Jesus was a revolutionary. What he taught turned the ancient world on its head. We can’t imagine believing what the ancients believed about the value of life, foregiveness, freedom, and equality---there were none. Western civilization is based on Christ’s teachings. Even if you are an atheist you believe in them. They are baked in our Constitution. And the early Christian church was the place where education, and care for the sick and poor happened, not the government. Government has usurped these roles as it shoved God into a corner. Look where that has gotten us. I am glad to see some in Hollywood are taking Jesus out of that corner and rediscovering his love and healing. We need them desperately.
Some of that is true, but it is also true that for much of western history heresy laws were in place to intimidate people from publicly disagreeing with Christian teachings or speaking out against the church. The reach and power of the faith was built on 1500+ years of repression. I'm not anti-Christian, but that truth has to be recognized.
As was/is Islam. As was Zoroastrianism. As was Roman religion. As was Shintoism. The common thread is not a particular religion, but the injection of humans into the equation. Read the texts underlying Christianity, do some homework, and seek God and you can easily get past the attempt of humanity to leverage it for there own means and find the beautiful truth of the Gospel.
As wasn't Roman religion. They were quite open to any god and their followers. Provided you acknowledged the emperor and their cult the Romans would reciprocate. Even the Jews were fine; they had a treaty that acknowledged and accommodated them. It was only when they succumbed to following swivel-eyed loons zealous for the Torah that Rome curtailed their privileges after three near-genocidal wars.
ALL organizations are repressive in nature! They need not be religious, they can be governmental or social. They ALL promote themselves and do everything possible to cement their places in power. Christianity is NOT "The Church" as an organization, although any body or gathering of believers ARE the church, the ecclesia (called out ones), it is composed of individuals who are trying to live out their faith and are trying to reconcile their place in society against the forces of a secular environment.
It is when religious groups corporatize and consolidate and seek governmental approval that the basic conflicts of power retention come into play. These film companies are not "saviors", they are just giving a large portion of the public what they want to see, films that affirm their place in a society that has not been solicitous to their wants and "needs", entertainment-wise.
Would that we could go back to having laws enforcing good ideology instead of the present state of affairs, where governments punish dissent against horrible ideology.
Regardless, Christianity does not require such laws, and it's foolish to ignore that distinction.
Actually, Western civilization is just as based on the ancient Greeks as Christ. Jesus didn't invent the concept of equality or democracy. The Greeks practiced both hundreds of years earlier. Granted, it was imperfect, it didn't apply to certain groups, but our Constitution excluded certain groups, too (i.e. blacks, women, white men who didn't own property.)
Les, it’s even earlier, I think than that, as the Israelites were commanded to leave the corners of their fields and some of what they dropped while harvesting to the poor and widowed. No stumbling blocks before the blind, etc. As I said before, Jesus was a Jew. His teachings are Jewish, his first followers were all Jews, etc. Only when the adult men revolted against circumcision was that commandment dropped.
Excuse me? Jesus was a revolutionary? Do you mean because he was Jewish? After the fall of the 2nd Temple, there were all sorts of Jewish revolutionaries, too bad Jesus wasn’t. Learn the history of the time.
While I would certainly agree Christianity has played a significant role in 'Western' civilization, I would disagree with the sentiment that it serves as a foundational tenant. I would argue that core 'Western' ideals like free speech, individual rights, and basic democracy run counter to the historical framework with which Christianity operated for most of its 2,000 history. I mean, up until a few hundred years ago most Western cultures were steeped in the kind of religious and royal absolutism that, for instance, did not allow for one to publicly speak their mind on anything that ran counter to the Church's teachings. Or believe in any kind of personal 'right' that was not granted by king or faith. And one certainly couldn't entertain the idea of a government structure in which officials were universally elected by the masses...it was the Church's way or the highway.
If anything, the Enlightenment, which is arguably the single greatest influence on modern Western democracies, can more accurately be seen as a backlash and revolt to the dominance of divine rule up until that point. And while things like care for the sick and poor were things that the Church certainly undertook and were known for, it didn't invent empathy and kindness and mercy...and it certainly doesn't have some kind of monopoly on those things. Human beings have been kind and caring to each other since we were hunting mammoths with spears, and even a concept as fundamentally human as love exists completely independent to faith in a divine creator.
"We can’t imagine believing what the ancients believed about the value of life, foregiveness, freedom, and equality---there were none. Western civilization is based on Christ’s teachings. Even if you are an atheist you believe in them."
We don't have to imagine, though, do we? We can read the Greek philosophers, or see what the Jews thought about it (you know, those Ten Commandments?) And even before Moses, do you really think that people had no concept that stealing, lying, murdering, committing adultery etc were perfectly acceptable behaviours? "Aw, Moses—you mean we can't kill each other any more?" It seems rather strange, does it not, that the God-given morals all align with those of the evolutionary self-interest of our genes, which promote any behaviour that makes them more likely to be passed on. If you think about it hard enough, it is in my self-interest to be charitable, kind, compassionate etc to my fellows. This is surprising to the religious, but mundane to evolutionary biologists.
No, Christopher, for NCMaureen, Jesus created everything and there is no morality without Jesus. Which is odd, because based on her comments about "the others" who are not like her, she's about as far removed from Jesus as one can get.
Actually people worshipped strength. The men who could conquer the most, kill the most, and horde the most were exalted as god kings. Those who were poor or helpless were despised and thought worthy of scorn. A modern example is the caste system of india (an ancient holdover). The Dalit are seen as untouchable bc they had bad karma in a previous life, therefore they DESERVE to be treated like trash and deserve their place in the lowest caste. This mode of thought was common throughout the ancient world. The weak deserved to be killed bc the gods of the victors were stronger. The ensalved concubine was dirty and thus deserving of scorn, despite the fact she was a slave. The rich were better than the poor. This was the way of the world. Jesus totally inverted that moral hierarchy and revolutionized the ethics of the human race
Hmmm...I guess if all these Christian churches were doing all this stuff, we wouldn't need government at all, would we?
Maybe the white evangelicals got so distracted with fighting against integration and abortion that they've dialed down their social service/community efforts?
Still far more charitable per capita than non religious people and not just in terms of tithing but towards all causes, in both dollars and hours donated
“What’s happening in Hollywood may not be a great Christian awakening”
One is certainly justified in doubting that what’s happening is a religious awakening. I’d argue further that they aren't even awakening to the fact that their movies suck. What finally seems to have aroused them from their great awOkening is their accountants screaming that ticket receipts say their movies suck.
The most successful movies from Hollywood’s golden era may not have been overtly religious but the bible’s tenets; courage, love, fidelity, sacrifice and yes, salvation were certainly woven into their narratives. Unfortunately, Hollywood has become a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, dominated by what some might refer to as false gods whose main tenets are cowardice, hatred, infidelity, greed and damnation. And as everyone who attended bible school knows, that didn’t work out too well for the original’s inhabitants
"Unfortunately, Hollywood has become a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, dominated by what some might refer to as false gods whose main tenets are cowardice, hatred, infidelity, greed and damnation."
It always was that to a degree. See L.A. Confidential, (for a lighter view) Get Shorty.
A little melodramatic, I think. Hollywood's number one priority is making money, which is true of any business anywhere. Do you condemn oil and gas, Wall Street, and the gun industry with equal gusto? You might think Hollywood films are trash, but at least they don't poison the environment, tank the economy, or enable school shootings.
Hollywood violence and mockery of families and religion and even patriotism has probably done more to undermine this country’s ethical foundations than any other industry. Hollywood has long glorified gratuitous violence - no industry has done MORE to enable school shootings.
In earlier generations, gun ownership was higher, yet this kind of alienated violence was all but unheard of. The difference? TV and movies were tasteful and discrete, yet made their points beautifully without the need to resort to cheap graphic excess. In the rest of the world, the level of violence on TV and movies shown here in the U.S. is often not allowed to be shown. As a result, the violence we’ve grown inured to is extremely rare elsewhere. As you correctly point out, “Hollywood ‘s #1 priority is making money”. Hollywood, more than any other single industry, is responsible for today’s gratuitous violence.
So you're saying Hollywood, which deploys fake guns, does more to enable school shootings than the gun industry, which supplies the real ones? Other countries see the same violent Hollywood movies we do (it's a global business), but have nowhere near our level of gun violence.
The real difference is we have more guns than people. More guns equals more gun deaths. That's just simple math, and we're doing very little to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, even when their mental health issues are well-documented. Depending on the state, we're neither not passing laws to address this or not enforcing the laws we do have.
Old movies were tasteful and discreet? Maybe. They still had plenty of people shooting each other. The most popular movie genre of the 1930s was the gangster film, and shoot-em-up John Wayne was an A-list star for over 40 years. The only difference is the level of gore. But movies are largely about spectacle. Movies got more graphic because audiences got more sophisticated. It takes an unusual sort of young person to sit them down to watch a film from the 30s and not have them be bored to tears.
To your first point, behind every sick crime is the mind that selects a weapon to inflict harm. Of course Hollywood doesn't hand out weapons, it just normalizes gratuitous violence - far more dangerous. I already addressed the # of guns issue, and anyone in law enforcement will tell you most violent crimes are committed by a very small group of individuals. I do believe crimes that involve guns should carry very heavy prison sentences, and that access to weapons should be restricted for individuals with a history of mental health issues. As you say, we're definitely not enforcing the laws on the books and - surprise - we're getting more violence. I didn't touch on social media, because Hollywood was the forerunner, but it is clearly playing a role, especially with impressionable adolescent minds.
The level of gore is indeed dramatically different than before, but I think you're the first person to suggest that a desire for graphic violence is "sophisticated". As for our children being "bored to tears" by a lack of violence, well wouldn't that just be terrible.
Ha ha ha. By "experienced," I just meant, "harder to fool." The magic of movies is to temporarily make you think these are real things happening to real people. As we've grown collectively more experienced as moviegoers, more "realism" is required. Not that all Hollywood violence is realistic. It just means that when somebody gets shot, we expect to see blood, even blood splatter because that's what happens when a metal projectile slams into you. Fight choreography has to be faster and tighter. Sex scenes have to involve more than two bizarrely motionless people laying on top of each other.
