Video: Christian Movie God Why Have I Got No Husband

This was recommended to me on YouTube a few months ago. The creators, Worshippers Christian Animations, have almost a dozen short animated videos. This is one of their first.

I’ve watched this video, and want to examine its message.

The topic of the video is in the title; it’s about a woman who is concerned that she has not yet found romantic love, that she is not yet married.

The video begins with a woman praying. Here is her prayer.

Father God, I thank You for the life that You have given me. Lord, I’ve been feeling lonely lately, and I believe that there will be a perfect companion for me in Your time, O Lord. Help me when I get lonely or afraid of being on my own.  Help me to feel Your presence.  I do not need a man to feel value, for I am precious to You. Teach me to be confident in You. I know that You are the great provider, the healer, and the one who makes all things beautiful, as You made me. Allow me to see that I am beautiful as I am, and that I am precious. Help me to give You all my praise with my whole heart, and know that things will happen in Your all-knowing time. Thank You, Lord, in Jesus name (and right here there is a very awkwardly placed interruption into the next scene)

So, there is some good stuff in this prayer. For one thing, she is praying about something that is a concern for her. That is good, that is something God has invited us to do. If we can interpret “be confident in You” as meaning “have faith in You”, then that is good, too. She asks for help when she feels lonely and afraid,and she’s right to pray for help.

Still, other parts of this prayer are, at best, questionable.

For example, where does the Bible say that there is “a perfect companion” for her, or for that matter for anyone else? And by companion, she is referring to a a husband, a man who will marry her.

I guess that I shouldn’t take the word “perfect” too literally or too seriously in this context, but it’s hard to escape the implications, the idea of “happily ever after” that is implied in it, the idea that when she meets and marries this man, this one man who is perfect for her, then their marriage will itself also be perfect. They’ll never argue, they’ll never disagree, they’re marriage will be years and years of honeymoon-like romance. They won’t get old, he won’t get hurt at his job and be crippled, she won’t develop cancer and loss all her hair and her physical beauty due to treatments, their kids won’t throw tantrums in Wal-Mart, everything will be like a fairy tale.

Am I reading too much into that one word? Maybe. I suppose if asked directly, most people who think that there is a perfect someone out there for himself or herself will admit that they know the marriage will have its difficulties. Still, the word “perfect” is imposing, given how sinful each one of us is.

But even more than that, there is her confidence that God has this “perfect companion” out there for her. What biblical passage can she point to where God says that to her, or to anyone else? I can’t think of any.

Finally, there is her idea that God has made her beautiful. This is problematic, because why would she think that? Again, given how much our fallen and sinful nature has affected us, how can anyone see themselves as they are, see the evil and sin that is in them, and think themselves beautiful? Would we not be better to join Isaiah in his lament, “Woe is me, for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips”, or the tax collectors in one of Jesus’ parables, “God be merciful to me, a sinner”?

The next part of the video is some kind of statement about the nature of the video, or maybe more about the types of videos and stories WCA intends to produce and release. After that there is a strange question-and-answer sequence, where some kind of gate-keeper is testing her with questions. It reminds me some of the old comics and cartoons of Saint Peter standing at the gates of Heaven, which, let’s be honest, may work for comedy’s sake but is really back theology. I’ll not get into every question and answer, but some are worth critiquing. One note; early in this exchange, she identifies herself as Jenna.

Gatekeeper: And why have you come here?

Jenna: I’ve been seeking God for years, but I still have no man. When will God give me a husband? “For I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope”, Jeremiah 29:11.

When a lot of people, far too many people, quote Jeremiah 29:11, they seem to assume that when God says “You” in that verse, He is referring to themselves, as if God thousands of years ago was directing that verse at them personally today.

I guess that’s because that verse is a nice one, it has God promising pleasant things. If the promises were more negative, such as the passage that promises women baldness, we’d all be more inclined to think that was for those people way back then.

But context is key. We aren’t just free to take verses from their context and apply them to ourselves. God, through the prophet Jeremiah, was speaking to people who were alive in that day, at the time Jeremiah was writing. We have no right to quote Jeremiah 29:11 as if God is making those same promises to us today.

Gatekeeper: Why shall the Most High pay attention to your prayer?

Jenna: I have come today to ask for a husband to my God. I know that when I come to Him that He will always answer, though in His perfect time. I pray the Lord to guide me to a man who fears Him and is filled with His Spirit, and one who will love me with God’s love, someone with whom I can worship and serve the Lord all the days of our lives together. Yet I will trust in God with all my heart and lean not on my own understanding.

Right at first, it seems as if she hasn’t answered the question. Or, if she has tried to answer it, she has done so badly, as she seems to be saying that God should hear her prayer based on her own virtues and desires.

It is Jesus who has opened the way for us to come boldly to the throne of grace. If we have any right to pray to God with any hope that He will hear us, that right and hope is only through Christ.

Her next response is very long, I’ll not transcribe it all here, but toward the end, she makes one statement that troubles me.

Jenna: I know my God is not a man, to lie; neither a son of man, to repent. I know for sure that He will fulfill these promises upon my life.

By “these promises”, I assume she means when she quotes certain biblical passages, such as in Genesis when God said, “It’s not good for the man to be alone, I will make a helper fit for him”, and a Proverb, “He who finds a wife finds a good thing, and gains favor from the Lord”. But while those passage do say that marriage is a good thing, they don’t promise that every person will marry.

The prophet Jeremiah did not marry. The Bible says nothing about other prophets, such a Elijah and Elisha, having wives. The apostle Paul was not married, and he even tells the people at one church that it would be better for them if they did not marry, though he does not in any way condemn marriage.

God simply has not promised every person a spouse. While most people will marry, we cannot claim marriage as a right from God, we cannot say that God has promised each one of us that “perfect companion”.

The main part of the video, not counting a kind of coda in the last couple of minutes, ends with a monologue in the form of a prayer. Jenna again goes on about wanting a husband, and at one point even says that she knows that God watches her proudly. Nothing in the Bible says that. The Gatekeeper dude responds to her prayer, “So shall it be, my child, according to your faith”. So, is this saying that if someone wants to marry but doesn’t, then their faith isn’t large enough or strong enough? If you say that’s not what the video is saying, then how else can we and should we interpret this statement?

