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: The Girl Who Believes In Miracles

 

I didn’t see this movie when it was in theaters, though I did know some people who did, and I was a bit surprised that they seemed to like it a lot. Curiosity finally got the better of me, and I gave this movie a watch. I really can’t say I was impressed; no, not one bit.

Summary

A young girl, roughly 12 years old, causes a stir when some dead animals come back to life when she prays for them. Then, some people get healed in the same way. But for the girl herself, something seems very wrong, and when it looks like she’s close to death, some people close to her try to get her to a certain place where she had earlier claimed to have seen God.

Cringe

Pretty strong. A cast of competent actors lessens the cringe a bit, but they can’t cover over a very poor and emotionally manipulative story.

Acting

I’ll give the acting some props. It seems like they did what they could with what they had been given. My problems with the movie have little to do with the actors as actors.

Cliches

Oh, boy, were there ever cliches.

A character who is bitter at God because of something that happened in his past? Check.

A parental-like figure begging God to take him instead of the little girl? Check.

A reporter who’ll do anything to get a story? Check.

An apparently sad ending the becomes happy because of a giant God-bandage? Check.

Lots of people apparently seeing God himself but not having any evidence for the event? Check.

About the only cliche the movie doesn’t really get into is the persecution cliche.

Interesting Aspects

No many, really. At least, not good ones. The movie has no great twists or turns. It’s all little better than typical.

Problems

This isn’t a Christian movie: Sorry to burst your bubble, but there is nothing really Christian in this movie, and that’s because Christ is not really in this movie.

Toward the end, after the little girl’s resurrection, she goes outside to talk with the people who have apparently come to see her as some kind of avatar or icon. While it’s good that she tells them not bow to her, and she says that God was the one who did the miracles and not she herself, what is her overall message to them? What are they suppose to do?

“All of you can cure people, you really can. All you have to do is believe in God and pray to Him, and He’ll help you.”

I can’t think of anything in the Bible that says that.

“He (God) told me to tell you to love your children and your families, and to try to help one another every day. So, when we all go home tonight, say a prayer and ask what you can do to make your family strong and to help other people. God will help you, because, well, He loves you all a lot.”

Barf.

So, we had all that drama, all those healings and resurrections, all that running about trying to get the girl to apparently the only place where God will meet her, all so God could tell her…that?

Is it necessarily bad advice? Maybe not, though it’s very vague. But it’s not Christianity. We don’t need a special message from God to tell us to treat each other well. We don’t even need Christianity to tell us any of that. Modern pagans are quite ready to force their virtues on all of us. Heck, we just got finished with two years of them trying to make us do all manner of useless and even harmful things because of a certain disease, and they told us to do it because it would help other people, or what have you.

The point it, there nothing particularly Christian in what she’s saying.

What would be a Christian message?

Act 2

37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” 38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” 40 And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” 41 So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

Acts 3

17 “ And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. 18 But what God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, he thus fulfilled. 19 Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, 20 that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, 21 whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago.

Romans 3

19 Now we know that whatever the law says it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. 20 For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

A Christian message would be more than just “treat other people well”. So far as it goes, that’s fine, but it doesn’t go far. We all know that we should treat each other well, we sure don’t need God to send a little girl back from the dead to tell us that, because not knowing that is not our problem.

One of our biggest problems is that we don’t do it. We don’t treat each other well. We don’t love our neighbors as ourselves. That standard may seem attainable, until we start to look at it and try to understand what it really means, then it becomes staggering, a burden too heavy to bear.

In what we call The Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addresses the idea that keeping the law is a simple thing:

Matthew 5

21 “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire. 23 So if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. 25 Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. 26 Truly, I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

Every law is crushing in its implications. We should not look at the law and feel pride, as if we’re doing so very well at keeping it, as if God must be pleased as punch with how well we’re doing.

Another of our biggest problems is not only that we’ve broken God’s laws, but that breaking those laws makes us subject to punishment. This is a serious issue, because the punishment for sin is Hell.

We don’t need good advice, we need to be rescued, we need to be saved.