As for being bored by lack of violence, it wasn't the lack of violence so much as I think it's be very challenging to get your average 17-year-old to sit down and watch a Charlie Chaplin movie, especially during the silent era.
Why in the world would I condemn "oil and gas," as they are the industries responsible for creating the food that machines eat, which powers literally every other industry on the planet? Unless you're personally willing to go live and work on an 18th-century self-sustaining farm, you might want to re-think that particular perennial boilerplate leftist gripe.
I'm not asking you to condemn anything. I wasn't talking to you. I was specifically addressing someone else's comment that called Hollywood "Lucifarian," (don't believe that's even a word but I get the gist) because they prioritized profit over morality. I was simply pointing out that specifically condemning Hollywood for doing what every other industry does is a little strange, especially since Hollywood's product doesn't damage anyone's physical or financial health.
The difference would be that Hollywood is producing a spiritual product, one that cannot help but promote certain attitudes and behaviors. Whereas those other industries you name produce a material product, not that that doesn't have possible downsides but it's a different deal.
Mel Gibson is a women-hating, anti-Semitic, unChristian fanatic, so I wouldn't ask him anything. And yes, there are good people in Hollywood, but they are at heart hard core capitalists, just like execs at the oil companies, etc, and their bottom line is always the bottom line.
Hollywood is the enemy of decency. Last night I watched part of the Mel Gibson movie trending on Netflix right now, up through the bank scene. I was so disturbed that I couldn't sleep and cancelled my subscription. I watched 9 seasons of Walking Dead and thought I was fairly desensitized to extreme violence, but the way this scene was written to manipulate the viewer was unrestrained evil.
Oh no doubt. It’s all profit. But who cares what the intention is. Hollywood, like politics, works best when it gives people some version of what they want, versus what they want them to want. If the Taliban started pumping out profitable movies Hollywood would line up to distribute them.
God is outside of time and He'll take as long as needed. How are we to shape or predestine the plan of God?
As a Catholic Christian, I need to be prepared for Jesus' return but if it doesn't happen in my lifetime, I need to do everything possible to see Him in heaven.
Hollywood means nothing to me. Everyone will face God whether you believe or not. I'd rather believe and live like I do.
Here's a quote from the attached article which you might find interesting: "God’s eternity does not go by with the time of the created world. “It does not coincide with the present.” It does not precede it or “prolong” it into infinity. . . .He is eternal because he is the absolute fullness of being which cannot be understood as a sum of fragments or of “particles” of being which change with time. The texts quoted from the Bible clearly indicate this."
It should be a lesson for anyone in the creative realm. When you suppress someone you don't just lose a part of them - you lose all of them.
The older I get, the more I realize that you can't really "know" anyone - you can only get a glimpse of their life and what they have experienced. The hardest thing for me to do is slow down, shut up and listen.
We love atheists. At least you have thought about it, most haven’t and don’t. I only ask people to honestly consider a Jesus, read the Gospels and contemplate the choice.
I really don't give a tihs about what anyone else believes or considers, as long as they don't get in the way of me believing and considering what I want to (and that I do likewise). The Truth will out, as Shakespeare said - whatever.
If a message is true and strong, it will resonate - it's not the messenger or messengers that need to resonate (not restricted to religion! :-)
Historians who study such things have said that humans have a "god hole" which we fill with something. If you look back thousands of years you will find some sort of religious ritual going on whether it is the worship of the sun, the moon, etc. We moderns are not really atheists - we have just tried to fill the "god hole" with other things to worship - success, money, sex, food, etc - things that in the long run don't really work.
Just for fun, Dorothy, what do you imagine I worship to fill my 'God hole'? And while we are at it, can you say that filling the hole with 'God' works 'in the long run'? OK, it works for you up until death...
I'm teasing you, gently, I hope. So far, I'm just happy no one has said they will pray for me. I did have to learn a coping technique for that. When I left my thirty year general practice in a rural community when I developed leukemia, many said they would pray for me. They meant well, and knew full well I was an atheist. I ended up saying, "Thanks, I'll take all the help I can get." Manners provide answers. This atheist is pretty happy in his foxhole.
When my wife was diagnosed with cancer, numerous members of her Radiology group which included Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus all offered prayers for her. We're both Christians, but our response was the same as yours.
Manners! Cost nothing, but are in short supply. I have a elderly Jehovah Witness lady who stops by about once a month. Is she trying to convert me? Yep! Does it bother me? Nope! I'm secure in my views and she's secure in hers. First 10 minutes we talk about passages in the Bible. The rest of the time, it's just two humans connecting.
I was an atheist for over a decade but then I started dating a man of faith. It caused me to go back and reconsider my position. If you’re at all, interested in a different point of view, The case for Faith, by Lee Strobel is a good place to start.
Christopher, as a fellow atheist I can only agree. Christians can make whatever the hell (pun not intended) they want. It is indeed, freedom of speech. But it doesn't always work the other way around.
Interesting, as I recall, the howls and anger emanating from the hallowed halls of Christianity not at all tolerating the (slightly!) different take on Jesus in Scorsese's "The Last Temptation Of Christ..'
I guess there's only so much freedom of speech entrenched orthodoxy can take.
The problem with putting people into the "All" category is that you forget the individual. Which makes it easier for you to dismiss, ignore, and deride them. It's so much easier to put the "All" labels on individuals whose values you will never know because they are part of the "All"
Scorsese had every right to make the film, you are certainly correct. But in the vociferous protestations from religious entities at that time, that small detail was never endorsed. The book the film was based on was banned by Christian groups worldwide.
I'm also an atheist, or at least that's the closest to an "ist" I am, and I truly back all freedom of speech come all directions, including Christians with whom I was raised. Since these movies are making a profit it sounds like a great business model.
I appreciate the article, and I agree that Jesus Revolution is a step forward. But there’s still a giant problem with Christian, or faith-based, content.
It’s not just that it’s bad. God’s Not Dead was bad, and so was Facing the Giants and Fireproof and The War Room. It was actually a little shocking to see the creator you quoted marking God’s Not Dead as a breakthrough. It was really really bad.
I had been writing as a hobby, and when I saw God’s Not Dead with my youth group, I literally thought, “well, if this is what Christians make as art, I don’t think I can be both a writer and a Christian. I guess I’ll have to pick.”
The most important point is not simply that Christian content has a history of being bad. It’s that the content is bad because it’s dishonest. Freshmen don’t lead their professors to Jesus three weeks into class, and that professor doesn’t give up class time to argue with a student. Marriages don’t always work out.
Jesus Revolution gets close, and it’s a step in the right direction, but it still has giant swaths of dishonesty. Lonnie Frisbee had a lifelong struggle to reconcile his faith with his homosexuality, and died of AIDS. Chuck Smith’s church split after he predicted the end of the world would come one New Year’s Eve.
Honesty makes the story better, not worse. The Chosen is a good example. As is Scorsese’s Silence. It magnifies God more, as the brokenness that He steps into is far greater than we can imagine. Faith-based movies will always make money, because our folk turn out to see content that finally addresses them. But will they ever be actually good? Make an impact beyond the people like us in the theater?
Not until they’re honest.
My take on Jesus Revolution and Christian dishonesty can be found here.
"Chuck Smith’s church split after he predicted the end of the world would come one New Year’s Eve."
Interestingly, Greta Thunberg simply deleted her June 21, 2018 tweet that humanity would be wiped out if fossil fuels were not phased out in 5 years. Her church didn't split, despite the science
That’s exactly the point. Who on earth thought it would be edifying to have a child lecture adults on matters of complex and nuanced science and policy? I’m an experienced environmental scientist and was appalled when this kid was trotted out by some environmentalist activists as an oracle to behold.
Deb, an honest mistake? Wouldn't you agree that if it were an *honest* mistake, Thunberg would be looking around right now at her fellow climate catastrophists and saying, "Gee guys, we were really, really wrong about all those doomsday predictions we made five years ago. And come to think of it, all those earlier predictions of death and famine from the 90s, 80s, and--golly, look at this--even the 70s turned out to be wrong. And not a little wrong, either; like, REALLY wrong. Since we're all honest people who have been making mistakes here, let's turn off the rhetoric, stop commanding people to revert to an 18-century level of living standards, and let's do this all publicly, until we can reassess our models and our thinking, and work to arrive at an honest conclusion. You know, since we're all honest folks just trying to save people. Tell ya what, I'm just going to hop on Twitter right now and announce these plans to the world."
Of course she's not doing any of that. She's a professional doomsday alarmist. She grifts a living wagging her finger at self-immolating, guilt-stricken people too ashamed to praise the standard of living that allows them to live well into their 80s and 90s. None of it is honest, and none of it is a mistake. It's quite deliberate.
A child in 2018 who could address the United Nations and hector the most impoverished parts of the world, including rural China, to stop fossil fuels regardless of what that would do to their living standards.
Honest mistake? Not good enough when the consequences can be so vast.
Please make sure that your Christian movies are actually Christian and not Jewish! Come on, it’s 2023 and you do not know the difference? Or are you simply being antisemitic by taking Jewish content and calling it Christian?
We are talking about Silence, a movie about Jesuit missionaries. My original post was about Jesus Revolution, a movie about a Christian revival in the 60s.
If you are referring to Jesus in general. You are right to laud him as a Jew. Paul as well.
But there are many verses in the New Testament about Christ uniting Jews and Gentiles in faith. He did it in his death too, in that the Jewish and Roman authorities both had a hand in his execution. By extension all of us, our Sunday school teachers would say. I think Christ does something new with both Judaism and Roman authority worship. And Judaism is essential to understanding the New Testament and the person of Jesus.
I would return your questions with a question. Do you have interest in a discussion about Jewish/Christian theology, or do you simply want to accuse likeminded people of anti-semitism in the comments because you don’t have anything to add to that discussion or have you just not seen the movies in question?
Silence was adapted from Shusaku Endo’s book of the same name. Endo was a Japanese Catholic writer.
I grew up Christian. Read his book, Samurai while in the military stationed in Japan around 2002. First time I’d read anything “Christian” not written by an American (not counting the Bible). Got me to see the faith from a very different perspective. Worth a read.