Conclusion

There’s some good in this video, but also a lot of iffy and even bad stuff.

It may be good to pray about love and marriage, but don’t pretend that God has some “perfect companion” out there waiting to be found or to find you.

Mostly, this video is sappy, soppy, trite, and overly sentimental. It’s message is that you, too, can have your romance dreams come true, if you’ll just wait for God and His timing. For all of the heavenly-like imagery in the animation, it’s concerned very much with the here-and-now, yet even in that, it doesn’t treat the here-and-now with any kind of reality. The video tells people that God has made promises that He hasn’t made and is under no obligation to keep, so why are we to doubt that the people who believe messages such as are in this video will feel betrayed and disappointed when God does not keep these false promises, when they do not find that “perfect companion” or when the companion they do find is much less than perfect?

Documentary: Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher

 

For the past few weeks, the movie “Jesus Revolution” has been making a stir in the church, for good or ill, I cannot say. I’ve not seen the movie, and really don’t plan to anytime soon.

On a tangent that is still related, a few years ago, I bought a digital copy of “Frisbee: The Life and Death of a Hippie Preacher”, a documentary about Lonnie Frisbee. From some things I’ve heard about “Jesus Revolution”, Frisbee is portrayed in the movie, so I thought it might be a bit interesting to take a look at this film.

Summary

This documentary is a very brief look at the life of Lonnie Frisbee. At under an hour in length, it doesn’t go into great details, but it does say a bit about both his highs and his lows, his roles in popularizing both the Calvary Chapel and Vineyard movements, and also his moral failings.

Tone

The tone of the documentary is very pro-Frisbee, though they don’t completely excuse his failings, nor do they say that he did not play a part in his own downfall.

But they do paint Frisbee in a way that is impressive to the point of grandiose. One example is at around 30:15 Chuck Smith Jr says, “But with Lonnie, it was like walking with an apostle, someone who was tuned into a divine frequency.” 

As such, then, I find myself a bit skeptical of some of the claims about Frisbee and the things that are said to have happened around him when he ministered. The film makers acknowledge that there is a lot of fakery in the church when it comes to miracles, but they also indicate that Frisbee was not a fake and the miracles around him were not fakery.

Marriage

One of the big controversies about Frisbee is that he was a man who even as a minister also practiced homosexual sex. As such, then, the fact that after his conversion he married a woman named Connie is important. One thing it may indicate is that he was trying to put behind him his old sinful ways, including his sinful sexual practices.

But it was a marriage that had it difficulties. No surprise, as any marriage will have difficulties. But at least in part, these difficulties came from the church itself. At 31:45, Chuck Smith Jr says, “My dad’s philosophy of minister had harmed Lonnie and Connie’s marriage.”, and later at 32:20 he says, “My dad’s belief was that the hierarchy of values was God, minstry, family., and just after this, Connie says that she knew this gave Lonnie “…carte blanche to be as irresponsible as he wanted to be…and that’s when I felt like I was fighting God for my husband’s attention”

Perhaps the most telling comment, from my view, is what Connie said about a meeting she had with Pastor Smith about her and Lonnie’s marriage, 32:10, “Chuck Smith told, looked at me and said, the only thing that’s important right now, Connie, is that people are getting saved.”

I find this mindset troubling, this idea that questions of character and personal life are not important because, well, things are happening. People are, at least in theory and maybe even in fact, getting saved. The church, the Calvary Chapel, had grown, it had grown fast and it had grown large. What else was important?

It’s too easy to play “What if?” games, because such speculations can be fun, but in the end they most often don’t matter much. Nothing Chuck Smith did or didn’t do, nothing he said, excuses Frisbee’s sexual immoralities. Yet Smith’s job as a pastor was to shepherd the flock of God, and Frisbee was one of his sheep, and one part of caring for Frisbee was in helping him in his marriage, not to encourage him to shunt it aside as unimportant because Frisbee could draw crowds and get responses.

There’s something ugly about all this. Assuming that what Connie and Smith Jr said in this documentary is true, then there is very much an impression that some people were very willing to let Frisbee do whatever he wanted with little to no accountability. So long as he brought success to the church, they were happy with it all.

I hope that’s unfair, that people like Pastor Smith and maybe others in the church were more concerned with Frisbee as a person then these statements may lead one to think. I hope so.

Discarded

The tone of the later part of this document is that Lonnie was used by Smith and Wimber, that they “enjoyed the goodies”, things like sudden and dramatic church growths, yet when his sexually immoral practices were finally brought to light, they discarded him.

In this, the documentary does leave open some reasons for hoping that’s an overly negative view of Smith and Wimber. It does mention that Frisbee had problems with his own pride, that he wanted to do thing his way and didn’t like being restricted.

My Thoughts

In many ways, I look at Lonnie Frisbee with a great deal of pity.

The overall sense of adulation in this document, of people speaking of Frisbee as if he were so special, is not so much comforting to me as troubling. All these people had this high and grand opinion of Frisbee, they seemed to think he was nearly untouchable, he was like an apostle, he could heal blind eyes and sore mouths, everywhere he went God did all these incredible things. And so much of this started happening not long after his conversion, when he was filled with zeal but still also filled with all kinds of strange ideas and bizarre notions.

Consider that, then ponder on this biblical passage:

I Timothy

The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. 2 Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3 not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. 4 He must manage his own household well, with all dignity keeping his children submissive, 5 for if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God’s church? 6 He must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit and fall into the condemnation of the devil. 7 Moreover, he must be well thought of by outsiders, so that he may not fall into disgrace, into a snare of the devil.

In this context of this blog post, two things get my attention in this passage. One is verses 4-5, about the overseer’s children and household, and what was said to Connie when she went to Smith for help with marriage difficulties. We may well say that Frisbee proves the truth of this passage, he was a man who did not know how to manage his own household, and so he could not rightly care for God’s church.