That is my problem with this movie; all it gives us is advice. It tries to inspire us to act better. But it offers us no hope of being rescued. It doesn’t tell us, “What must we do to be saved?”

Miracles don’t convince: For whatever reasons, a lot of people think that if people could only see a miracle, if they could only see God “show off” or however they want to phrase it, then people will believe. That’s certainly not a biblical way of thinking; if anything, the Bible says and shows otherwise.

Luke 16

19 “ There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, 23 and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and l saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. 24 And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ 27 And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— 28 for I have five brothers— so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ 29 But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ 30 And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’”

In this story alone, Jesus contradicts the notion that miracles will convince people. Even a resurrection, such as the man Lazarus coming back from the dead, would not convince this rich man’s brothers.

We even see the truth of the story in the account of when Jesus himself resurrected a man named Lazarus.

John 11

45 Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him, 46 but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. 47 So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, “What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. 48 If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” 49 But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all. 50 Nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” 51 He did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, 52 and not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. 53 So from that day on they made plans to put him to death.

It could rightly be pointed out that this passage does say that many believed, true. But hardly all, and some who heard about it, knowing it was a true miracle, still not only doubted, but began looking for ways to get rid of Jesus.

In John 6, there is an account of Jesus feeding thousands of people with very little food. Later in that chapter, the people Jesus fed catch up with him, and it’s pretty plain that they want to continue getting free food from him, and are not happy with him when he will not give them what they want.

Some people may well believe if they see a miracle, but miracles are never held up in the Bible as any kind of key to making people convert.

Emotionalism: In the end, this movie is just emotional manipulation. It tries to legitimize some shoddy thinking by trying to make the viewer feel lots of emotions.

Emotions are fine, they have a place, but feeling emotions doesn’t make something right. If a story succeeds in making someone cry, we have no reason to think that this story is giving that person a good message.

Conclusion

Disappointing. Very disappointing, even. Shallow, cliche, just a useless mound of emotionalism. Nothing solid, no good teaching, no real Christ, nothing in it deals with our real issues.

I can’t regret not seeing this in theaters. It wasn’t even worth seeing now. And I sure can’t recommend that anyone else watch it.

movie: Daniel's Lot

 

If I could offer an example of the things a Christian movie should not be, Daniel’s Lot would be that example.

Summary

Things are not good for Daniel and his wife Christina. He has a low-paying job, she’s not had success at her realtor’s job for months, and they are way behind on their mortgage payments. This leads to lots of tension between them.

But there is no need for this tension. Daniel has inherited a small piece of property in a very good location, and he could sell it for a lot of money, thus ending his family’s financial difficulties. But he won’t. He claims that he told his father that he wouldn’t sell it until the time is right, and even says that he’s waiting for a sign from God before he sells it. This doesn’t set well with Christina, who’s getting most of the blame for the family’s difficulties.

Then Daniel starts hearing a voice, a voice like Sam Elliot in a wind tunnel, telling him to do something, though the instructions are of course vague.

Cringe

Overwhelming, unrelenting, and thoroughly saturating every level of this movie.

Anything good?

Pretty much, no. Not even the presence of the actor who played Radar on the old TV series M*A*S*H gives this movie any redeeming qualities.

Dealing with the bad

There’s so much bad about this movie that it’s hard to determine where to begin, or what needs to be dealt with. These are a few bad things, but by no means all of them.

No hero: Right from the first, we are hit over the head with the movie telling us that Daniel is the good guy, while Christina is the bad guy. But what I see in those first few minutes is this: Christina is at her job, trying to make sales at her real estate job, while Daniel is at home watching some TV preacher. In other words, Christina is being responsible, while Daniel is being irresponsible. Christina is trying to do something about their situation, while Daniel is just…watching television.

To understand my point here, let me try to put it like this: this isn’t me trying to say “She’s not wrong”, this is me saying “He’s not right”.

The problems are on both sides. Christina is wrong to think that sleeping with a client will result in anything good, but Daniel is also wrong to be whiny and complaining, for not taking responsibility for his family’s situation, for not even taking his children to church because he’s afraid of upsetting Christina (although any church he would take them to would likely not be worth attending, given his taste in TV preachers). Christina and Daniel are both wrong, but as the head of his house, Daniel is the one most responsible.

