The Parable of the Movie Actor

Elder McConkie’s parable of the debtor explains how justice and mercy are reconciled in that great sacrifice.  The parable doesn’t get much into *why* the third party agrees to pay off the debts.  Love, obviously, but that’s not the focus.

On Sunday we had a really excellent talk about repentance and it got me thinking about the motives of the third party in that parable, as a stand-in for the Savior.  What if the Savior pays my debts because I am in a partnership with him and the goals of the partnership will fail without me–viz, making me as Himself.  In other words, what if He bails me out for love because he sees great potential in me?

So here’s the parable of the movie actor.

There once was a great movie actor.  The greatest who ever had been.  His presence on the screen made any movie great.  He could bring an audience to tears, or laughter, or quiet reflection with a word, or a certain tilt of his head.  He gave the shallowest of on-screen characters rivers of meaning.

He also made people great around him.  Co-stars and directors working with him reached their own peaks of performance and beyond.

But this was not enough for him.  He wanted to do something more than make great movies.  He wanted to make the greatest movies ever made.   Inspiring actors and directors (and cameramen and light guys and editors sound studio people and so on) to reach their peak performance would not be enough.  He needed to train them up so that the peaks of their performance was much higher than they had been.

To this end, he went looking for people.  For actors, he found young actors and actresses who were willing to commit to his program.  He worked with them, gave them insight, designed experiences to widen their dramatic range.  If they made mistakes, he pointed them out and suggested various corrections.  If they accepted the corrections, they were still part of the pr0gram.  Obviously, because the whole point of the program was to take actors who weren’t at the greatest actor’s level and get them there.  If they were already at his level, they wouldn’t need the program.

One young actor, giddy at his new prospects, took out a great deal of debt to buy a Hollywood house with a pool as befitted a successful actor, and to outfit it, and to host galas.  He felt he had arrived.  But the young man wasn’t yet a star in his own right and was still paying his dues professionally.  The income was not there to support a mansion on a hill.  He couldn’t pay his debts, and he couldn’t cover them by selling off the house.

The great actor interviewed the young man.  He probed what the young man had learned from his experience–not just life lessons, but also lessons about what it really meant to be an actor.  He plumbed the young man’s commitment to remaining in the program.  When he was satisfied that the young man was still with him, he bought the house and paid the debts because if he didn’t the young man couldn’t continue.