Wuthering Heights Meets Faith Like Potatoes

     Last night, I watched a BBC movie based on Wuthering Heights...well, most of it.  I fast-forwarded a few scenes.
     I started the movie with absolutely no idea of the plot.  I only knew that it was a famous "classic" by a famous author -- perhaps like Jane Eyre or a book by Austin or Dickens.

     *****If you don't want spoilers, don't read on.*****

     I wish people had been nice to Heathcliff.  How different might he have turned out if people poured good things into him instead of telling him how he was destined for badness?  He had so much potential at the beginning and it shrivelled smaller and smaller as the story went on.
     But you know, Heathcliff did have at least two people who loved him and stood up for him.  Maybe even three or four.  He didn't have to turn dark and vengeful.
     I wish Heathcliff and Cathy had married.  If they were so meant for each other, they should have married.
     But you know, their love was intertwining and passionate and unwavering...but it wasn't the self-sacrificing kind of love.  It was more about "I need you" than "how can I make your life as wonderful as possible while expecting nothing in return."  While I think that they were very well suited to each other, their marriage still would have been rocky.
     I wish Cathy, once she made her decision of marriage, had given herself wholeheartedly to her husband.  He was a good man and deserved a loyal and loving wife.
     I wish the church had been more Christ-like.  And where does the Bible say that a child born out of wed-lock (which that man of the cloth had no evidence of, by the way) is in more danger of hell?  It does not.  All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.  Period.  We all need forgiveness and redemption equally.

     What if, at any point, an honest, Christlike Christian had reached Heathcliff?  Somebody who loved him unconditionally as Christ loved us.  Somebody who spoke good things into his life.  Somebody who introduced him to Who God is.
     Heathcliff would never have turned out as a proper, sophisticated British gentleman.  He was too wild for that.  But the Bible does not insist we all turn out mild-mannered as Cathy's husband.  God made us different, and, as much as I liked Cathy's husband, that is not who Heathcliff was meant to be.
     I think of the story "Faith Like Potatoes" and how the pastor told Angus that God loved wild men.  Think of the men of the Bible.  Would Sampson have fit into proper British society?  Or David?  Or Jesus, for that matter?
     No, Heathcliff would have turned into the passionate evangelist or prophet or teacher or apostle, scorned by the religious leaders and the high-class society members.  Eh, but what's new.  They already hated him.  What had he to lose?  If God loved him, what would he care?
     And he would have learned to love...really love...with no hatred in it.
     Now THAT would have been an awesome story.