Daniel is weak. He’s constantly whining and complaining. He loses his job because he insists on taking his kids to school himself instead of letting them ride the school bus. He even lies to his boss about why he’s late for work, saying it’s because his wife was sick when she wasn’t. 

And he gets almost no character development. He’s constantly portrayed as the one in the right, as the victim. When he finally confronts Christina saying he wants her to come back, he doesn’t apologize to her about his lack of family leadership, about his whining, or about him blaming her for their family’s situation. To try to be fair, he does give ab “If I did something wrong” kind of apology in a TV interview.

Daniel is not a leader to his family. It’s little wonder that Christina has so little respect for him.

Man tears: I don’t think I’ve seen a movie where one man cries so much.

Preacher idolatry: This is shown in a few ways. Any time Daniel is watching Bishop Long on TV, we see him crying. In the one scene where Daniel attends the church where Radar is the pastor, we hear the crowd whooping at Radar’s most inane statements and see, for example, one woman grabbing at her heart as if she’s never heard anything more wonderful.

To put it another way, we don’t see people actually interacting with what the pastor says, they aren’t thinking about what they’ve heard the pastor say; rather, we see them simply accepting the pastor’s statement in an uncritical, unthoughtful manner. This is more cultic than Christian.

Acts 17

10 The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. 12 Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.

We get two seemingly contrary things in this description of what happened in Berea: they eagerly received what Paul and Silas taught them, and they examined the Scripture to verify what these men are saying. But this isn’t a contradiction. The Bereans did their homework, they first listened to Paul and Silas, then they looked at the Scriptures to make sure what Paul and Silas were telling them the truth. Once they could see that Paul and Silas were speaking the truth, the people accepted their statements, and were even eager to do so. That’s what made them noble.

To see how far Paul encouraged people to not just accept anything said by anyone, even himself, consider this:

Galatians 1

8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed. 9 As we have said before, so now I say again: If anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed.

Paul was not someone who told believers to accept his words because he had some kind of position. Even a message given by an angelic being was subject to scrutiny.

As such, the fawning, unthinking acceptance on the part of Daniel and the church people in this movies is simply sickening. It is not an example to be followed by people in the church; rather, it is how they should not be.

Hearing voices

Teachings on how to hear God’s voice have saturated the church in recent decades, and not just the Pentacostals and charismatics. For my own part, for a few years I was a part of an organization called Youth With A Mission, and YWAM is very big into hearing God’s voice in all kinds of ways, so I’m no stranger to the teachings.

In the past few years, I’ve come to question a lot of what has been taught about hearing God’s voice, and I’ve seen that so much of it has little biblical support, or even none at all. This review is not really a place for an in-depth look at the flaws with so much “hearing God’s voice” teachings, so I’ll recommend God Doesn’t Whisper by Jim Osman. Give this book a try.

But to look at some of the things said about it by characters in the movie…

At one point early on, in one of his early arguments with his wife, Daniel tells her, “God talks to everyone. The Bible says it.” This is about 13:00 minutes into the movie.

So, where does the Bible tell us that God speaks to everyone?

At almost 39:00, the TV preacher Bishop Long said this, “The word of the Lord says in First Samuel that a young man by the name of Samuel learned the voice of God. Let me say this to you. When believers hear the voice of God, they will know it and they should be obedient to it.”

So, here’s a link to an online version of I Samuel 3, the chapter which gives us the account of the child Samuel hearing God calling to him. Give this chapter a look, and then consider, where does this passage tell us that Samuel learned the voice of God, or learned to hear the voice of God?

Nothing is said in this chapter about the boy needing to learn any methods or techniques to hear God calling to him. The boy did not do anything to try to hear God speaking, in fact God was the one initially doing the speaking while the boy himself was asleep.

And as far as being obedient to what God told Samuel, God didn’t really tell Samuel to do anything, although maybe the message could be understood to be for the priest Eli. But it was Eli who told Samuel to tell him what God had told Samuel.

