God’s Not Dead!
Unfortunately, you wouldn’t be
able to tell that listening to or reading all the movie critics these days. There is a disconnect between Hollywood and the rest of us, it seems, that is actually bigger and broader once we look closer. Look no further than the critical vs. audience ratings for some recent Christian movies on the Internet Movie Database and Rotten Tomatoes. Here’s just a little chart to give us a
better view of this disconnect, featuring Combined Critical vs. Combined
Audience ratings on the Rotten Tomatoes Website for 4 recent biblically themed
films:
Christian
Based Movie
|
RT
Critic Rating
|
RT
Audience Rating
|
God’s
Not Dead
|
13%
|
85%
|
Son
of God
|
22%
|
76
%
|
Noah
|
77%
|
46%
|
Heaven
is for Real
|
49%
|
76%
|
And here’s a visual representation of
these ratings figures:
I find it interesting that the
Christian movie that audiences liked the most is the one critics hated, while
the one critics loved the most was the least favorite among general
audiences. Guess which one challenges
atheism the most? Now guess which one
was made by an atheist and is the least biblically accurate, but has the biggest budget and stars? If you guessed God’s Not Dead for the first
question and Noah for the second one, then you know your modern pop culture
landscape and how Christians fit in (or don’t fit in, as the case may be). You can clearly see from this little
experiment the animosity the entertainment elite has for followers of
Jesus.
And this is only one small blip in a vast sea of animosity. I need to pay more attention to
what’s going on in the world, and I need to
do a better job of fighting the good fight.
Those that preach tolerance only seem to preach tolerance for everything and everyone except God, the concept of
God, and those who believe in God (that is, outside of a general and flat spiritualism
that doesn’t upset the apple cart). And I’m
getting tired of it.
My bother Scott told me he feels like he should just “give up on the whole entertainment
industry." He's getting tired of the way they support only the far-left liberal views and demonize those on the right. It's there if you choose to look. So why support the media and the entertainment
industry if they don’t support us and our views? In a recent interview with that
paragon of virtue, Playboy Magazine, actor Ben Affleck admitted, “When I watch a guy I know is a big Republican, part of
me thinks, I probably wouldn’t like this person if I met him, or we would have
different opinions. That !@#$ fogs the
mind when you should be paying attention and be swept into the illusion.” Oh what a horrible thing, to have a differing
opinion and to be taken out of the moment by a conservative actor! “It’s hard,” he continues whining, “to get
people to suspend disbelief.” With
Hollywood actors being overwhelmingly liberal democrats, just think of how the
rest of us feel!
Then I have another friend who is a Christian, but only seems to see things in black and
white. She doesn’t see the spiritual war
taking place right before our eyes. To her, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion,
the Witch, and the Wardrobe was just a fantasy story, and when I explained the
deeper Christian meaning - how it was written by CS Lewis as Christian allegory, and how the lion Aslan is a Christ figure - it’s lost on her.
It’s just a fantasy movie, and all that other stuff is just a bunch of
malarkey, she says. Jesus spoke
in stories and parables with deeper meanings, and that she
understands. But apparently, in her view, the rest of us can only work upon the surface of things, and our stories
don't really have deeper meanings. It's just blunt
reality for some people, I guess, and I'm left wondering why she’s not an atheistic scientist with that unyieldingly cold view of the world.
But let
me tell you, there is more going on here.
Nothing is ever just on the surface. There are shades of grey and color everywhere! Life, and the stories of
life, and the stories we make up about life, are not just surface water. There is always something there beneath the
surface, and like Michelle Pfeiffer in the thriller What Lies Beneath, it is our job to dive deeper
and find out what's really down there! Why, even the latest movie we just watched, the romantic comedy Baggage Claim, had a lot of stuff going on under the surface, even for such a trite and forgettable slice of romantic life, and the characters who are portrayed as the likable, positive heroes are gay or sleeping around, and the villains are conservative republicans. Before the end of the film, the main character rebukes the advances of a conservative control freak climbing his way up the political ladder, and tells a room full of people that she doesn't trust black republicans. Tell me again how there's nothing going on underneath the surface!
I know it's a constant, ongoing battle, and I make wrong choices, but that doesn't mean that we just settle for whatever. It’s
time to be choosy. It’s time to pay more
attention. It’s time to be more
discerning - not less - and to fight the good fight. As a Christian, I see things I never saw there before, and make choices I wouldn't have made before, and have thoughts I otherwise wouldn't have had.
Like all other nations, this too is a nation of sinners - Jesus even said several times in the bible that Satan is the Prince of this world - and if we're not paying attention, Christians will lose this battle. Not the war - God will win the war - but Christians at least need to know what's going on, and to try to make the right choices - in everything.
I’m
speaking here about a lot more than just about those two Christian brothers,
the Benhams, who happen to hold traditional Christian views about the sanctity
of life and marriage, and the sinfulness of the homosexual lifestyle, and for
this, they were banned from HGTV. It had
nothing to do with their proposed house fixing show “Flip It Forward” before it
even got off the ground, and everything to do with their Christian beliefs. I say it’s time to peddle your show over at
UpTV or Hallmark Channel, guys! I don't even know the Benham brothers, but I can already say I like them, and admire them.