This is very well-put! (And your article has me thinking we might be “kindred spirits.”) I’ve always thought Christian movies tended to be “cheesy” and “hokey” ( although, I CAN BE a sucker for “feel good” viewing.) I think your point about honesty nails it. We are all broken; the gospel of Christ is that meeting us in our mess, that gory reality that by an instrument of torture and the way of sacrifice are we made whole AND taking that way of life is how we’re most fully alive. (Not a popular message in our be-whatever-you-FEEL-will-make-you-happy cultural atmosphere.) This is why I often find that movies that are compelling in their dealing the realities of life and the beauty of transformation often come from people who are (or were) Catholic. Catholicism emphasizes “the way of the cross” and “the Suffering Servant” more than in evangelical circles. (Scorcese fits that description.)
God's Not Dead couldn't have been any worse if they tried. Agree with you on that one. And anything with Kirk Cameron in it is utterly unwatchable. But I thought Facing the Giants had some lovely moments.
It would be great to see a movie about Lonnie Frisbee, but Jesus Revolution is primarily based on Greg Laurie's autobiography and his life intersected only briefly with Frisbee.
I agree with you but I think the purpose of these movies is Hallmark-happy-endings and people are craving that right now. It’s no surprise producers are dialed into the social mood (Maverick was timed perfectly) Even though laying all the honesty cards on the table might make a more realistic story, most people don’t want to watch movies that force them to examine their own failings so we get happy escapism.
I think you’re right, and that’s why they continue to make money. It’s just that when they make money, and fill that need for people to escape, they also make Christianity more into a kitschy subculture, and keep Christians in the safety of their upper room insttead of our in the world.
So I guess it’s a trade off, and I write for free on Substack rather than for millions at box offices, so maybe I don’t know that much. But in my eyes, the cultural trade off isn’t worth it.
These are really good points. After I saw the film I looked into the history as well. But I’m not sure those facts were relative to that particular part of the story which was mostly about the struggle with the current youth movement of the ‘60s vs their parent’s generation. But I agree that telling a story honestly is essential , as is just good storytelling in general. I look forward to reading your Substack!
Thanks for your comment and for reading! I think my gripe is that they never seem to be relevant in Christian content. When stories leave out parts of the whole, and storytellers leave out really human details, the stories lose their magic. It feels like writers and storytellers leave out details like this, or more to your point choose to tell stories that don’t need any rough details so as not to offend Christians. Speaking for my lot, most of us aren’t as easily offended as people think, and want to see our God work in the hard parts of the world.
I am comforted knowing a man who was capable of as much power and good as Lonnie Frisbee had a lifel long struggle, a thorn in his side as Paul might say. God’s strength in his weakness and all that.
Movies never do the book justice either. You are just using real life as a parallel to movies from books. But I think your point is important for another reason. We are being groomed(?)/conditioned(?)/ trained(?) to accept that bad character negates good deeds, i.e. Thomas Jefferson, Donald Trump, and others being discredited currently. That is not true. We cannot afford to overlook good actions because they were done by someone we disapprove of. Humans exist in a state of moral struggle. All humans. For the ones thinking "[N]ot me[!]" right now, it is probably pride. Rather than thinking ewww I don't like him/her when we hear about something we should think wow I am surprised because I don't like him/her generally but that is great.
I like that. I think it cuts both ways as well. Not being able to admit when someone does wrong because we like them or because we agree with them. Another spectrum.
Exactly. I have always thought that was one of the major takeaways. That "[To err is human, to forgive is divine[.]" thing. Couple that with being made in His image and striving to be like Him, by being forgiving for example, and voila we have a winning formula.
I know, what a novel idea! Admit when we're wrong.Ask for forgiveness when we hurt someone, receive forgiveness from someone who hurt you. Be kind, be humble. Be of service to others.
You know what I want? I want Christian movies where characters have to deal with real stuff that’s presented in real ways. If a character could be reasonably expected to swear in real life, I want them to swear. I want highly religious characters to be human, with human flaws, and have interests beyond leading prayer groups or praising Jesus. I want characters to deal with things that are truly dark and/or complicated. From my limited exposure to Christian films, the characters don’t act like real people.
Interesting. I've asked my born-again friends if Jesus had to use the restroom or have sexual desire or get a cold etc. They always answer yes of course. Why because he was a man.
Yep. That’s what always bugs me about some Christmas carols - newborn baby Jesus is sleeping peacefully, making no noise, et cetera. Nope - if he was a human newborn, he was breastfeeding every couple of hours, crying, and pooping out black tar-like poop.
“It was actually a little shocking to see the creator you quoted marking God’s Not Dead as a breakthrough. It was really really bad.”
The author said it was a ‘financial breakthrough’ and no words about those movies being any good.
Im thankful for your comment because I’ve been making a list of movies mentioned in the article and comments. Your comment made me go back and read the article again and helped me to remember that nuance is important!
Maybe I will watch God’s Not Dead, but with your review in my head that if I think it stinks I don’t have to watch to the end for any moral redemption! (Like I just did watching The Banshees of Inisherin. Horrible, horrible)
The Banshees of Irisherin was unpleasant to watch, like a train wreck. I appreciate what they seemed to be trying to do, which was, "what if Ireland's Troubles were an argument between two men? Wouldn't that be the most fvcked up thing ever?"
I’m not much of a movie goer- not much really interests me that’s showing. But I’m a Christian and it’s fun to go out with your church friends/family to watch an uplifting movie together - even if it’s not terribly high brow.
And sure there was “more to the story “ in The Jesus Revolution; it tells the story of real people who had other facets to them. If filmmakers try to go into all the backstories , it would be a really long movie.
While growing up in the 70's and 80's, my best friend's father made movies for a Christian film company called Ken Anderson Films. These were movies that were mainly shown in churches. I have wanted to see them present day, wondering how my adult mind would find the quality. So far, no one seems to have adapted them for the internet.
“there’s still a giant problem with Christian, or faith-based, content”. Dude, there’s a giant problem with Christians in general. I think the last number I saw was there are 20,000 different Christian-based sects. That alone is enough to cause problems for people. It’s one Bible! Why so many different versions of Christianity?
It’s the theological problem of the individual versus the collective, we call it the Church with a big C. There are as many different versions of Christianity as there are individuals. And yet one Lord, one Church, one baptism. Complicated, but I think both things are true. There are many different “sects” and even more ideas about Christ. And yet, the Church is one. A paradox.
The Orthodox think they are the real church. The Catholics think they're the real church because the Orthodox don't follow the Catholic pope. The Protestants I grew up with considered nobody Christian but Protestants, and often not even them if their beliefs were 'wrong'. None of those think Mormons or Jehovah's witnesses are Christians. It gets even weirded when you get into smaller sects, like Hawaiians who combined Christianity with Pele worship so Protestants can't decide of they heathen or Saved.
Personally I think Christianity is extremely radical as Jesus teaches it, and I've probably only met a few genuine Christians in my life. Anyone who's concerned about their house, job, food or clothing doesn't qualify for me, myself included.
I simply mean the Church as the apostles talk about it. They considered those who believe in Jesus and follow him to be the church. And I said the church is one because that’s a quote from scripture. So by the theology of the New Testament, some orthodox adherents are Christians. Some Catholics, some Protestants.
It always strikes me how radical and anti-family Jesus is as depicted in the four gospels. Then Paul comes along - a guy a generation or more later who never met the man - and back-pedals it into an administrative organized religion. "Christian" is literally a misnomer. The vast majority are followers of Paul. But "Paulians" doesn't work.
Administration is little developed in those Paulines taken to be genuine; unlike the very highly developed Christology you find. Of what organisation there is, Apostles are foremost and foremost of the Apostles? One Junia, a woman.
The developed admin you are thinking of is found in the fraudulent pseudographs like Timothy that make up two thirds of the collection.
Because every Christian has a personal relationship with Christ and as such are on their own path to Him. Some do it in collaboration with a formal organization but many do not.
It's not just one Bible, the Catholics and Orthodox include different books than the Protestant version, which itself is a collection of I think 66 books spanning a couple thousand years or so.
And of course, there are a multitude of interpretations of those books. Couldn't tell you how many various criteria for "salvation" I have heard over the years.
You cannot understand Western civilization/culture without a solid knowledge of the Bible. It should be TAUGHT for historical/literary(not religious) reasons in public school. If you were to “study” and understand Saudi Arabia and ignore the Koran you would be foolish indeed
In addition to overt Christian films, Christian themes are evergreen for artistic expression: faith, love, redemption, devotion.
I had an English professor who was a feminist and a Buddhist, but she said it was important to read the Bible cover to cover because without it one couldn’t really understand British literature.
I think, as well as reading the Classics, this applies to Western Civilization as a whole, which is one of the reasons things are falling apart so rapidly.
I went to a well-known college (hint: it was attended by two First Ladies) and people in my English classes had the hardest time recognizing basic Biblical allusions. They seriously thought I was some kind of genius, because I could figure out that a character doing a bad thing in a garden was supposed to remind the reader of Adam and Eve. I just went to church and Catholic school. 🤷♀️
Mimesis. The canonical Gospels and Acts are fairly littered with scenes that recall Homer and other Classical/Hellenistic literature samewise. Paul similarly reveals a solid Hellenistic education.
I think that, in a lot of states now, the Bible would have to be banned, even if taught as history/literature. It's too sexually explicit Song of Solomon, anyone? Not to mention incest, pedophilia, bestiality, prostitution, etc.
Although this is nothing new, the content coming from Hollywood is so increasingly filled with absolutely no morals or virtue. The White Lotus was so raunchy and vile I couldn’t stomach more than half an episode. Viewers want something that can give hope, that can provoke thought, that can uplift and change. I’m encouraged reading that maybe, just maybe, change will come.
Agree. I couldn’t finish the first white lotus it was so awful.
And Hollywood thinks that every movie and TV show needs to have the obligatory sex scene and the obligatory chase scene. It’s stupid and boring and derivative.
But then Hollywood prime seems to have run out of ideas and only does marvel comic books or remakes. (Although Top Gun Maverick was a really fun remake).
Look what they’ve done to the Star Trek franchise. Nothing but interpersonal drama and fancy CG. Nothing remotely interesting and nuanced in the storytelling.