But it was verse 6 that I had thought of at first, where Paul wrote that an overseer must not be “ a recent convert”. It seems as if Frisbee had not long been a covert before he ended up at Smith’s church and they began using him to draw in the hippies.

And what happened? Frisbee grew proud, he became conceited, and he fell into ugly sexual sins and condemnations.

The cult of youth is very strong in the church, and perhaps was even back at this time, the 1960s and 70s. Youth With A Mission was around at that time, with their vision of “waves of young people”. But if I look at the New Testament, what I see is not a great emphasis on young people, but rather a great desire for maturity in the church, for the believers to grow and become mature in their understanding. This cult of youth is completely missing from the early church.

And this difference is important. If a church tailors its message and methods to a certain group of people, if it wants to draw in young people, then may we ask, who is that church’s real god? But if a church’s god is God, then it will know that the message it preaches to the young is the same message it preaches to the old, the message of people being sinners and of Christ dying to save sinners by grace through faith.

Perhaps there was something admirable in Smith’s desire to reach to hippies, but he was wrong to place the responsibility so heavily on a Christian newbie like Frisbee. If Frisbee needed anything, ti was to be taught, not to teach, not at that time, not as someone who ideas still tended toward the wacky and outlandish.

Conclusion

This is a fascinating documentary. Keeping in mind that it’s difficult to summarize a life in only a hour, and that it’s slanted pretty heavily in favor of Frisbee, it’s still a documentary worth seeing if you’re interested in this time period and the people involved in what is called the Jesus People.

Why “Belle” Succeeds and Fails

It’s a bit difficult for me to be too critical of this movie, because I like it a lot. It’s an ambitious story that comes so very close to completely succeeding. But in listening to a few people’s takes on it and reading some others, I think they do point to some valid criticisms.

Story Form

To start, I want to point you to something called kishotenketsu. This is a story form. The word is a compound word, made up of four Japanese words that are for the four parts of the story form.

Ki—The intro. The story and the characters are introduced.

Sho—Story development. The characters live in their world, go about life.

Ten—A twist, turn, or something different. This incident changes things for the characters.

Ketsu—A new normal, life isn’t quite like it was before.

One thing I’ve seen about this story form is that it can be used to create stories where conflict isn’t necessary, meaning stories where there are no dragons to slay, no evil masterminds to knock from their thrones, no villains to bring to justice. Those kinds of things can be there, but they aren’t necessary. That’s also why I’m reluctant to call the “ketsu” part the resolution, because it may not really resolve anything.

I think this story form can be applied to Belle.

Ki—The main characters are introduced early on, though some of the introductions are subtle. We’re also introduced to the world, or rather, worlds, both the “real world” in Japan and the virtual world of U. We’re also told Suzu’s backstory, which explains the difficulties she’s going through. We meet her circle of friends and her father. Although the story begins in U, a lot of this early part focuses on the real world.

Toward the end, though, we’re in U with Belle holding a concert that is interrupted by the last two main characters; the Dragon and Justin.

Sho—A lot happens to Suzu in the real world, and to Belle in U. I don’t want to put too much spoiler material here, so I’ll just say that Suzu as herself and Suzu as Belle is put through some difficulties.

Ten—The question “Who is the Dragon?” takes a very dark turn, and it becomes about much more than satisfying a bit of curiosity, but about helping two people in a potentially dangerous situation. To hopefully win the Dragon’s trust, Suzu does something that in the context of U is very radical, and then does something maybe even more dangerous in the real world.

Ketsu—This would be the last few minutes. Suzu returns to her home town, and meets her father and her friends. Things have changed. Suzu isn’t a completely different person from what she was when the movie began, but she has changed a bit, she has grown.

Success

If I were to see the movie as being only about Suzu’s story, about her finally getting over her mother’s death, I could be very happy with this movie. 

Suzu is a very likable character, and it’s easy to sympathize with her. She isn’t perfect; for example, she keeps her distance from her father for most of the movie, though the ending does promise that she might open up more to him. And I’ll admit, I’m not a fan of pop music, so sometimes her music as Belle isn’t to my taste.

But the movie tells Suzu’s story very well.

Failure

But the problem is, the movie isn’t just about Suzu.

Perhaps the movie’s most intense moment is the scene that ends when the boy Kei delivers his rage-filled “I’ll help you” speech. There have been hints that the real person behind the Dragon is hurting in some way, but this scene not only raises the stakes, but also changes the tone of the story, and “moves the goalpost”: can Suzu really help these two boys, or is all she can do is simply say “I’ll help you” without really being able to help at all?

And I don’t think it can be said that the movie showed her really helping end a bad situation.

In a way, that’s an unfair statement. So far as she could do anything, it could be said that she did what she could, and it would be up to others in positions of legal power to deal more thoroughly with this domestic abuse situation, which maybe they did off-camera. But I’ll admit it’s still unsatisfying that we aren’t really given much of a hint that at the least this legal process was begun, that at the least when Suzu left the boys they were being taken to a safer place to stay.

Conclusion

Belle is one of the better recent movies that I’ve seen. But it has its flaws. That doesn’t keep me from enjoying it, or keep me from recommending it very strongly.

Movie: Faith

 

Seeing the movie-poster-like image for this movie Faith on Amazon, and reading the blurb for it on the Amazon page, my thought was that I would be watching a pretty typical Christian movie. I’ll admit that I was surprised at what the movie was really like, and with a few caveats it was a nice surprise.

Summary

It’s not a complicated story. A farmer loses his teenage son to what seems to have been a drug and alcohol overdose suicide, and everything falls apart around him. Some people close to him try to help, but real solutions and answers are never to be found..

Cringe

Very little. The movie keeps a good level of realism throughout, and either avoids easy answer, or seems to show that the easy answers just aren’t working.

Acting

Not bad. There is no hysterical over-acting. The actor for the main character keeps him very grounded as a man who does not easily show his feelings.

Not Easy

This isn’t an easy movie to analyze, perhaps because it’s not a very typical movie, and certainly not a typical Christian movie.