Just because someone claims to hear a voice doesn’t mean that voice was God. How many cults have been formed because someone claimed to have some kind message from God? The founders of Islam and Mormonism wrote books about the special revelations they claimed to receive from God, and we have no reason to think they were getting messages from the true God.

There is lots of danger in this teaching about hearing voices and then doing what they tell us to do.

Law, law, and more law will fix all your problems: The basic message of this movie seems to be “If you’ll just be obedient, then God will make your life good and give you prosperity”. A lot of stress is put on obedience, especially when it comes to obeying whatever direct messages God is giving a character.

Obedience to God is a good thing. We should obey God. The Bible is filled with laws and rules, even in the New Testament, and we should obey those rules. The problem is, we all do a very poor job in obeying those rules. We Christians are still fallen, still sinful, our sanctification is still incomplete. If we are trying to earn God’s blessings by obeying God’s laws, then we will do nothing but fail.

For Christians, God has promised to provide all our needs, God will take care of us, but that doesn’t mean we will have prosperity, it doesn’t mean we’ll be like this bishop in the movie who has a big limo. Consider this…

I Corinthians 4

8 Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you! 9 For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. 10 We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. 11 To the present hour we hunger and thirst, we are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, 12 and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; 13 when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.

Look at how Paul writes about himself and his fellow apostles: they are poor, hungry, despised, weak, reviled, fools, scum and refuse.

What did they do wrong? How were they disobedient? What laws did they fail to obey? Why didn’t God bless the apostles with prosperity?

Also, consider what Paul writes about the Corinthians. They have become rich! They are even kings! They have so much, compared to what the apostles have. Remember, this is the same Corinthian church that Paul has to correct on many, many issues, because they were doing a lot of things wrong. In the next chapter of I Corinthians, Paul even has to chastise them over an incident of really gross sexual immorality, where a man in the church has married his own father’s widow.

I Corinthians 5

It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. 2 And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.

I Corinthians 4 actually contradicts this movie’s message.

Let me point you to the Voice of the Martyrs website, where you can find accounts of Christians suffering persecutions and even being killed because they are Christians. What did these Christians do wrong, that they should experience persecution instead of the promised prosperity of this movie?

Once you realize these people are experiencing persecution because they are obedient, that they are the ones being faithful witnesses instead of those who peddle a false gospel for shameful gain, then you’ll see more clearly how bad this movie’s message really is.

Ponderings

It is what it is: Garbage is still garbage, and putting the label Christian on it doesn’t make it any less garbage.

While understanding should be shown for someone’s early attempts at doing something new, that understanding can only go so far, especially if they insist on putting those early attempts out there for public viewing. Perhaps the people behind this movie were new to movie making, so some of the awkward elements can be explained that way, but that doesn’t explain away the bad theology that permeated this film. And more than the bad acting and poor script, this bad theology is poisonous.

Conclusion

Don’t just pass on this movie, but run as far from it as you can. It’s not worth your time.

Movie: Shake Off The World

Summary

Austin is a high school student. He’s not a very good student, so he’d hanging his college hopes on his football skills. After he has a falling out with his coach, who refuses to play him, he decides to transfer to another school, hoping to make their team. But things at this new school are not all good, and he becomes the target of some bullies. But some other students come to his help, he gets in with their church youth group, and eventually helps in some way with their big Christmas event to raise some money for a local nursing home.

Cringe

For the first half of the movie, it wasn’t too bad. In the second half, it grew worse, and the Christmas concert was painful.

Acting

Most of the acting was solid. Some of the action during the football games was a bit awkward, such as one “tackle” at about 17 minutes, a tackle which was really little more than the defender giving the running back a push and the running back flopping to the ground.

Interesting Aspects

The story is different from normal, and while I don’t know if that was intentional or not, I’ll assume it was. I really hope it was, because it’s a point of interest for me.

In thinking about the movie, I was trying to determine what Austin’s main conflict was. Was it with the coach? That plays a part, but not much is done with it. Was it with his old girlfriend? Nor really. Was it the bullies? That was too sporadic.

There didn’t really seem to be a central conflict; rather, it was more like a slice-of-life story. And those can be some of my favorite kinds of stories.