I’m a Christian and enjoyed The White Lotus. I found quite a few underlying themes that can resonate with Christians. Much of the cast appears to be “normal” and some living what is supposedly the American Dream, but a closer look reveals all is not happy in paradise.
While the sex scenes are definitely not appropriate for all ages, the use of sex as a theme in the series is to show how it’s used outside its original purpose and is morally corrupting. Same with money/wealth and power/status. I think it also supplies plenty of examples of how people like Tonya (main character) wonder through life aimless and without purpose. She’s extremely wealthy but unhappy and perpetually feels alone. Christian’s know living a life without purpose is not fulfilling and life without God is lonely.
While definitely not a Christian series, I still found worthy themes in the show and enjoyed the acting and dialogue. It’s supposed to make you uncomfortable, maybe even a little disgusted with their actions. Unfortunately that’s reality for much of the world and if anything it’s a good dialogue starter regarding the choices we make and their outcomes.
Not saying to go out and watch it and love it, it’s not for everyone.
Tonya's character really affected me, too. She was sad and tragic, but at the same time seemed to be trying to latch onto SOMETHING to give her life meaning but also wanted complete comfort when finding meaning often means being uncomfortable. I really hoped she would break out and help start the Wellness Spa. The scene where she went back to get her sunglasses was, to me, more uncomfortable to watch than anything else in the series.
The White Lotus was satire and the whole point of it was to show that extremely rich people are generally raunchy and vile while pretending otherwise. They all, in their own way, used the staff. The message wasn't positive, but it wasn't meant to be.
It was. Like shock and awe. But I persevered. Some of the later episodes are absolutely brilliant and relevant to were we are headed. The one where the elite woman pays to clone a copy of her consciousness into an AI she tasks as a household manager and slave - the job of breaking the will of her own conscious dual by the Madmen actor - is one of the most creative, plausible, and horrific things I've ever seen. The one with the little bot dog bombs was also horrific and plausible.
This wasn't Augustine. It’s usually attributed to St Francis, but there’s no evidence that he said it in such a pithy way. His rules for his order, however, says, “Let all the brothers, however, preach by their deeds.” So the attribution is fair.
Currently taking Catholic Political Thought 101 through the Institute of Catholic Culture (via ZOOM, for free) with Dr. Chad Pecknold. We started with Socrates and Plato and are now on week three of St. Augustine. Wow, am I learning a lot.
As a professing Christian, I fear what happens when Hollywood gets ahold of Jesus. Life in Christ is complicated, messy, sacrificial, confusing, you name it. But it’s built on a foundation of hope through faith, which keeps the wobbly house described above standing. Hollywood will never portray that adequately because there’s always only one hero, the same one time and again, and he ain’t us. I wish all these folks well. Thank God (literally) that they finally are producing movies someone like me will return to the theater for. But these films are just entertainment. As with all relationships, reality is much stickier than fantasy, and one with Jesus isn’t crowd sourced. So I’ll continue to seek Christ in the midst of my little, loving, very human community in here in CT.
We have to search for - and find - whatever it takes to pull this nation back from the abyss. In some ways I hope the Alleged President's "administration" goes full bore against the people so they will get riled enough to stop them.
But more than anything else, we need a leader. The Orange Man has feet of the softest clay, but he's all we have right now. Maybe religion is the answer, and if so, this atheist is all-in. Whatever it takes, but we HAVE to define our national identity, set our standards, and stop the blue-haired soreheads and communists from derailing us. It's only a mission to save Everything That Ever Mattered.
The secularist beliefs in Gender Theory, Race Theory and Climate Change have taken the place of Christianity/Religion because it seems humans need something to believe in. Cancel Culture and the moves to limit Free Speech are the Inquisitions of the 21st century.
Have you seen Michael Crichton's speech on environmentalism-as-religion? Basically he says that environmentalism is religion for atheists. It's really worth looking up. Something I'd never thought of before and right on target, IMHO.
"Because in the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better."
No, haven't seen that, but John McWhorter ( a Black professor of Linguistics) has said the exact same thing about CRT in his book "Woke Racism". I'll check out the Michael Crichton speech, thanks.
I saw Jesus Revolution in a sold-out theater and loved it. Even if one isn’t Christian or religious it was an enjoyable and uplifting story that people need right now.
It seems that with a society that's decided that's it's laughable to have faith in something greater than yourself, that the only alternative is a return to tribalism. Many it seems, reject tribalism but are looking for an alternative. Whether you are a believer or not, aspiring to something greater than yourself is very attractive and within limits, healthy
In a period where being part of a physical community has been replaced by staring with glazed eyes at Twitter/Tik Tok, Instagram, where proclaiming that “Math is racist” is considered a legitimate point of view, where what you choose to do with your genitals becomes a defining characteristic of your identity, it is easy to conclude that America has become a dystopian nightmare. This article inspires hope that this is not true.
As an aging Boomer, I grew up in the time after World War II where you started every school day with the Pledge of Allegiance, went to church/synagogue every Sunday and heard sermons that were all variations of the the Ten Commandments. This provided a framework of good/bad, right wrong, and acceptable/unacceptable behavior. You were part of a physical community. But then the 60’s arrived. Among many other changes, religion came under fire. Best personified by Madelyn Murray O’Hare’s crusade for atheism, the Crèche scene was disallowed in front of Churches, the Ten Commandments disappeared from the entrance to Courthouses, and Time magazine (a real magazine at the time) decided on a cover declaring “God is Dead”. This was replaced with “do your own thing”, “let it all hang out”, “power to the people”.
And now, 60 years later, here we are. The fact that these films are gaining popularity demonstrates that, increasingly, people are searching for a greater meaning in their life. There is hope for America after all.
60 years ago it was much easier to be part of a community. The average house cost twice the average income (11,000 and 5,600), not nine times the average income as it does today (450,000 and 53500). One person in a family could work and the family could still be comfortable. Rich people had better homes but didn't lock themselves in gated communities--they were part of the community. People didn't make a living betting that businesses would fail so they could get rich.
Most importantly, you could get a job just about anywhere and stay in that job and be part of a community. You didn't have to constantly move from place to place to chase work. Kids didn't think about being shot in school--guns were barely mentioned, not something yahoos paraded around with just because they could. Companies still tried to sell their products, but didn't hire psychologists to find ways to get people to shove more salt, sugar and fat down their gullets.
As for "God is Dead," Nietzsche said this in the 1800s so it wasn't a new concept in the 1960s by any means.
With blind faith in tech and progress (and individual rights) we let the State and the Market redesign our institutions and our relationships. The changes have been profoundly alienating and dehumanizing. Arguably evil, with the worst imaginable feedback loops. Instead of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness we've embraced death, bondage and mental illness.
Just so. The advance of technology also allowed American companies to begin sourcing products overseas from totalitarian regimes that paid a fraction of the cost to produce and resulted in two positive results - less expensive products and greater profits for American companies and one horrific result - the off-shoring of production in America which decimated good paying jobs and wiped out communities primarily in mid-America and the South. I graduated in 1968 and, in a class of 95, I was one of two that went on to college. All my friends in school who didn't go to college were able to find good jobs with decent wages. Graduates from High School who don't go to be indoctrinated in what passes for "Higher Education" face few, if any, opportunities to find meaningful employment. Deaths from Fentanyl in the 18-30 age bracket have now claimed more than double the lives lost in that age group than in World War II.
Yes, but also we were in an extremely lucky position after World War II when most of Europe was in ruins and we ramped up production to basically rebuild an entire continent. It's unlikely we'll be in that position again.
It's not just the secularization of human life. It's the outright profanity of it. Some of us are 100% convinced that they are the divine gods now. They are mistaken.
White Christian preachers are almost always depicted in film and TV as Bible-thumping, Southern, gun-loving, repressed, wild-eyed zealots that hate gays but are secretly closeted or have inappropriate contact with minors or affairs with congregants or parishioners.
Conversely, Black preachers are almost always depicted as being in deep and joyous communion with their creator, welcoming any and all to their congregation.
I don't practice any religion and the loathsome term "spiritual" also doesn't apply to me, but I hate the way Christians and Catholics are depicted in media.
Yep. You summed it up. The black preachers will probably have pretty wives and cute kids, too, while the white preachers have dour wives and children with blank states.
(Though it’s “Christians, including Catholics,” not “Christians and Catholics.”)
And to be clear, this isn't to say that Black preachers aren't kind and good or not in communion with their creator, but there must be one white preacher that is.
Not sure whether it fits those tropes, but it does in part considering Duvall's character starts the movie out by killing his wife's lover in a drunken jealous fit. But, then he becomes "depicted as being in deep and joyous communion with their creator, welcoming any and all to their congregation" by the end of the movie.
It's human nature that when someone acts morally superior, we like to see them taken down a peg. As for the Catholic Church, what garnered the most negative press was not that some priests turned out to be child molesters, it's that the church KNEW this and just rotated them around from parish to parish.
Christ didn't build the Church you describe. Human beings....very fallible, sinful human beings (priests/others) did that to Christ's Church. This is true in other institutions as well
--schools, Boy Scouts, etc. Humans are capable of heinous things, regardless of their position, their vows, or their knowledge and that is Satan working too diligently to bring Christ's Church to an end. For practicing Catholics like myself, we're well aware that the man in the collar can be as much as sinner as us and instead of relishing in their "take down" I pray for them to repent and change. Then, I leave it to God.
Jesus was a revolutionary. What he taught turned the ancient world on its head. We can’t imagine believing what the ancients believed about the value of life, foregiveness, freedom, and equality---there were none. Western civilization is based on Christ’s teachings. Even if you are an atheist you believe in them. They are baked in our Constitution. And the early Christian church was the place where education, and care for the sick and poor happened, not the government. Government has usurped these roles as it shoved God into a corner. Look where that has gotten us. I am glad to see some in Hollywood are taking Jesus out of that corner and rediscovering his love and healing. We need them desperately.
Some of that is true, but it is also true that for much of western history heresy laws were in place to intimidate people from publicly disagreeing with Christian teachings or speaking out against the church. The reach and power of the faith was built on 1500+ years of repression. I'm not anti-Christian, but that truth has to be recognized.