There are essentially four main characters in this movie: the farmer, his wife, his father who lives a bit away but travels to seem him, and the pastor of his church. I’ll focus here on the pastor and father, and how they relate to the farmer.

In many ways, they are both shown to be good characters. They obviously care about the farmer after the son’s death. The pastor is there immediately after the son’s death, trying to comfort the farmer and his wife. The father shows up a bit later, but when he learns what happened, he makes a trip that is obviously difficult for him to be there for his son (the farmer’s wife has left to be her own parents at this time).

So, right at first, these two characters are put in a mostly good light.

But as the movie goes along, there is a change, and a subtle one. I’m not sure how much time goes by in the movie, though there were a few things said that hinted that it was a few weeks. The farmer has been missing services at the church, not to mention doing some other stupid stuff, so finally the pastor and father have an intervention with the farmer. Their basic message is essentially “Get back into church”, although I wonder if there wasn’t also a subtext under that, “Get back to normal”.

So, he does. With his father, he goes to the church. It’s a small-town charismatic church, complete with speaking in tongues, getting slain in the spirit, and a pastor more concerned with what he feels like God is saying than with what God has actually said in the Bible. The farmer gets involved, he goes down to the front, the pastor lays a hand on his head, and he goes to the floor. And while the usual kind of madness of such sermons is going on all around him, the farmer stares up at the ceiling, and it’s plain that he feels nothing. He says all the right things to his father, he goes through all the motions for the pastor, and it’s all empty to him.

And that’s pretty much where the movie ends.

What Is This Movie About?

So, what kind of movie is this?

Is it a Christian movie? Is it some kind of anti-Christian movie? Is it a movie that is Christian while also being critical of some aspects of the church? It’s not the typical fare in Christian movies, but nor is it what I would expect in the more virulent anti-Christian or ex-Christian type of story.

Did the farmer give up on his faith? I can’t say for sure. Did he keep his faith? Again, I’m not sure.

This isn’t a preachy movie, and that could be good as well a bad. There is no point where a character tells the viewer the overall message of the movie. There is some good that could be said for that. Still, when the viewer is told to just draw their own conclusions from a story, there is the chance that the viewer may draw a very wrong and even morally offensive conclusion from it.

Most stories don’t go that route. There are often clear divides between the good guys and bad guys. There is a lot of good to be said for this demarcation. Stories are meant to convey messages, to tell the viewer or the reader or the listener something. For all that, let’s say, a villain like The Joker may want to say that he and Batman are so very much alike and have so much in common, we know that even though those similarities may be true, there are even greater differences, and these differences are why those two characters are constantly at war with each other.

Does that make what Faith does wrong? No. If anything, it makes for a fascinating movie and a different kind of ending. But it can lead to a movie like this having a potentially confusing ending. It’s a risk, but if that’s the kind of movie you want to make, then fine.

Where Is Jesus?

Once again, we have a movie that could be considered Christian while also ignoring the Christ that is the reality behind Christian.

Conclusion

There is some stuff in this movie that the normal Christian movie viewer will not like, outside of the almost agnostic nature of the story's end. There is some language, especially in the first few minutes. There is a bedroom scene between the farmer and his wife. The farmer gets pretty heavily into alcohol. I’m not one who thinks Christians should never drink alcohol, but the farmer’s drinking was too much and for bad reasons. To be fair, I don’t think the movie was trying to glamourize his drinking, but was only showing him going downhill in his grief.

Understand that this isn’t a typical Christian movie, which is mostly good but with a bit of questionable stuff, too. Still, I think I can recommend it. But expect to watch a movie that is not light and fluffy, that will not offer cheap and silly answers, and that will make you think.

Laziness in Christian Movies

This post, which is a kind of summary of observations made based on the movies I’ve watched and reviewed so far, didn’t happen in isolation. There is, in fact, a YouTube video that is a kind of inspiration for it, something the started the old mental gears to grinding. 

Perhaps I should give a bit of a content warning about the video, I think I remember a few profanities in it, and I don't agree with him on everything he says, but I do recommend that you give it a watch. It’s not primarily about Christian movies or stories, although “crappy Christian cartoons” do come up in it towards the end. But it's the overall message about lazy storytelling, as displayed in one particular series, that was and is most thought-provoking.

So, with that said, here are my observations about the problems I’ve seen in these movies.

Lazy Theology 

For a movie that wants to wear the name "Christian", lazy theology is a serious issue, and it is a far too common issue. 

So, what do I mean by "lazy theology"? 

Lazy theology is an idea or solution that the movie appears to endorse that has either no biblical support, or very little. My disagreement is not just a matter of possible interpretations, but of seeing that the movie is teaching something very bad while trying to pretend that it is biblical. 

In the movies I've reviewed so far, perhaps the worst example would be in the big climactic scene in The Girl Who Believed In Miracles. After the girl is thought to be dead, then comes back to life, and she's outside talking to the all the people who have come to revere her as a miracle worker, she tells them that the message she received from God for all of them was that they are to love each other and be kind and all that jazz. I don't want to reiterate arguments made in the review. The point here is that this is lazy theology. It's almost too much of a compliment to call it "theology" at all. 

Now, it could be said that loving each other and being kind are biblical commands. Yet the Bible says much more than that. It tells us that all of our works of righteousness, even all our acts of love and kindness toward each other, are like filthy rags, like soiled diapers. The biblical command to the people who are not believers in Christ is to "repent and believe the gospel", not act nice and be kind. It's not that loving one another and being kind are unimportant, but we must keep first things first. One act of kindness on our parts will not wash away one of our sins; in fact, that act of kindness is itself soiled in our sins, perhaps in pride at our act of generosity, perhaps at how we hope others notice this act of generosity and will think well of us, perhaps at how we intend to use this act of generosity to put the person we're helping our debt. 

The Girl Who Believed In Miracles has lazy theology, because it doesn't deal with ultimate things while pretending it does. It tries to offer the viewer, and all mankind, a solution, but the solution is only more law. God has given man plenty of laws, and man has even heaped more and more laws upon himself, and the truth is, trying to keep those laws isn't going to save any one of us, nor is it going to make the world any better. If God's only message to us is to love each other and be kind, then we are hopeless, because we don't do those things, and as we are right now we cannot do them perfectly. 

