There’s no doubt in my mind that Kirk Cameron is a real hero. Anyone that is THAT on fire for the Lord is a
real hero in my book, particularly if they hail from Hollywood!
This doesn’t mean, as is
true of any person, Christian or otherwise, that he can’t sometimes become his
own worst enemy, I suppose. His recent
documentary Unstoppable was marketed
as an amazing personal journey that was not to be missed, and Kirk certainly
tackled a great question, the very question that, as he explains in the
documentary, turns Christians into atheists, or worse, and it came on the heels
of Kirk experiencing a devastating loss amongst a small group of devout
Christian friends when a loving 15 year old boy finally died of cancer. With access to Liberty University’s new
Cinematic Studies department and students, Kirk decided to tackle the question
of how God can allow evil and suffering in the world, with a strong emphasis on
the stories of Adam and Eve, Cain and Able, and Noah and the Flood, backed up
with recreations of some of these stories with Kirk’s voice over. The problem is the same problem I run across
with many Christian products – if it’s about God, it should be better, but it
so often is not. The renditions of the
stories of Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel were – this is the only word that
seems to fit the visuals I saw – “disturbing”.
They looked like something out of a strange horror film, with Adam being
born from mud, and Eve being taken from his side, and then being tempted by a humanoid
serpent, and Cain’s murder of Abel being quite bloody and violent. Kirk talks about God’s role as all this drama
unfolded, making skins to cover Adam and Eve before expelling them from
paradise, or putting a mark on Cain to keep anyone else from murdering him, but
allowing him to live. His point is that
God showed compassion in all of this sin and misery to those who committed
these crimes, but I don’t think he was clearly able to make his case for how
God allows evil and suffering into the world.
Dinesh D’Souza tackled the same question in his book Godforsaken, and used for his catalyst
the Anthropic principle of the fine tuned universe, and how there was really no
other way God could have created the universe without making us in His image
and giving us free will. I was very
impressed with D’Souza’s argument and book, and that’s basically what I was expecting
when I went to this movie. Instead, I
got a rather meandering sermon, heightened with unsettling recreations of old
biblical stories, and in the end, even the narrator says the question mark
remains (though for him personally, it has changed into an exclamation
point). With this film, audiences got a
message from the mournful friend of a grieving family doing his best to make
sense of a tragedy, but he wound up preaching only to the choir, and still did
not provide a complete answer the question he tackled. If I were going to do the same thing, I would
have tackled the issue from the same standpoint that Dinesh did, using the
Anthropic principle. In my opinion, that’s
the real key to answering that question!
And aside from the live pre-show from Liberty University, the film
clocked in at one hour tops. You’re not
going to be able to answer such a question in an hour, no matter who you might
have working behind the camera!
Still, even though the product may not be all we hoped it
to be, the fact that an old Hollywood heartthrob is on fire for God and even
attempting to make such a product is amazing and praise-worthy! I've seen Kirk Cameron listed on the internet as one of the top out-of-touch former Hollywood stars or has-beens (see links here, here, and here). Truthfully, he should wear such a moniker as a badge of honor, knowing the
people and projects Hollywood chooses to embrace these days! What THEY label as out-of-touch and strange, the
Christian heartland embraces. The truth
is, as Kirk said in the live pre-show for his movie, Hollywood doesn’t know
what to do with him. Even for a
documentary that Kirk himself called simply his “personal journey” and that
was, in all reality, a glorified church sermon, the Christians stood up for it
and went to this live event in droves, which, according to this recent Facebook
post, broke all kinds of records:
See the following links for more on Unstoppable:
Boy, the pukes that dissed Kirk in the "out-of-touch former Hollywood stars or has-beens" sure were vile. I agree with you, having that "brain trust" of "never-beens" in opposition to him IS a badge of honor in my book.
ReplyDeleteOne of those pukes was his TV dad Alan Thicke. Look up up his real son Robin Thicke's "Blurred Lines" video on YouTube sometime to find out what THEY are all about: degrading women and treating them as objects and sexual conquests!
ReplyDeleteThe one pornocizing miley on stage, right? Alan must be proud. I use people like them as reverse barometers for Identifying what is good, just, right, acceptable, etc. - if they recommend it... I don't want anything to do with it. And anything they're against has intrinsic value to me automatically.
ReplyDeleteYou and I are on the same page Scott!
ReplyDelete