As was/is Islam. As was Zoroastrianism. As was Roman religion. As was Shintoism. The common thread is not a particular religion, but the injection of humans into the equation. Read the texts underlying Christianity, do some homework, and seek God and you can easily get past the attempt of humanity to leverage it for there own means and find the beautiful truth of the Gospel.
As wasn't Roman religion. They were quite open to any god and their followers. Provided you acknowledged the emperor and their cult the Romans would reciprocate. Even the Jews were fine; they had a treaty that acknowledged and accommodated them. It was only when they succumbed to following swivel-eyed loons zealous for the Torah that Rome curtailed their privileges after three near-genocidal wars.
"
ALL organizations are repressive in nature! They need not be religious, they can be governmental or social. They ALL promote themselves and do everything possible to cement their places in power. Christianity is NOT "The Church" as an organization, although any body or gathering of believers ARE the church, the ecclesia (called out ones), it is composed of individuals who are trying to live out their faith and are trying to reconcile their place in society against the forces of a secular environment.
It is when religious groups corporatize and consolidate and seek governmental approval that the basic conflicts of power retention come into play. These film companies are not "saviors", they are just giving a large portion of the public what they want to see, films that affirm their place in a society that has not been solicitous to their wants and "needs", entertainment-wise.
Would that we could go back to having laws enforcing good ideology instead of the present state of affairs, where governments punish dissent against horrible ideology.
Regardless, Christianity does not require such laws, and it's foolish to ignore that distinction.
Actually, Western civilization is just as based on the ancient Greeks as Christ. Jesus didn't invent the concept of equality or democracy. The Greeks practiced both hundreds of years earlier. Granted, it was imperfect, it didn't apply to certain groups, but our Constitution excluded certain groups, too (i.e. blacks, women, white men who didn't own property.)
"the early Christian church was the place where education, and care for the sick and poor happened"
Care for the sick and poor has a much earlier origin that you might well review in Deutoronomy 15.7:
"For the poor shall never cease out of the land; therefore
I command thee, saying: ‘Thou shalt surely open
thy hand unto thy poor and needy brother, in thy land.’"
Les, it’s even earlier, I think than that, as the Israelites were commanded to leave the corners of their fields and some of what they dropped while harvesting to the poor and widowed. No stumbling blocks before the blind, etc. As I said before, Jesus was a Jew. His teachings are Jewish, his first followers were all Jews, etc. Only when the adult men revolted against circumcision was that commandment dropped.
The passage you mention is in Leviticus, 19.9 and is contemporary with Deuteronomy (within 500 years I would guess), not any earlier stricture:
" And when ye reap the harvest of your
land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corner of
thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleaning
of thy harvest. And thou shalt not glean thy
vineyard, neither shalt thou gather the fallen
fruit of thy vineyard; thou shalt leave them for
the poor and for the stranger I am the Lord your God."
I find the Deuteronomy excerpt more stirring.
Excuse me? Jesus was a revolutionary? Do you mean because he was Jewish? After the fall of the 2nd Temple, there were all sorts of Jewish revolutionaries, too bad Jesus wasn’t. Learn the history of the time.
While I would certainly agree Christianity has played a significant role in 'Western' civilization, I would disagree with the sentiment that it serves as a foundational tenant. I would argue that core 'Western' ideals like free speech, individual rights, and basic democracy run counter to the historical framework with which Christianity operated for most of its 2,000 history. I mean, up until a few hundred years ago most Western cultures were steeped in the kind of religious and royal absolutism that, for instance, did not allow for one to publicly speak their mind on anything that ran counter to the Church's teachings. Or believe in any kind of personal 'right' that was not granted by king or faith. And one certainly couldn't entertain the idea of a government structure in which officials were universally elected by the masses...it was the Church's way or the highway.
If anything, the Enlightenment, which is arguably the single greatest influence on modern Western democracies, can more accurately be seen as a backlash and revolt to the dominance of divine rule up until that point. And while things like care for the sick and poor were things that the Church certainly undertook and were known for, it didn't invent empathy and kindness and mercy...and it certainly doesn't have some kind of monopoly on those things. Human beings have been kind and caring to each other since we were hunting mammoths with spears, and even a concept as fundamentally human as love exists completely independent to faith in a divine creator.
"We can’t imagine believing what the ancients believed about the value of life, foregiveness, freedom, and equality---there were none. Western civilization is based on Christ’s teachings. Even if you are an atheist you believe in them."
We don't have to imagine, though, do we? We can read the Greek philosophers, or see what the Jews thought about it (you know, those Ten Commandments?) And even before Moses, do you really think that people had no concept that stealing, lying, murdering, committing adultery etc were perfectly acceptable behaviours? "Aw, Moses—you mean we can't kill each other any more?" It seems rather strange, does it not, that the God-given morals all align with those of the evolutionary self-interest of our genes, which promote any behaviour that makes them more likely to be passed on. If you think about it hard enough, it is in my self-interest to be charitable, kind, compassionate etc to my fellows. This is surprising to the religious, but mundane to evolutionary biologists.
No, Christopher, for NCMaureen, Jesus created everything and there is no morality without Jesus. Which is odd, because based on her comments about "the others" who are not like her, she's about as far removed from Jesus as one can get.
Actually people worshipped strength. The men who could conquer the most, kill the most, and horde the most were exalted as god kings. Those who were poor or helpless were despised and thought worthy of scorn. A modern example is the caste system of india (an ancient holdover). The Dalit are seen as untouchable bc they had bad karma in a previous life, therefore they DESERVE to be treated like trash and deserve their place in the lowest caste. This mode of thought was common throughout the ancient world. The weak deserved to be killed bc the gods of the victors were stronger. The ensalved concubine was dirty and thus deserving of scorn, despite the fact she was a slave. The rich were better than the poor. This was the way of the world. Jesus totally inverted that moral hierarchy and revolutionized the ethics of the human race
Hmmm...I guess if all these Christian churches were doing all this stuff, we wouldn't need government at all, would we?
Maybe the white evangelicals got so distracted with fighting against integration and abortion that they've dialed down their social service/community efforts?
Still far more charitable per capita than non religious people and not just in terms of tithing but towards all causes, in both dollars and hours donated
Well said
Maybe you should try and follow his example?
“What’s happening in Hollywood may not be a great Christian awakening”
One is certainly justified in doubting that what’s happening is a religious awakening. I’d argue further that they aren't even awakening to the fact that their movies suck. What finally seems to have aroused them from their great awOkening is their accountants screaming that ticket receipts say their movies suck.
The most successful movies from Hollywood’s golden era may not have been overtly religious but the bible’s tenets; courage, love, fidelity, sacrifice and yes, salvation were certainly woven into their narratives. Unfortunately, Hollywood has become a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, dominated by what some might refer to as false gods whose main tenets are cowardice, hatred, infidelity, greed and damnation. And as everyone who attended bible school knows, that didn’t work out too well for the original’s inhabitants
Well Put.
"Unfortunately, Hollywood has become a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, dominated by what some might refer to as false gods whose main tenets are cowardice, hatred, infidelity, greed and damnation."
It always was that to a degree. See L.A. Confidential, (for a lighter view) Get Shorty.
The question that should be asked is, Why?
The Guy you should listen to is Andrew Klavan
Andrew Klavan on the Politics of Culture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb4HO9R6Ve0
Did you see Drew Barrymore, on the floor and kneeling before Dylan Mulvaney? Ugh.
They Deserve each other.
Yeah, what a joke their movies have become. Reminds me of that generic superhero review BB did awhile back: https://babylonbee.com/news/review-of-latest-marvel-movie-a-film-where-things-happen-heroes-fight-bad-guys-and-sometimes-there-are-jokes
Well here I am again with an off topic post. I can't help myself. It' a sickness.
Democrats will hate this:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/people-are-upset-over-sign-kfc-store-posted-on-their-doors-restaurant-refuses-to-take-it-down/ar-AA19e8sU?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=1aa6ca197021491982e5c1b97ddcdf6a&ei=35
2016? Lol.
Guess everyone is required to love cops/be bootlickers.
A little melodramatic, I think. Hollywood's number one priority is making money, which is true of any business anywhere. Do you condemn oil and gas, Wall Street, and the gun industry with equal gusto? You might think Hollywood films are trash, but at least they don't poison the environment, tank the economy, or enable school shootings.
Hollywood violence and mockery of families and religion and even patriotism has probably done more to undermine this country’s ethical foundations than any other industry. Hollywood has long glorified gratuitous violence - no industry has done MORE to enable school shootings.
In earlier generations, gun ownership was higher, yet this kind of alienated violence was all but unheard of. The difference? TV and movies were tasteful and discrete, yet made their points beautifully without the need to resort to cheap graphic excess. In the rest of the world, the level of violence on TV and movies shown here in the U.S. is often not allowed to be shown. As a result, the violence we’ve grown inured to is extremely rare elsewhere. As you correctly point out, “Hollywood ‘s #1 priority is making money”. Hollywood, more than any other single industry, is responsible for today’s gratuitous violence.
So you're saying Hollywood, which deploys fake guns, does more to enable school shootings than the gun industry, which supplies the real ones? Other countries see the same violent Hollywood movies we do (it's a global business), but have nowhere near our level of gun violence.
The real difference is we have more guns than people. More guns equals more gun deaths. That's just simple math, and we're doing very little to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, even when their mental health issues are well-documented. Depending on the state, we're neither not passing laws to address this or not enforcing the laws we do have.
Old movies were tasteful and discreet? Maybe. They still had plenty of people shooting each other. The most popular movie genre of the 1930s was the gangster film, and shoot-em-up John Wayne was an A-list star for over 40 years. The only difference is the level of gore. But movies are largely about spectacle. Movies got more graphic because audiences got more sophisticated. It takes an unusual sort of young person to sit them down to watch a film from the 30s and not have them be bored to tears.
To your first point, behind every sick crime is the mind that selects a weapon to inflict harm. Of course Hollywood doesn't hand out weapons, it just normalizes gratuitous violence - far more dangerous. I already addressed the # of guns issue, and anyone in law enforcement will tell you most violent crimes are committed by a very small group of individuals. I do believe crimes that involve guns should carry very heavy prison sentences, and that access to weapons should be restricted for individuals with a history of mental health issues. As you say, we're definitely not enforcing the laws on the books and - surprise - we're getting more violence. I didn't touch on social media, because Hollywood was the forerunner, but it is clearly playing a role, especially with impressionable adolescent minds.