Lazy Character Development

I understand the Christian movies have a "target audience", and that "target audience" very likely doesn't want gritty movies that are too realistic when it comes to the dark side of humanity. I can accept that idea that a story can be very good without delving too far into that dark side. Still, if we don't push and test our characters in important ways, out stories become dull. 

In A Box of Faith, a potentially fascinating story is set up, the idea of a mid-teen girl having to survive on the streets while trying to not get caught by a social worker, all while not know what happened to her father. And right at first, it does show her going through a few struggles; she loses a bag she tried to stash in what she thought was a safe place, and she ends up having to sleep under a bridge. But almost right after that, her struggles mostly end: she sets up a living space in a storage shed her father rented, the social worker lady gives her money, she keeps winning free meals at a certain restaurant, she finds as dog as a companion, and she's able to repair a cheap watch and get lots of money for it. She even sees through how another girl wants to steal from her, and the other girl doesn't, for example, try to turn her in or tell the social worker lady where she can be found. In other words, the main character just becomes dull, and the movie loses much of its interest. 

As clumsily as it may have done it, and for all of its other many many problems, Daniel's Lot at least tried to maintain a sense of conflict and tension. 

Lazy Solutions 

This can appear in a few different ways. 

One is what I've come to refer to as "Oh no my life is completely falling apart so I'm going to pray and oh look everything is just perfect now" solution. It's a bit wordy; in fact, it's about a clunky as the movies it appears in. 

This can have a few variations. 

In Shake Off The World, for example, the main character is having a rough time, losing his girlfriend and being bullied at his new school, until he starts going to church. To be fair, the bullies are still an issue even after that, but he finds a nice girl in the church's youth group, and at the end even the bullying thing is mostly resolved. 

I haven't written a review for this movie yet, though I watched it a few years ago, but the movie Flywheel does this.  The main character is having his past come back to bite him, and so he prays and suddenly things start going right for him just as the movie ends. 

A lot of this brings up some issues that Christian story tellers should consider: how should prayer be used in our stories, and how should we portray God as a character in our stories? I know that Christian story tellers want to show that God answers prayers, but I'm not sure we do that all that well. 

Lazy Stories 

This is such a huge problem. 

There is a concept out that there that is important for people who create stories and enjoy reading or watching them: the suspension of disbelief. This means that, for example, if I'm watching a science fiction TV show, maybe Star Trek, then for the sake of this show I accept the idea that there are many different kinds of alien races in the galaxy. I suppose that's possible, but at least so far there is no proof of any such peoples out there. But this suspension of disbelief can only go so far. So, while I may accept that Star Trek has aliens, I can't accept that Mr. Spock can be on the bridge of the Enterprise when it's orbiting a planet a thousand light-years from Earth while at the same time Mr. Spock is also eating a fruit salad in a restaurant in Chicago on Earth. If such a thing appears to be happening, there'd better be a good reason in the story. 

Look at a movie like The Badge, The Bible, and Bigfoot, I can accept that the lady might set the gun down while taking a potty break in the forest, and even forget about it when she's done, but I can't accept that the guy would not go back to find it after realizing they no longer had it. In fact, I can barely accept the fact that he would have given the gun to her in the first place. Or in Daniel's Lot, the idea that a man would risk letting his family become homeless instead of selling a valuable piece of property is asking too much, at least for me. 

And there are other, smaller incidents in the stories that show a lack of effort. In Guided By The Word, the daughter's main role for almost all of the movie is to either mope about her home or argue with her husband. The movie does little or nothing to explain her anger towards the parents who adopted her. 

Shake Off The World is very frustrating in this regard. In the first half hour of the movie, football is a big part of the story, but after that, it almost completely disappears. 

Daniel's Lot tries to sell the viewer that a pretty lousy character is actually the good guy. Early in the movie, Daniel is whiny, complaining, a pretty lousy husband and father, and he lies to his boss about why he's late for work. Yet the movie tries to show him as being in the right, even with a bit of a song about how he's in the right. 

Conclusion 

I wonder sometimes if Christian movies are worth it. At the least, they need lots of work. But by their nature, a movie has to appeal to people, and when appealing to people becomes the primary objective, then compromises are going to creep in, and one sure compromise is going to be that the message will be changed, diluted, watered down. Instead of offering Christ as the answer to man's lost state and need for redemption and salvation, we'll be told that we just need to be kind and loving. 

At the least, Christian movie making needs to be ministry, not a business. I know that may not be easy. A movie is not a simple thing, nor is it cheap. Yet the truth is, Christian movie makers need to be careful of trying to be friendly with the world, lest they become the enemy of God. They need to be careful of loving the world and the things of this world, lest they discover, and probably too late, that the love of the Father is not in them. They need to be careful of laying up treasures here on Earth rather than in Heaven. Too many of these Christian movies I've watched lately show this compromise. How else to explain the gospel-less nature of the final message in The Girl Who Believed In Miracles? Or how the gospel is missing from the other movies, too? 

Movie: The Badge, the Bible, and Bigfoot

 

I first saw this movie a while ago, and for some strange reason decided to put myself through it again. Some of us bloggers do insist on suffering.

Summary

In a small Oregon town, there are rumors of a Bigfoot walking about in the nearby woods. The mayor wants the former police chief to look into it, but having just lost his job because of stupid politics (as if there were any other kind), he’s not up for more foolishness. That is, until a couple of young girls are kidnapped by this Bigfoot. He and the mayor rather reluctantly team up and try to hunt down the creature and save the girls.

Cringe

Oh, yeah, everywhere. So very much cringe.

The Good

Despite my rather sarcastic opening, there is some good to be taken from this movie, which is more than I could say for, let’s say, Daniel’s Lot, the movie that still epitomizes the worst of the worst of Christian movies in my mind.

One thing that should be kept in mind is that this is pretty plainly a very low budget movie. In fact, it’s made by pretty much one family, with a few extra people. Keeping that into account, and in many ways it’s not a half-bad effort.