If, for example, the story had been about him either getting over his coach’s bad opinion of him, or maybe earning his coach’s respect by changing his attitude, or if it was about him facing the bullies and defeating them in some way, that could well have been a good story, but it would also have been typical, the usual conflict/resolution that of thing.

One example of a good slice-of-life movie that I like, that I even consider among my favorite movies, is from Studio Ghibli, Whisper Of The Heart. 

Like Shake Off The World, Whisper Of The Heart is a story following one character as she faces normal problems and challenges, and how she grows and matures over time. It’s not about the main character facing one big problem, such as one big villain or catastrophe or rival. In a way it’s a story that could be seen as a few smaller stories that hold up well together, though that description could make it seem loose-jointed, which it isn’t.

So, on the one hand, I want to give some respect to the writers of Shake Off The World for trying something different in this story. On the other hand, although it’s not all bad, it really does need some work.

Problems

What happened to football: The first half hour of the movie is heavily focused on football, with scenes of players in the locker room, scenes of players practicing, and not a few scenes of game action. The whole reason Austin transfers from one school to another is the hope that he can continue playing. But after the transfer, football completely disappears except for being mentioned a few times in conversations. Austin even seems less interested in football, which is never explained.

The name: I’m still not sure why this movie was called Shake Off The World. I know the Christmas program at the end of called Shake Off The World, but I’m not even sure why it was called that name. Nothing in the musical numbers performed had anything to do with shaking off the world.

Can he do that: I don’t know what the rules are for athletes in North Carolina schools, but it seems odd that Austin can quit one school and go to another, I’d guess in the same town or a very nearby one, and still be eligible to play sports on that new school’s team.

Character development: Let me go back to Whisper of the Heart for a moment. The strength of that movie is in seeing Shizuku’s character development. She starts the movie as a bit immature, though not so badly for her age, with a superior attitude toward some of her classmates and family. Her pride gets taken down a few notches, and her growing friendship and affection for a certain boy in her school who knows that he wants to become a violin maker leads her to want to stop drifting along and find her own skills and passion. By the movie’s end, she’s clearly matured.

On the other hand, Austin either doesn’t really have much character growth, or we aren’t shown it happening. Things happen to him, and he makes some interesting decisions, but he’s still very much the same character at the end as he was at the beginning. His seeming lack of interest in football toward the end of the movie could be considered character development, but it comes out of nowhere, without really any reason or explanation.

Even Austin’s sources of conflict are not given much screen time. His football coach doesn’t like him because he can be argumentative, but we are shown only one very brief incident of him arguing with the coach, and even that isn’t a very intense scene. His relationship with his mother is good from the start. His falling out with his first girlfriend is briefly shown but then nothing more comes of it as she splits from him and then disappears from the movie. Whether we see his story as character development or character reveal, we know almost everything we need to know about him early on, and there is no significant change or important reveal during the rest of the movie.

The season: This movie begins at the time the school year starts, which would have been in August, goes through the high school football season, and ends at a Christmas musical event, so probably some time in December. So, it starts in late summer, goes through the fall, and likely into early winter. Yet the movie looks as if it were all shot in the summer. Perhaps if the movie were set in, let’s say, some parts of Florida or Texas or Arizona, that would be believable, but being set in North Carolina, this is hard to buy into. The weather should have been cooler, there should have been trees turning and leaves falling. And at various times, especially in scenes in the town itself, there should have been Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas signs and decorations on display.

Along with that, there is nothing really Christmas-y about the youth group’s Christmas concert.

Theology: Because church stuff doesn’t really appear until over halfway through the movie, this isn’t a very theology-heavy movie; still, it is there, and it’s…odd.

At about 46:10, we get a small sermon snippet from the pastor of the church Austin has started going to:

I think faith is like a spice rack. A lot of times we have a lot of options. You have the different kind of spices and flavors in the world. We have ginger and basil, oregano and rosemary, sage and parsley and cinnamon. I love cinnamon. All these different kind of spices are available right in front of us, sitting right there on our spice rack. But when we’re cooking, half the time we forget that they’re even there. Oh, don’t get me wrong, we’re good at adding salt and pepper. It’s always the salt and pepper. And like I said, the spices are like faith, and sometimes we forget that we have them and that we can use them. We have variations of faith that we believe in and that we can use in any opportunity. But like the spices on the rack, we forget about them. And when we’re going into a tragedy like a death in the family or some situation that sometimes hard to bear on our own, we forget about the spices that are on the rack.