The level of gore is indeed dramatically different than before, but I think you're the first person to suggest that a desire for graphic violence is "sophisticated". As for our children being "bored to tears" by a lack of violence, well wouldn't that just be terrible.
Ha ha ha. By "experienced," I just meant, "harder to fool." The magic of movies is to temporarily make you think these are real things happening to real people. As we've grown collectively more experienced as moviegoers, more "realism" is required. Not that all Hollywood violence is realistic. It just means that when somebody gets shot, we expect to see blood, even blood splatter because that's what happens when a metal projectile slams into you. Fight choreography has to be faster and tighter. Sex scenes have to involve more than two bizarrely motionless people laying on top of each other.
As for being bored by lack of violence, it wasn't the lack of violence so much as I think it's be very challenging to get your average 17-year-old to sit down and watch a Charlie Chaplin movie, especially during the silent era.
hahahahaha this may win prizes for the most worthless comment on the fp
Why in the world would I condemn "oil and gas," as they are the industries responsible for creating the food that machines eat, which powers literally every other industry on the planet? Unless you're personally willing to go live and work on an 18th-century self-sustaining farm, you might want to re-think that particular perennial boilerplate leftist gripe.
I'm not asking you to condemn anything. I wasn't talking to you. I was specifically addressing someone else's comment that called Hollywood "Lucifarian," (don't believe that's even a word but I get the gist) because they prioritized profit over morality. I was simply pointing out that specifically condemning Hollywood for doing what every other industry does is a little strange, especially since Hollywood's product doesn't damage anyone's physical or financial health.
The difference would be that Hollywood is producing a spiritual product, one that cannot help but promote certain attitudes and behaviors. Whereas those other industries you name produce a material product, not that that doesn't have possible downsides but it's a different deal.
surely you jest as. yes they do all of those tings
LucifErian or you'll get it in the neck as a racist.
Mel Gibson is a women-hating, anti-Semitic, unChristian fanatic, so I wouldn't ask him anything. And yes, there are good people in Hollywood, but they are at heart hard core capitalists, just like execs at the oil companies, etc, and their bottom line is always the bottom line.
Sorry, not my definition of a Christian. Bigoted and abusive, he’s as un-Christlike as it gets.
Oh, yes, the cynic in the group. Only took me three comments to find you.🤣
Watch it RT. God might be looking for you
All of them. They've formed a posse. A band of superheroes.
Hollywood is the enemy of decency. Last night I watched part of the Mel Gibson movie trending on Netflix right now, up through the bank scene. I was so disturbed that I couldn't sleep and cancelled my subscription. I watched 9 seasons of Walking Dead and thought I was fairly desensitized to extreme violence, but the way this scene was written to manipulate the viewer was unrestrained evil.
Oh no doubt. It’s all profit. But who cares what the intention is. Hollywood, like politics, works best when it gives people some version of what they want, versus what they want them to want. If the Taliban started pumping out profitable movies Hollywood would line up to distribute them.
Oh but R T, you underestimate Christ. He performs miracles and Hollywood isn't that special that it can't experience a miracle!
God is outside of time and He'll take as long as needed. How are we to shape or predestine the plan of God?
As a Catholic Christian, I need to be prepared for Jesus' return but if it doesn't happen in my lifetime, I need to do everything possible to see Him in heaven.
Hollywood means nothing to me. Everyone will face God whether you believe or not. I'd rather believe and live like I do.
What does it mean the God is outside of time? How do you know this?
Here's a quote from the attached article which you might find interesting: "God’s eternity does not go by with the time of the created world. “It does not coincide with the present.” It does not precede it or “prolong” it into infinity. . . .He is eternal because he is the absolute fullness of being which cannot be understood as a sum of fragments or of “particles” of being which change with time. The texts quoted from the Bible clearly indicate this."
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/3-views-of-time-and-eternity
Couldn't and wouldn't go through a day without my faith. Wish more would try it on!
Hollywood cut off conservative comment. Canceled anyone who dared to step out of the orthodoxy.
So, when you silence people - you also lose their creative input. But, who needs it?
You'll never learn anything from someone who agrees with you - that's the lesson to be learned.
Well said.
It should be a lesson for anyone in the creative realm. When you suppress someone you don't just lose a part of them - you lose all of them.
The older I get, the more I realize that you can't really "know" anyone - you can only get a glimpse of their life and what they have experienced. The hardest thing for me to do is slow down, shut up and listen.
I'm an atheist, but entirely happy for Christians to have their movies. Freedom of speech is tolerating the speech of those you disagree with.
We love atheists. At least you have thought about it, most haven’t and don’t. I only ask people to honestly consider a Jesus, read the Gospels and contemplate the choice.
I really don't give a tihs about what anyone else believes or considers, as long as they don't get in the way of me believing and considering what I want to (and that I do likewise). The Truth will out, as Shakespeare said - whatever.
If a message is true and strong, it will resonate - it's not the messenger or messengers that need to resonate (not restricted to religion! :-)
Historians who study such things have said that humans have a "god hole" which we fill with something. If you look back thousands of years you will find some sort of religious ritual going on whether it is the worship of the sun, the moon, etc. We moderns are not really atheists - we have just tried to fill the "god hole" with other things to worship - success, money, sex, food, etc - things that in the long run don't really work.
The climate cult.
Just for fun, Dorothy, what do you imagine I worship to fill my 'God hole'? And while we are at it, can you say that filling the hole with 'God' works 'in the long run'? OK, it works for you up until death...
I'm teasing you, gently, I hope. So far, I'm just happy no one has said they will pray for me. I did have to learn a coping technique for that. When I left my thirty year general practice in a rural community when I developed leukemia, many said they would pray for me. They meant well, and knew full well I was an atheist. I ended up saying, "Thanks, I'll take all the help I can get." Manners provide answers. This atheist is pretty happy in his foxhole.
When my wife was diagnosed with cancer, numerous members of her Radiology group which included Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus all offered prayers for her. We're both Christians, but our response was the same as yours.
Manners! Cost nothing, but are in short supply. I have a elderly Jehovah Witness lady who stops by about once a month. Is she trying to convert me? Yep! Does it bother me? Nope! I'm secure in my views and she's secure in hers. First 10 minutes we talk about passages in the Bible. The rest of the time, it's just two humans connecting.
It’s not a god hole. It’s people trying to explain things they cannot understand.
Dylan “your gonna have to serve somebody”
I’m just curious. Have you tried reading the Bible or used a Bible teaching/interpreting app?
In today's America it's hard to say which is the smaller minority, the openly atheists or those supporting free speech for those they disagree with.
Alas!
In a Venn diagram, those two groups would have a great deal of overlap!
I doubt you will find many fervent Christians among the woke mobs imposing a single approved vision of everything on today's campuses.
A int B = ~ (~A union ~B)
I was an atheist for over a decade but then I started dating a man of faith. It caused me to go back and reconsider my position. If you’re at all, interested in a different point of view, The case for Faith, by Lee Strobel is a good place to start.
Please; the bloke is a liar who has been debunked hundreds of times over. Exactly the kind of person that gives the rest of youse a bad name.
Christopher, as a fellow atheist I can only agree. Christians can make whatever the hell (pun not intended) they want. It is indeed, freedom of speech. But it doesn't always work the other way around.
Interesting, as I recall, the howls and anger emanating from the hallowed halls of Christianity not at all tolerating the (slightly!) different take on Jesus in Scorsese's "The Last Temptation Of Christ..'
I guess there's only so much freedom of speech entrenched orthodoxy can take.
The problem with putting people into the "All" category is that you forget the individual. Which makes it easier for you to dismiss, ignore, and deride them. It's so much easier to put the "All" labels on individuals whose values you will never know because they are part of the "All"
Scorsese had every right to make the film, they had every right to protest/dislike it. Not sure there is a problem here
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-08-10-me-88-story.html#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Catholic%20Church%20threw,bishops%20and%20two%20pro
Scorsese had every right to make the film, you are certainly correct. But in the vociferous protestations from religious entities at that time, that small detail was never endorsed. The book the film was based on was banned by Christian groups worldwide.
I'm also an atheist, or at least that's the closest to an "ist" I am, and I truly back all freedom of speech come all directions, including Christians with whom I was raised. Since these movies are making a profit it sounds like a great business model.
A truly Free Press enables hope. Thank you for a breath of intellectual fresh air.
I appreciate the article, and I agree that Jesus Revolution is a step forward. But there’s still a giant problem with Christian, or faith-based, content.
It’s not just that it’s bad. God’s Not Dead was bad, and so was Facing the Giants and Fireproof and The War Room. It was actually a little shocking to see the creator you quoted marking God’s Not Dead as a breakthrough. It was really really bad.
I had been writing as a hobby, and when I saw God’s Not Dead with my youth group, I literally thought, “well, if this is what Christians make as art, I don’t think I can be both a writer and a Christian. I guess I’ll have to pick.”
The most important point is not simply that Christian content has a history of being bad. It’s that the content is bad because it’s dishonest. Freshmen don’t lead their professors to Jesus three weeks into class, and that professor doesn’t give up class time to argue with a student. Marriages don’t always work out.
Jesus Revolution gets close, and it’s a step in the right direction, but it still has giant swaths of dishonesty. Lonnie Frisbee had a lifelong struggle to reconcile his faith with his homosexuality, and died of AIDS. Chuck Smith’s church split after he predicted the end of the world would come one New Year’s Eve.
Honesty makes the story better, not worse. The Chosen is a good example. As is Scorsese’s Silence. It magnifies God more, as the brokenness that He steps into is far greater than we can imagine. Faith-based movies will always make money, because our folk turn out to see content that finally addresses them. But will they ever be actually good? Make an impact beyond the people like us in the theater?
Not until they’re honest.
My take on Jesus Revolution and Christian dishonesty can be found here.
https://open.substack.com/pub/tothestorehouse/p/jesus-revolution-and-the-state-of?r=tn513&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
"Chuck Smith’s church split after he predicted the end of the world would come one New Year’s Eve."