I noticed two things in rewatching it again.

One is that some effort was made to use some different kinds of camera angles, to offer some visual interest to scenes that could easily have been plain dialogue given by boring talking heads. One instance of this is early in the movie, when the mayor and the still-police chief are in a coffee shop, and she (the mayor) is telling him about the agenda in the coming town committee meeting. This scene shows that the film makers were trying to make the movie more visually interesting, perhaps trying to put into practice things they had learned and maybe seen in other movie’s they’d watched. I can applaud this.

Another thing is that the movie itself looks nice. I’m not sure what filming equipment they used, I’d guess it wasn’t very expensive, but they succeeded in making a movie that at the least looks nice. They were able to show the scenery in its natural beauty, and even the town looks cozy and inviting.

The Bad

This movie is filled with awkward dialogue and scenes, so much so that doing a list of all of it would be cumbersome, both to write as well as to read. I’m going to do something different in reviewing this movie, and I hope it’ll help. I’m going to focus on certain scenes. The names I’m giving for these scenes are my own, not ones taken from the movie.

The Council Meeting

This scene begins almost seven minutes into the movie.

In a scene of any group meeting, you would expect there would be shots of all the people at the meeting, probably gathered around a table with a bit of paperwork, and they’d talk to each other about whatever it is they are meeting about. In this movie, the mayor is briefly shown, then she goes off-camera and she says a bit to begin the meeting, then the camera focuses solely on Harrison, the police chief, staying on him the whole time as someone off-camera, an unnamed council member who, let’s be honest, sounds a lot like the actress playing the mayor, gives the reasons why the council wants to take money away from the police department.

It should be remembered that this movie came out in 2019, just before all the “Defund the police” nonsense, so that’s why such ideas weren’t used as a reason to disband this town’s police department. Still, the idea that they had to disband to police to give the money to the fire department seems coo-coo in its own right. But similarly lunacy seems to be not uncommon in modern politics, so I’ll just leave this by saying it’s all too stupid and all too realistic.

But this scene is bad.  For all that I try to applaud their attempts at creative scene framing, in this case it doesn’t work. Keeping the camera on one guy doing pretty much nothing for about a minute is not a good idea.

If they weren’t able to get enough people to have a committee meeting on film, then they should have come up with another way of giving the viewer the information about Harrison losing his job through stupid politics.

Meeting at the Dock

This scene begins about 16 minutes in, with some build-up to it before that.

The mayor meets Harrison, now the former police chief, at the docks, and tells him about a hunter who claims to have seen something, to have seen Bigfoot. In one of the movie’s better moments, Harrison dismisses it as nonsense, “I don’t have time to play games”. There’s a bit more dialogue, then she says, “You’re the only hope we have in this town.”

Huh?

Understand, that at this point, Bigfoot is not in any way a threat to this town. Earlier in the movie, Harrison has what looks to have been a video chat with a man claiming that something has been killing and eating his grandfather’s cattle. And the mayor mentions a hunter having seen Bigfoot.

And that’s it, outside of various news snippets that may or may not involve this town.

At this point in the movie, the Bigfoot has not kidnapped the two girls.

So, what’s the mayor so very worked up over? There’s no there, there. Not yet. The movie has given us no reason to accept this hyperbolic “You’re our only hope” statement.

Hide And Seek

This begins a bit over 18 minutes in, though it is interrupted for a bit.

Three young girls, I’d guess not quite in their teens, a going to a park after school. They run around in the woods, playing some game, then sit at a picnic table to talk about boys and dances. Then they hear noises in the woods, and get scared and move away from the table. Then the noises continue to follow them, and they scream and run away. Then they…

Then they decide to play hide-and-seek in the woods.

If they had decided to run into a spooky old vacant house in the middle of the woods, I don’t think even that decision would have been as stupid as playing hide-and-seek after being chased away by a noisy Squatch.

And needless to say, that game of hide-and-seek doesn’t end well, as Sassy makes off with two of the girls.

This is one of those scenes that is so stupid it’s insulting to the viewer. Come on, put some thought into what you’re writing, into how your characters will act.

The Gun

So, Harrison arms himself and goes into the woods, and he runs into the mayor, who went before him. He’s not happy to have her tag along, and frankly I can’t blame him.

Yet for some reason, he gives her his gun, or at least the shotgun (later, rather mysteriously, he has a handgun, which I guess he forgot about for some part of the movie).

They tromp around a while, and she has to take a potty break. She puts the shotgun down, does her business, returns to him, and they continue on.

Without the shotgun, which is still on the ground.

And when he finally realizes what happened, he doesn’t go back to get it; no, he decides they don’t need it.

I don’t know how much that shotgun and ammo cost, but I’m pretty sure it was somewhere in the “Not Cheap” level. Plus, they were trying to hunt down a creature that is suppose to be very huge and very strong. While going back to find the gun may have taken time, it still seems much, much wiser than going on without it.

Again, so stupid it’s insulting.

The Final Fights

If people are going to make movies like this, they should at least offer the viewer some memorable scenes, and this one has some at the end, in the big fight against the Bigfoot.

To understand just why this is all so hilarious, you have to see the end credits, where you’ll learn that the actor who played Harrison was also the guy in the Bigfoot monkey suit.

In this final fight, we don’t really see Harrison and the Bigfoot fighting; instead, what we get is Harrison punching at something that is mostly off-screen, then the Bigfoot swiping at something mostly off-screen, the camera jumps from Harrison to Sassy and back again and again, they punch and swipe, Sassy picks up a large rock, and the mayor gets into the action a bit.

They couldn’t really put Harrison and Sassy in the same shot, because, well, they were the same actor.

The results of this were hilarious.

Was this all a dream

The movie’s final scene is so out of left field that it seems like it’s from another movie entirely.

Harrison wakes up from a nap, and he and the mayor, who now appears to be his wife, talk for a bit in what looks like a rather comfortable living room area.

So much about this scene is just, “Ugh”.

First, was this scene saying that Harrison has been dreaming this whole time?  This seems like a not unreasonable conclusion.

