Freedom, Love, Gatsby
January 9, 2025 | Jim Angehr
Flying back from a jaunt to old Germany, I enjoyed Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 movie riff, The Great Gatsby. Not a perfect film, but no adaptation of the Fitzgerald novel could ever be. (Editor's note: The lukewarm critical response was not warranted. This is no masterpiece but in agreement that it's a fine film).
Occasionally in Luhrmann’s film, the book is directly quoted, including when Gatsby kisses Daisy for the first time: “His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her.”
Not bad writing by F. Scott here, although I’d quibble with the theology behind it.
It seems that until Gatsby kisses Daisy, he lives in perfect freedom, akin to what God himself must hold. After he falls for this lady, however, Gatsby will be free no more, and likewise not as God.
This isn’t only a Fitzgerald thing: it’s pretty common for folks to imagine that freedom and love are incompatible. If I’m bound by love, I can’t be free, and vice versa.
The God revealed to use in the Scriptures is different. He’s always free, and always love. By implication, as people follow Jesus, they’re both bound to him as bondservants even as the truth of Christ sets us free. Following Jesus brings us into obedience to “the perfect law that gives freedom” (James 1:25, NIV).
When Gatsby kisses Daisy, he wasn’t losing his freedom. He was gaining it.