Interestingly, Greta Thunberg simply deleted her June 21, 2018 tweet that humanity would be wiped out if fossil fuels were not phased out in 5 years. Her church didn't split, despite the science
https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.5.8071/full/
Climate change, the religion of the radical left! Different circus, same old monkeys.
Greta Thunberg was a child in 2018. She is allowed a mistake to learn. But Les, you cannot forgive an honest mistake by her?
That’s exactly the point. Who on earth thought it would be edifying to have a child lecture adults on matters of complex and nuanced science and policy? I’m an experienced environmental scientist and was appalled when this kid was trotted out by some environmentalist activists as an oracle to behold.
Deb, an honest mistake? Wouldn't you agree that if it were an *honest* mistake, Thunberg would be looking around right now at her fellow climate catastrophists and saying, "Gee guys, we were really, really wrong about all those doomsday predictions we made five years ago. And come to think of it, all those earlier predictions of death and famine from the 90s, 80s, and--golly, look at this--even the 70s turned out to be wrong. And not a little wrong, either; like, REALLY wrong. Since we're all honest people who have been making mistakes here, let's turn off the rhetoric, stop commanding people to revert to an 18-century level of living standards, and let's do this all publicly, until we can reassess our models and our thinking, and work to arrive at an honest conclusion. You know, since we're all honest folks just trying to save people. Tell ya what, I'm just going to hop on Twitter right now and announce these plans to the world."
Of course she's not doing any of that. She's a professional doomsday alarmist. She grifts a living wagging her finger at self-immolating, guilt-stricken people too ashamed to praise the standard of living that allows them to live well into their 80s and 90s. None of it is honest, and none of it is a mistake. It's quite deliberate.
Well in her defense, she's just an autistic brainwashed kid. But the adults in the room, that's another matter entirely.
She's 20 yo old now....no longer a kid. She owns what she says and does.
A child in 2018 who could address the United Nations and hector the most impoverished parts of the world, including rural China, to stop fossil fuels regardless of what that would do to their living standards.
Honest mistake? Not good enough when the consequences can be so vast.
honest? no. sorry.. she is and was a pawn. at first a real pawn. now a wiling pawn
Chariots of fire.
Chronicals of Narnia
Uber-gentile Charlton Heston as Moses leading the Hebrews out of Egyptian bondage in “The 10 Commandments.”
You had to love Edward G Robinson as the evil slave master.
A masterpiece
Never seen it. Is it good? A contradiction to my points? Have to put it on my list.
1981 Oscar winner. Well worth the time. Example of a deep faith informing your life.
I am not a Christian, but Silence is one of my all time favorite movies. Absolutely magnificent.
It really is. And addresses actual humanity. Christian stories are human ones.
Please make sure that your Christian movies are actually Christian and not Jewish! Come on, it’s 2023 and you do not know the difference? Or are you simply being antisemitic by taking Jewish content and calling it Christian?
We are talking about Silence, a movie about Jesuit missionaries. My original post was about Jesus Revolution, a movie about a Christian revival in the 60s.
If you are referring to Jesus in general. You are right to laud him as a Jew. Paul as well.
But there are many verses in the New Testament about Christ uniting Jews and Gentiles in faith. He did it in his death too, in that the Jewish and Roman authorities both had a hand in his execution. By extension all of us, our Sunday school teachers would say. I think Christ does something new with both Judaism and Roman authority worship. And Judaism is essential to understanding the New Testament and the person of Jesus.
I would return your questions with a question. Do you have interest in a discussion about Jewish/Christian theology, or do you simply want to accuse likeminded people of anti-semitism in the comments because you don’t have anything to add to that discussion or have you just not seen the movies in question?
Well done again.
Two cheers from me. ;-)
Silence was adapted from Shusaku Endo’s book of the same name. Endo was a Japanese Catholic writer.
I grew up Christian. Read his book, Samurai while in the military stationed in Japan around 2002. First time I’d read anything “Christian” not written by an American (not counting the Bible). Got me to see the faith from a very different perspective. Worth a read.
Thanks for the deep dive. I’ll pick it up!
This is very well-put! (And your article has me thinking we might be “kindred spirits.”) I’ve always thought Christian movies tended to be “cheesy” and “hokey” ( although, I CAN BE a sucker for “feel good” viewing.) I think your point about honesty nails it. We are all broken; the gospel of Christ is that meeting us in our mess, that gory reality that by an instrument of torture and the way of sacrifice are we made whole AND taking that way of life is how we’re most fully alive. (Not a popular message in our be-whatever-you-FEEL-will-make-you-happy cultural atmosphere.) This is why I often find that movies that are compelling in their dealing the realities of life and the beauty of transformation often come from people who are (or were) Catholic. Catholicism emphasizes “the way of the cross” and “the Suffering Servant” more than in evangelical circles. (Scorcese fits that description.)
Definitely. Thanks for reading! I think we lost a robust Protestant doctrine of suffering when we lost Protestant work ethic.
God's Not Dead couldn't have been any worse if they tried. Agree with you on that one. And anything with Kirk Cameron in it is utterly unwatchable. But I thought Facing the Giants had some lovely moments.
It would be great to see a movie about Lonnie Frisbee, but Jesus Revolution is primarily based on Greg Laurie's autobiography and his life intersected only briefly with Frisbee.
I agree with you but I think the purpose of these movies is Hallmark-happy-endings and people are craving that right now. It’s no surprise producers are dialed into the social mood (Maverick was timed perfectly) Even though laying all the honesty cards on the table might make a more realistic story, most people don’t want to watch movies that force them to examine their own failings so we get happy escapism.
I think you’re right, and that’s why they continue to make money. It’s just that when they make money, and fill that need for people to escape, they also make Christianity more into a kitschy subculture, and keep Christians in the safety of their upper room insttead of our in the world.
So I guess it’s a trade off, and I write for free on Substack rather than for millions at box offices, so maybe I don’t know that much. But in my eyes, the cultural trade off isn’t worth it.
These are really good points. After I saw the film I looked into the history as well. But I’m not sure those facts were relative to that particular part of the story which was mostly about the struggle with the current youth movement of the ‘60s vs their parent’s generation. But I agree that telling a story honestly is essential , as is just good storytelling in general. I look forward to reading your Substack!
Thanks for your comment and for reading! I think my gripe is that they never seem to be relevant in Christian content. When stories leave out parts of the whole, and storytellers leave out really human details, the stories lose their magic. It feels like writers and storytellers leave out details like this, or more to your point choose to tell stories that don’t need any rough details so as not to offend Christians. Speaking for my lot, most of us aren’t as easily offended as people think, and want to see our God work in the hard parts of the world.
I am comforted knowing a man who was capable of as much power and good as Lonnie Frisbee had a lifel long struggle, a thorn in his side as Paul might say. God’s strength in his weakness and all that.
Movies never do the book justice either. You are just using real life as a parallel to movies from books. But I think your point is important for another reason. We are being groomed(?)/conditioned(?)/ trained(?) to accept that bad character negates good deeds, i.e. Thomas Jefferson, Donald Trump, and others being discredited currently. That is not true. We cannot afford to overlook good actions because they were done by someone we disapprove of. Humans exist in a state of moral struggle. All humans. For the ones thinking "[N]ot me[!]" right now, it is probably pride. Rather than thinking ewww I don't like him/her when we hear about something we should think wow I am surprised because I don't like him/her generally but that is great.
I like that. I think it cuts both ways as well. Not being able to admit when someone does wrong because we like them or because we agree with them. Another spectrum.
Ain't that the truth.
Very true.
Most of those Biblical characters had major flaws- David, Solomon, even Paul of Tarsus. Because they were human.
Exactly. I have always thought that was one of the major takeaways. That "[To err is human, to forgive is divine[.]" thing. Couple that with being made in His image and striving to be like Him, by being forgiving for example, and voila we have a winning formula.
I know, what a novel idea! Admit when we're wrong.Ask for forgiveness when we hurt someone, receive forgiveness from someone who hurt you. Be kind, be humble. Be of service to others.
You know what I want? I want Christian movies where characters have to deal with real stuff that’s presented in real ways. If a character could be reasonably expected to swear in real life, I want them to swear. I want highly religious characters to be human, with human flaws, and have interests beyond leading prayer groups or praising Jesus. I want characters to deal with things that are truly dark and/or complicated. From my limited exposure to Christian films, the characters don’t act like real people.
Interesting. I've asked my born-again friends if Jesus had to use the restroom or have sexual desire or get a cold etc. They always answer yes of course. Why because he was a man.
Yep. That’s what always bugs me about some Christmas carols - newborn baby Jesus is sleeping peacefully, making no noise, et cetera. Nope - if he was a human newborn, he was breastfeeding every couple of hours, crying, and pooping out black tar-like poop.
I've been hearing predictions about the end of the world since 1959 when I was 8 years old.
“It was actually a little shocking to see the creator you quoted marking God’s Not Dead as a breakthrough. It was really really bad.”
The author said it was a ‘financial breakthrough’ and no words about those movies being any good.
Im thankful for your comment because I’ve been making a list of movies mentioned in the article and comments. Your comment made me go back and read the article again and helped me to remember that nuance is important!
Maybe I will watch God’s Not Dead, but with your review in my head that if I think it stinks I don’t have to watch to the end for any moral redemption! (Like I just did watching The Banshees of Inisherin. Horrible, horrible)
The Banshees of Irisherin was unpleasant to watch, like a train wreck. I appreciate what they seemed to be trying to do, which was, "what if Ireland's Troubles were an argument between two men? Wouldn't that be the most fvcked up thing ever?"
I’m not much of a movie goer- not much really interests me that’s showing. But I’m a Christian and it’s fun to go out with your church friends/family to watch an uplifting movie together - even if it’s not terribly high brow.
And sure there was “more to the story “ in The Jesus Revolution; it tells the story of real people who had other facets to them. If filmmakers try to go into all the backstories , it would be a really long movie.
Well done, Hampton, well done.
While growing up in the 70's and 80's, my best friend's father made movies for a Christian film company called Ken Anderson Films. These were movies that were mainly shown in churches. I have wanted to see them present day, wondering how my adult mind would find the quality. So far, no one seems to have adapted them for the internet.
