Star is Born Comes With Heartache, Song and Just a Twinkle of Faith

Where Jackson feels half dead already, Ally is full of life. She has friends. She has family. She seems to have a wealth of love and compassion to give. And, the movie suggests, she has God, too.

Granted, Ally doesn’t position herself as a never-stray-from-the-righteous-path sort of  Christian. But we see hints that, even if she follows her faith imperfectly, she still believes. She’s wearing a cross when we first meet her. And lest we think it was just a fashion statement, we see her later after she becomes famous, leading her band and dancers in a pre-show prayer.

Listen, I know it sounds simplistic to say, “God is the answer.” As a guy who’s dealt with a degree of depression for a good chunk of my life, I know that being a Christian doesn’t automatically save us from feelings of anxiety or depression or worthlessness. For some, maybe it works that way. But it doesn’t for me. God may heal us, but not all at once. Maybe not in this lifetime.

But I do believe that faith is inexorably tied to hope, and to live hope is itself a near miraculous state of being—one that, frankly, I find inexplicable if it’s not tied to faith. Hope is the very backbone of the future, the very air of life. Our own strength, after all, can look pretty pitiful when we face our most difficult days. It takes a lot to change a man, it takes a lot to try, Jackson sings. But with faith—faith not in ourselves, but in God (and, sometimes, faith in the folks that God has put into our lives), we know we can overcome.

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” Hebrews 11:1 tells us. Ally has that hope—the unseen hope that Jackson can shake his addictions, can become the man and husband and even singer she knows he can be. Jackson, as much as he loves Ally, can’t fully share that hope. He can’t let it fill him. So instead he fills it with other things.

Funny. When you look at the birth of real stars, they’re born in heat and violence—a chemical passion that ignites a flame that lasts for billions of years. Stars can die in a fit of passion, too, of course—turning supernova at the end. But from what I remember of my science, more often they simply, slowly, grow darker and dimmer, smaller and cooler, until they vanish in a slow slide of cosmic resignation.