So, first, dealing with a spice rack simply as flavorings, as someone who does a bit of cooking myself, I’ll just say that I like to use a bit more than just salt and pepper, though those also have their place. So his point about me forgetting about the spice rack is rather lost on me, because I don’t.

Second, it should be noted that this little snippet has no scripture in it to support his idea about faith being like spices, or the idea that we have “variations of faith that we believe in and that we can use in any opportunity”. I can’t recall anything in the Bible about “variations of faith”, though I can be forgetful. Still, with no scripture to support the claim, I’m unclear why I should buy it.

In fact, it seems rather a needless distinction. We Christians have faith in God. What variations of faith can I have, when that faith has one focus?

The movie give us three musical performances from the Christmas program. One, a girl singing Amazing Grace, I’ll not say much about here. Amazing Grace is a solid song. The other two, though, need to be more closely looked at.

The first song is called “Good Morning” by Tiffany and David Spencer, and performed by Tiffany Spencer in this movie.

Perhaps my main problem with this first song is that it’s empty, it’s mostly just fluff and nonsense. It’s saying almost nothing worth hearing. You made it through another day? Well, congratulations, you’re like about 6 billion other people in the world.  You told the snow to flee? Maybe that explains why the weather in this movie is so summer-like right before Christmas. If you want to say something worth hearing, instead of some trite “I gave it to the Lord and he said it’s ok”, what about going into what it means to “cast all our cares on him, because he cares of you”, or what God told Paul concerning his thorn in the flesh, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my strength is made perfect in weakness”, and Paul’s response, “More gladly will I boast in my afflictions, for when I am weak, then I am strong”.

I don’t need some kind of trite “it’s ok” rah-rah message; I need a message with real substance; my soul doesn’t need cotton candy, but food with real spiritual nutrition to it. This song is just cotton candy, no substance at all.

The second song in question is “I’m On Top Of The World”, written and performed by Kendrix Singletary, and it is even worse.

If Spencer’s song says nothing, Singletary’s song says less than nothing. It’s basically just him going on about how good he feels and nothing is going to make him feel bad, keep your negativity to yourself, and somehow (for what I guess is a Christian song in a Christian movie) your drama is messing with my chi, and right now there’s nothing wrong with me. There is nothing Christian at all about this song.

There is nothing particularly Christian about feeling good. It’s not that feeling good is wrong, but stop pretending that Christianity is about feeling good, about being “on top of the world”, about not having problems because you pushed them all on to God. If you read the Bible, can you really say that any of the people written about in the Bible felt good all the time? If you read the Psalms, do you think the psalm writers always felt good?

There is a place for bad feelings. “Godly sorrow leads to repentance”, and that is a good thing, because there is always something wrong with us, we are sinners who have broken God’s laws countless times. “You are blessed when men revile you, persecute you, and speaking evil against you falsely, for my (Jesus’) sake.” “Those who endure to the end will be saved.” Christianity is very down-to-earth, even as it is also about setting our affections on things above and not on things of this earth.

And it would be wise to remember a few more things: we are disciples of Christ crucified, who suffered and bled and died for our sins, who lived as Isaiah described as “a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief”; we follow Christ in the footsteps of the Apostles, who themselves often suffered persecutions and rejections and martyrdoms; we follow Christ in the steps of almost 2000 years of persecution on the church, of people who were burned at stakes, of people who were imprisoned for their beliefs and who suffered in other ways.

It is trite and silly to try to sell Christianity as an “You’ll always feel good” religion. “You will be hated of all men for my (Jesus’) sake”. Even the process of discipleship is described by Jesus himself as being like taking up a cross, a particularly cruel form of execution.

The gospel: You can have a Christian story without a conversion scene, but if you do have a conversion scene in your story, you need to get the gospel right.