Second, there is the hypocrisy of this movie’s final lecture.

Harrison is having second thoughts about some movies he enjoys, ones that he calls “violent movies” and “monster movies”.We aren’t given an example of what is meant by this.

I’ll ignore the psycho-babble they engage in about why he enjoys those movies, and just go with this—that a movie about a monster kidnapping children and two people running around in the forest trying to fight this monster now tries to lecture us viewers about the evils of “violent movies” and “monster movies”.

My response is: get the plank out of your own movie, then you can lecture me about any movies I enjoy watching.

Theology

It feels almost gratuitous to pile on this movie any more, but this does fall into the category of Christian movies, so the theology is of some importance.

Now, the movie does one good thing—there is no conversion scene. The two main character are already religious, so when they spend the last half of the movie tromping about in the woods, we are not subjected to a tiresome atheist/Christian dual-diatribe argument.

Still, the theology does go some strange places.

At one point, when the two mains are tromping about, the mayor says to Harrison, that since Bigfoot is only another animal and God gave man dominion over the animals, then all they have to do is find it, look it in the eye, and in Jesus name tell it to do something. Even Harrison more-or-less agrees with her.

Now, it could be pointed out that, when it comes to finally facing off against Sassy, neither of them do this; instead, the confrontations become a fight. Still, they said that, and it’s bad.

It could be said that, yes, God did give man dominion of the earth, which includes the animals. But this is more complicated than just using Jesus’ name as some kind of charm to get Fido to do tricks.

There is the fact of sin, and sin has had an effect on the natural world, and even Christians are affected by these consequences. In some times of persecutions, Christians were killed by animals.

In the events related in Daniel, the king had to throw Daniel into a “den of lions”. God sent an angel to close the lion’s mouths, so that Daniel was kept safe through the night. There is no hint in the account that Daniel was able to exercise some dominion over the lions.

Much of the rest of what passes for theology in this movie is just out-of-context biblical phrases used badly.

Conclusion

The problem with this movie isn’t the low budget. No, the problem is the story. It’s a mess.

Movie: A Box Of Faith

So, back to normal Christian, or Christian-esque, movies.

Summary

A teenage girl named Dior finds herself in a tough spot. Her mother is dead, her father has been arrested, and she has no home. So, instead of letting herself be taken in by a lady who I guess was a social worker, Dior takes to the streets. After a few mishaps and a quick prayer, life picks up for her, and she not only survives but manages to make a small fortune, so that when her father is released because he didn’t commit the crime, they have enough money to get their lives back on track.

Cringe

It gets pretty heavy at times.

Acting

The acting wasn’t so bad. The story focuses mostly on Dior, and the actor playing her did fairly well. The rest of the small cast did well, too, with the material they had. If there was a problem, it was with the story itself, not the actors.

Interesting Aspects

If this movie should get your attention and you’d want to watch it, understand that this is not some kind of gritty film following a girl’s intense struggles to somehow make in the means streets of some big city. No, it’s a pretty tame and sanitized look at homeless life. True, Dior does struggle when she first takes to the streets, but she adjusts quick.

The idea of using the storage shed filled with her family’s belongings as a new home was a clever touch.

The Crime

The movie started going off the rails for me early on, during the scenes of the dad’s supposed crime.

Dior’s father worked some kind of factory or construction job, I really couldn’t tell which, and while he’s busy at his work, one of his co-workers puts some piece of equipment into his lunch box. When they get off work, someone is at the door to inspect their lunch boxes, and when the dad hands his over, of course the inspector finds the equipment in it, and things go downhill from there, and the dad is arrested.

This scene didn’t work, for all kinds of reasons.

First, all the guys at the job kept their lunch boxes in the same area, what seemed to a small break area with a few lockers and maybe a bench. The dad kept his lunch box on top of the lockers, and there were others up there, too. He also has a locker, and we see him put his hard hat in it, though it doesn’t seem to have a lock.

In other words, with everything out in the open like that, anyone could have put anything into any lunch box or locker.

Second, although the common thief many not be known for being smart and clever, or so I’ve heard, it still makes no sense for a man who wants to steal a piece of equipment from a job site to put that piece of equipment in his lunch box when he knows all lunch boxes will be inspected before the men are free to leave the job site. The fact that the dad casually hands over the lunch box to the inspector at the door would shout that he had no idea anything was wrong. If he had really been trying to steal it, he would not have left it in the lunch box where the inspector could easily see it.

Third, the boss goes on some kind of rant with lots of statistics, concluding that the dad is guilty because he “fits the mold”. Glad we’re determining such matters based on such flimsy reasoning now. Actually, real-life reasoning in this age of cancel-culture is even more flimsy.

I’d think that any police officer or detective or lawyer could look at this crime scene and find all kinds of reasons to think that the dad’s claims of innocence could be valid. The crime just wasn’t convincing, and if anything seemed too contrived.

Prayer

This is another issue; Dior’s prayer, “Lord, help me through this experience, and I’ll be a great warrior for you.”

So, can someone show me where the Bible tells us to pray “great warrior” prayers?

Actually, I can point you to a few passages that warn against making these kinds of promises or vows.

Ecclesiastes 5

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. To draw near to listen is better than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they are doing evil. 2 Be not rash with your mouth, nor let your heart be hasty to utter a word before God, for God is in heaven and you are on earth. Therefore let your words be few. 3 For a dream comes with much business, and a fool’s voice with many words. 

4 When you vow a vow to God, do not delay paying it, for he has no pleasure in fools. Pay what you vow. 5 It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay. 6 Let not your mouth lead you into sin, and do not say before the messenger that it was a mistake. Why should God be angry at your voice and destroy the work of your hands? 7 For when dreams increase and words grow many, there is vanity; but God is the one you must fear.

Prayer is good. We should prayer. God has invited us to come to Him, to tell Him our needs. Dior asking God for help is good. It’s when it becomes a bargain that it become much more questionable.

How can she fulfill this promise? 

When, for example, Hannah seems to bargain with God in I Samuel 1, her vow had specifics in it.