I can see it clearly. There
is a division happening in this country, and it’s a division that’s been
happening for a long time. There is more
than this, of course, but for the most part, there are two extremes: The liberal left and the conservative
right. And sooner or later, you are
going to find yourself somewhere in one of these two camps. Any other camps in this nation aren’t really
big enough to make that much of a difference, at least not right now, and aside from that,
most other camps fit in somewhere on one side of this fence or the other. For instance, the libertarians, who probably
like to say they straddle the fence, are actually on the right side of it,
because they have more conservative views.
Tell me what you believe, and I could tell you what side of the fence
you are on. The abortion debate is a
good example. If you believe in
abortion, you are on the left. If you
don’t, you are on the right.
Of
course, the big picture isn’t that cut and dried.
There are tons of people out there who profess a faith in Christ – implying
the conservative, biblical ideals of those on the right – who call upon that
faith as the reason they support leftist liberal causes, like Carrie Underwood
did with her Christian faith in support of the gay movement. These camps of ideals are actually rather
fluid things, and like anything else, there are as many exceptions to the
general rules as there are people on the planet. There are two ideologies at war with each
other here, and tiny little exceptions flourish.
Traversing
an ideological, political, and theological landscape like this isn’t easy, and
it can get confusing if we are not rock solid in our own beliefs and
ideals. It can get confusing even if we
ARE rock solid in our own beliefs and ideals (and who is really rock solid on
anything when, quite frankly, facts are not enough to explain everything, and beliefs are not
facts).
And
so, what I usually find myself doing, when I’m not hiding from all the political noise, is to find those nuggets of truth – and not just truth for me,
but universal truths that cannot be refuted (even though they so often are).
The writer or blogger I wish I could be like is
Matt Walsh. (See his website linked here.) I look upon Matt as a bit of
a personal hero since he sees the world the same way I do, but pays more
attention to what’s going on, and writes the way I wish I could write, in content, volume, and intelligent perception. And he doesn’t load
his blog down, like I love to do, with all those obsessive movie and TV reviews from an
entertainment world full of, as he calls them in his blog about the Benham
brothers and HGTV (linked here), “deviants, junkies, rapists, pedophiles, adulterers, and
crooks,” citing how the likes of Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Mike Tyson, and
Hugo Chavez are loved and adored by the Hollywood elite, no matter what they’ve
done, or might have done. To Hollywood,
it doesn’t matter. Well, it IS a
business, and they’ve got to sell their product. For the longest time, I’ve been buying, and
to just swear off it and stop buying is very difficult for a movie lover like
me. There will probably be more movie and TV reviews in this blog in the future, - including the near future - just because I love them so much. For instance, I loved recent movies such as About Time, Enough Said, God's Not Dead, The Last Station, and Ruby Sparks, because they were so well made and inventive. Yet it is also my duty as a Christian to be discerning, and to fight the good
fight – like Matt does. Because, like my brother Scott, I’m getting tired of the liberal attitude, and like Matt said in his
blog about the Benham brothers, there
are more of us than there are of them, even though they are the Elite who run
everything, and we are getting tired of being lied to by “a bunch of
politically correct, bigoted, mewing, leftwing carnival barkers.” It kind of reminds me of the way the Egyptians kept the Israelites in slavery, even though the Israelites outnumbered them. “In a country of filth,” Matt concludes, “the
only thing you can’t be is pro-life and pro-marriage. Enough of this, already. It’s time to stop playing nice with these
people.” Well said, Matt! That’s the attitude we should have, and need
to have, as conservative - yes, even loving - Christians!
Jesus loved everyone, but if you spend any amount of time in the Gospels at all, you also realize He wasn't afraid to stand up to dissenting voices. "Playing nice" doesn't mean that we should just shut up and sit down and accept everyone and every situation, and don't rock the boat. It means you stand up for those who are being persecuted. Why, this is the liberal's very playbook! The reason they're liberals is to "liberate" the persecuted, apparently, but these days, this noble cause has turned into race baiting and an agenda of Political Correctness and Big Government and victimhood, and whoever cries the loudest gets the microphone, and my, those conservative Christian republicans are a bunch of backwards meanies, aren't they? Yet when these "victims" suddenly find themselves with power, then they become the persecutors, silencing the "intolerant" Christians - like what happened to the Benham brothers. It shows, as I said above, that as this division cuts deeper, people, individual and collective, will have to make a choice about which side they want to be on. HGTV chose the left. They chose to make a big stink about the Benham brothers professing their faith, as Jesus calls them to do.
Jesus called out the sinners. He may love them and teach them and be their friend, but he also realizes they are committing sin. They are sick, and He is their doctor, who came to heal them. He even said as much when he stated, "Healthy people don't need a doctor - sick people do." - Matthew 9:12 NLT
And now, as followers of Jesus, we must go and do likewise.
And as it was for Jesus in His time, the world will hate us, because we "accuse it of doing evil." - John 7:7
In fact, if you are Christian, and you are loved and adored by this world... I don't know. Maybe you're doing something wrong!
