he had talked himself into a worldview where absolute justice would vindicate him. He wouldn’t forgive, and he couldn’t accept forgiveness. This ended badly for him. It is much easier to be a Javert than to be a follower of the one who turned society upside down with mercy. Thanks for this article, and the reminder that we still need that mercy, just as we need to extend it to others in our society.