I Samuel 1

9 After they had eaten and drunk in Shiloh, Hannah rose. Now Eli the priest was sitting on the seat beside the doorpost of the temple of the LORD. 10 She was deeply distressed and prayed to the LORD and wept bitterly. 11 And she vowed a vow and said, “O LORD of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.”

We can see how this vow was to be fulfilled. The reference to “no razor shall touch his head” seems to indicated that the boy would be a Nazarite from his birth, and “I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life” was fulfilled when he brought the child to live at the Tabernacle with the priest, as we are shown later in that same chapter

21 The man Elkanah and all his house went up to offer to the LORD the yearly sacrifice and to pay his vow. 22 But Hannah did not go up, for she said to her husband, “As soon as the child is weaned, I will bring him, so that he may appear in the presence of the LORD and dwell there forever.” 23 Elkanah her husband said to her, “Do what seems best to you; wait until you have weaned him; only, may the LORD establish his word.” So the woman remained and nursed her son until she weaned him. 24 And when she had weaned him, she took him up with her, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour, and a skin of wine, and she brought him to the house of the LORD at Shiloh. And the child was young. 25 Then they slaughtered the bull, and they brought the child to Eli. 26 And she said, “Oh, my lord! As you live, my lord, I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to the LORD. 27 For this child I prayed, and the LORD has granted me my petition that I made to him. 28 Therefore I have lent him to the LORD. As long as he lives, he is lent to the LORD.” And he worshiped the LORD there.

By contrast, the vow to “become a great warrior” is vague. How can anyone know if Dior has fulfilled that vow? What if she doesn’t fulfill it? What if she struggles, what if she falls into sin? What if, for example, she caves to peer pressure, and takes drugs? What if she falls in love, and she and the boy sleep with each other before they’re married? What if she just gets married, stays at home, takes care of her family, and doesn’t become some kind of great and famous person?

The implication of this movie seems to be that God watched out for Dior, keeping her safe and making her prosper, because of this vow, and maybe other prayers she writes on the paper from her mother’s stationary box. Yet we should be very careful about making such vows. I don’t know if I can say that the Bible completely teaches against making such promises, but it does warn about them, such as in the verses above from Ecclesiastes, which say that it’s better to not make such a vow than to vow and not pay it.

Anyway, this claim to be a “great warrior” is just pride. It’s like Peter claiming he’ll never deny Jesus, but a few hours later he’s denying Him. We’d be better to pray with humility, to ask God to help us, to help us even in our behavior, to walk humbly, to learn God’s ways, and to repent when we do sin.

Called Out

There is one scene I want to focus on for a moment.

Not quite midway through the movie, there a scene with the social worker lady and one of her co-workers, a man. They’re in her office, and he’s getting on her case a bit, telling he she’s letting this case with Dior get too personal.

In response, she starts to go on about how special Dior is (even though she’s never spoken with the girl and knows almost nothing about her), and he calls her out on that.

“She just deserves better.”

“Are we sure we’re not talking about you? Why are you so interested in this case?”

“She lost her mother. Her father’s going to prison. She has no relatives, no siblings, no one.”

“All of these children has similar situations.”

“No. This one is different. She’s incredibly intelligent. She’s gifted.”

“What about Jose? Or Aaron? Or Chantell? They’re not?”

“Look, maybe you’re right.”

“It’s not about me being right or wrong.”

“Some of these kids don’t want to make anything of their lives, but not this kid, Ray.”

“I think you’re getting too attached to his case.”

“It’s not a case, Ray. It’s a person. A  young girl who deserves a change to lead a better life, to grow up and have an impact on people’s lives. Ok?”

That’s a part of their conversation. There is a bit more before.

Some things he said were off-putting, but for my part, I’m glad the guy, Ray, called her out on a few things. I’m glad he pointed out that all the kids they’re trying to help are special.

And who is she to determine if a child is worthy of help or not, or is less worthy of help than another? What does she mean when she says that some of those other kids “don’t want to make anything of their lives”? Should they be abandoned, or not helped as much? Do they not deserve good homes? If they’ve experienced the death of parents, or abandonment, or come from bad homes, or themselves been abused, would it not be possible that once they found a good home they might also come to “want to make something of their lives”?

And, again, there is the simple fact that the lady has still not yet talked with Dior at this point in the movie. How can she know that Dior wants to make something of herself, or what the something might be?

Where is the gospel?

It’s no longer a surprise how many movies and stories want to be considered Christian when they have pretty much no Christ in them.

In a lot of ways, this movie reminds me of The Girl Who Believes In Miracles. There is God-talk, but that’s about it, and there is nothing about Jesus in it.

We the viewers are suppose to think that Dior has strong faith. But what does that mean? Does her running from the social worker lady show faith? What if she decided to go with her, or she’s caught, would her faith also be in God providing her a good foster family until her own father gets out of jail?

The movie promotes a rather vague notion of faith based on…what, exactly? There is one scripture verse referenced early on, from John’s account of Jesus speaking to the disciples before he is betrayed. After that, nothing about what the Bible says, and Jesus is missing from the whole thing.

I think this is a fair question: can something Christless be considered Christian?

The Church

So, we have Dior and her dad, and both seem to have some kind of faith in God, but where did that faith come from? There is nothing about the church in this movie.

It’s not like they’re in some kind of third-world tyranny where churches must hide themselves, they’re in some city in the US. And it’s not like the dad has decided church and God aren’t for him because bad things happen. The church simply isn’t there, anywhere.

This is important. The church is the spreader of the gospel. If these people have faith, they learned of God from somewhere.

Conclusion

There is some winsomeness about this movie; maybe it’s the dog. But it’s mostly just cotton candy, a lot of fluff and not much else. While it could maybe encourage people to trust God in difficulties, I’m not even sure of that. More likely, it’ll just reinforce the notion that not much bad will happen to people who trust God. People, even church people, do like to have their ears tickled with sweet-tasting messages of life being good, or of how good life will be once we’ve endured a few trials and proven ourselves to God.

There’s almost nothing here. It’s an empty movie with at best a small bit of a good message, but overall it’s hollow.