So, does this movie have a conversion scene? Really, I’m not sure what it has.

At about an hour and two minutes, there’s another sermon snippet, where the pastor is trying to get people to commit or recommit their lives to God. Austin, who apparently missed the rest of the sermon, walks in from the back of the auditorium and up to the front, then just stands there, and after a moment the church’s youth group, and a few random people, come up and put a hand on him while the preacher keeps speaking.

I’ll give the movie some credit here, because this is the prayer the preacher wants them to pray:

God, I know that I have sinned against you. But Jesus Christ took the punishment that I deserve, so that through faith in, I could be forgiven. I place my trust in you for salvation. Thank you for your wonderful grace and forgiveness, the gift of eternal life. 

So, there is some good stuff in this prayer, an admission of sins as well as the truth that Christ suffered and died in our place. A few things make this scene confusing, though.

One is that Austin is the focus of this “conversion scene”, yet in an earlier scene, one where he’s sitting with some friends from his old school telling them he wants them to help with the Christmas program, he says that he “recently joined a church a few months ago”. The phrase “joined a church” usually means someone has become a member of a church, though it’s ambiguous enough to have other meanings, too; perhaps Austin meant that he’d been with the youth group for a while and was fitting in well with them.

But he was also dating the girl from the youth group at this point in the movie, and they were getting close, yet if the church knew that he wasn’t yet converted, and if her family knew that (we don’t meet her family in the movie, but I’ll assume some family is in theory there), shouldn’t they have been warning her about getting close to a boy who didn’t yet share her faith? Shouldn’t they have been warning her about being unequally yoked with an unbeliever?

Ponderings

False advertising: This movie depicts the church’s youth group as some kind of ideal club, where a newcomer like Austin just fits right in without any problems, and even quickly finds a new girl after his old one breaks up with him. This youth group somehow puts on a Christmas program that looks maybe semi-professional, with lights and smoke machines and well-performed music, all while also being high school students who have to go to school and do homework and, presumably, be at football practice. The kids in this youth group are always super-nice to each other, there are no hurt feelings or other dramas. The movie is like a big advertisement saying “Church is perfect and will make your life better”.

Of course, everyone knows that’s not true, especially anyone in a church. So, why try to sell Christianity in that way? Isn’t that false advertising?

But worse than that is the theology in the Christmas program’s music, which is selling Christianity as a “feel good” religion—I’m on top of the world so keep your dramas to yourself ‘cause you’re messing with my chi, don’t be negative, and God’s going to take your problems and tell you it’s all ok. Believe me, when you leave that concert, your problems will still be there, things will happen that will make you feel bad, and these silly and trite songs will not help you one bit; however, know the God’s grace is enough for you, that God’s strength is made perfect in our weaknesses, that biblical truth can be a real help to us.

Shallow: This story is simply shallow. You have problems in school? Join the church’s youth group. Your girl friend/fiance just broke up with you? The church’s youth group has several young ladies waiting to meet you. You got big problems in your life? Break out your faith spice rack and try to find a kind of faith that will work for you. There is no depth to any of this.

Strange extra stuff: What was the point of the fireman’s race? Why was the Christmas program the big climax of the movie, especially since the main character Austin had almost nothing to do with it? Since Austin was a defensive player, why was so much of the football game action focused so much on the offensive, and why was so much football time spent on a bit character whose main contribution to the story is to keep having concussions whenever he’s hit? For that matter, shouldn’t someone encourage that player to stop playing, if he gets concussions that easily? Is it common for a high school junior, which I think Austin was in this story, to propose to his girlfriend, also a high school junior? What was the point of the fish bowl scene? Why bring in completely new people, people not previously in the movie, to perform at the Christmas program?

Conclusion

There are a few things I like about this movie, but several other things I don’t. The big concert-like not-Christmasy-at-all Christmas program is especially distasteful, with its silly and trite message of Christianity as a feel-good-all-the-time religion. I simply can’t give this movie a recommendation.

We can do better. We can do much better. We should do much better.

We can at least leave the unbiblical songs out of what would have otherwise been an acceptable, though still bad, movie.