Thank you! I’m reading through the comments and adding to the list of movies mentioned in the article!
“there’s still a giant problem with Christian, or faith-based, content”. Dude, there’s a giant problem with Christians in general. I think the last number I saw was there are 20,000 different Christian-based sects. That alone is enough to cause problems for people. It’s one Bible! Why so many different versions of Christianity?
It’s the theological problem of the individual versus the collective, we call it the Church with a big C. There are as many different versions of Christianity as there are individuals. And yet one Lord, one Church, one baptism. Complicated, but I think both things are true. There are many different “sects” and even more ideas about Christ. And yet, the Church is one. A paradox.
I'm a little amused by "the Church is one"
The Orthodox think they are the real church. The Catholics think they're the real church because the Orthodox don't follow the Catholic pope. The Protestants I grew up with considered nobody Christian but Protestants, and often not even them if their beliefs were 'wrong'. None of those think Mormons or Jehovah's witnesses are Christians. It gets even weirded when you get into smaller sects, like Hawaiians who combined Christianity with Pele worship so Protestants can't decide of they heathen or Saved.
Personally I think Christianity is extremely radical as Jesus teaches it, and I've probably only met a few genuine Christians in my life. Anyone who's concerned about their house, job, food or clothing doesn't qualify for me, myself included.
That last sentence, JC rags on a lot about that.
I simply mean the Church as the apostles talk about it. They considered those who believe in Jesus and follow him to be the church. And I said the church is one because that’s a quote from scripture. So by the theology of the New Testament, some orthodox adherents are Christians. Some Catholics, some Protestants.
It always strikes me how radical and anti-family Jesus is as depicted in the four gospels. Then Paul comes along - a guy a generation or more later who never met the man - and back-pedals it into an administrative organized religion. "Christian" is literally a misnomer. The vast majority are followers of Paul. But "Paulians" doesn't work.
Administration is little developed in those Paulines taken to be genuine; unlike the very highly developed Christology you find. Of what organisation there is, Apostles are foremost and foremost of the Apostles? One Junia, a woman.
The developed admin you are thinking of is found in the fraudulent pseudographs like Timothy that make up two thirds of the collection.
Because every Christian has a personal relationship with Christ and as such are on their own path to Him. Some do it in collaboration with a formal organization but many do not.
You must be old. It was north of 40,000 ten years ago. The best comment on the phenomenon is Emo Philips' "Two Baptists on a Bridge"
It's not just one Bible, the Catholics and Orthodox include different books than the Protestant version, which itself is a collection of I think 66 books spanning a couple thousand years or so.
And of course, there are a multitude of interpretations of those books. Couldn't tell you how many various criteria for "salvation" I have heard over the years.
And translations and versions of those.
You cannot understand Western civilization/culture without a solid knowledge of the Bible. It should be TAUGHT for historical/literary(not religious) reasons in public school. If you were to “study” and understand Saudi Arabia and ignore the Koran you would be foolish indeed
In addition to overt Christian films, Christian themes are evergreen for artistic expression: faith, love, redemption, devotion.
I had an English professor who was a feminist and a Buddhist, but she said it was important to read the Bible cover to cover because without it one couldn’t really understand British literature.
I think, as well as reading the Classics, this applies to Western Civilization as a whole, which is one of the reasons things are falling apart so rapidly.
William Tyndale is arguably the greatest wordsmith in the English language.
I went to a well-known college (hint: it was attended by two First Ladies) and people in my English classes had the hardest time recognizing basic Biblical allusions. They seriously thought I was some kind of genius, because I could figure out that a character doing a bad thing in a garden was supposed to remind the reader of Adam and Eve. I just went to church and Catholic school. 🤷♀️
Mimesis. The canonical Gospels and Acts are fairly littered with scenes that recall Homer and other Classical/Hellenistic literature samewise. Paul similarly reveals a solid Hellenistic education.
I think that, in a lot of states now, the Bible would have to be banned, even if taught as history/literature. It's too sexually explicit Song of Solomon, anyone? Not to mention incest, pedophilia, bestiality, prostitution, etc.
Yes. The full range of man and his nature
🤣🤣
Agree 💯
Although this is nothing new, the content coming from Hollywood is so increasingly filled with absolutely no morals or virtue. The White Lotus was so raunchy and vile I couldn’t stomach more than half an episode. Viewers want something that can give hope, that can provoke thought, that can uplift and change. I’m encouraged reading that maybe, just maybe, change will come.
Agree. I couldn’t finish the first white lotus it was so awful.
And Hollywood thinks that every movie and TV show needs to have the obligatory sex scene and the obligatory chase scene. It’s stupid and boring and derivative.
But then Hollywood prime seems to have run out of ideas and only does marvel comic books or remakes. (Although Top Gun Maverick was a really fun remake).
It’s a lowest common denominator formula designed to appeal across cultures to get a maximum return.
And look where that’s getting us!!!
Look what they’ve done to the Star Trek franchise. Nothing but interpersonal drama and fancy CG. Nothing remotely interesting and nuanced in the storytelling.
Try the current 'Picard' run: very good and very TOS/TNG. Very much NOT Kurtzman Dreck.
I’m a Christian and enjoyed The White Lotus. I found quite a few underlying themes that can resonate with Christians. Much of the cast appears to be “normal” and some living what is supposedly the American Dream, but a closer look reveals all is not happy in paradise.
While the sex scenes are definitely not appropriate for all ages, the use of sex as a theme in the series is to show how it’s used outside its original purpose and is morally corrupting. Same with money/wealth and power/status. I think it also supplies plenty of examples of how people like Tonya (main character) wonder through life aimless and without purpose. She’s extremely wealthy but unhappy and perpetually feels alone. Christian’s know living a life without purpose is not fulfilling and life without God is lonely.
While definitely not a Christian series, I still found worthy themes in the show and enjoyed the acting and dialogue. It’s supposed to make you uncomfortable, maybe even a little disgusted with their actions. Unfortunately that’s reality for much of the world and if anything it’s a good dialogue starter regarding the choices we make and their outcomes.
Not saying to go out and watch it and love it, it’s not for everyone.
Tonya's character really affected me, too. She was sad and tragic, but at the same time seemed to be trying to latch onto SOMETHING to give her life meaning but also wanted complete comfort when finding meaning often means being uncomfortable. I really hoped she would break out and help start the Wellness Spa. The scene where she went back to get her sunglasses was, to me, more uncomfortable to watch than anything else in the series.
The White Lotus was satire and the whole point of it was to show that extremely rich people are generally raunchy and vile while pretending otherwise. They all, in their own way, used the staff. The message wasn't positive, but it wasn't meant to be.
When one has to explain the point, the argument is lost.
I tried to watch it twice. This is award-winning?
Same for Black Mirror. That first episode was horrid!
It was. Like shock and awe. But I persevered. Some of the later episodes are absolutely brilliant and relevant to were we are headed. The one where the elite woman pays to clone a copy of her consciousness into an AI she tasks as a household manager and slave - the job of breaking the will of her own conscious dual by the Madmen actor - is one of the most creative, plausible, and horrific things I've ever seen. The one with the little bot dog bombs was also horrific and plausible.
There is nothing so inspiring as a person of true faith, who leads by quiet example.
We could use more of them in our troubled times.
“Preach the Gospel continually, use words if necessary “. ST Augustine.
This wasn't Augustine. It’s usually attributed to St Francis, but there’s no evidence that he said it in such a pithy way. His rules for his order, however, says, “Let all the brothers, however, preach by their deeds.” So the attribution is fair.
I thought that was st Francis actually
Currently taking Catholic Political Thought 101 through the Institute of Catholic Culture (via ZOOM, for free) with Dr. Chad Pecknold. We started with Socrates and Plato and are now on week three of St. Augustine. Wow, am I learning a lot.
As a professing Christian, I fear what happens when Hollywood gets ahold of Jesus. Life in Christ is complicated, messy, sacrificial, confusing, you name it. But it’s built on a foundation of hope through faith, which keeps the wobbly house described above standing. Hollywood will never portray that adequately because there’s always only one hero, the same one time and again, and he ain’t us. I wish all these folks well. Thank God (literally) that they finally are producing movies someone like me will return to the theater for. But these films are just entertainment. As with all relationships, reality is much stickier than fantasy, and one with Jesus isn’t crowd sourced. So I’ll continue to seek Christ in the midst of my little, loving, very human community in here in CT.
True, but if the movie can be evangelizing, then it's not just entertainment.
We have to search for - and find - whatever it takes to pull this nation back from the abyss. In some ways I hope the Alleged President's "administration" goes full bore against the people so they will get riled enough to stop them.
But more than anything else, we need a leader. The Orange Man has feet of the softest clay, but he's all we have right now. Maybe religion is the answer, and if so, this atheist is all-in. Whatever it takes, but we HAVE to define our national identity, set our standards, and stop the blue-haired soreheads and communists from derailing us. It's only a mission to save Everything That Ever Mattered.
The secularist beliefs in Gender Theory, Race Theory and Climate Change have taken the place of Christianity/Religion because it seems humans need something to believe in. Cancel Culture and the moves to limit Free Speech are the Inquisitions of the 21st century.
Have you seen Michael Crichton's speech on environmentalism-as-religion? Basically he says that environmentalism is religion for atheists. It's really worth looking up. Something I'd never thought of before and right on target, IMHO.
Its religion for lapsed Christian's.
Just read the Crichton speech. Wow. 2003.
This bit near the end:
"Because in the end, science offers us the only way out of politics. And if we allow science to become politicized, then we are lost. We will enter the Internet version of the dark ages, an era of shifting fears and wild prejudices, transmitted to people who don't know any better."
We are lost. We've entered the dark ages.
https://medium.com/@hwater84/climate-change-and-the-ten-warning-signs-for-cults-56c181db82c1
Just read that Crichton speech. He's spot on.
No, haven't seen that, but John McWhorter ( a Black professor of Linguistics) has said the exact same thing about CRT in his book "Woke Racism". I'll check out the Michael Crichton speech, thanks.
I saw Jesus Revolution in a sold-out theater and loved it. Even if one isn’t Christian or religious it was an enjoyable and uplifting story that people need right now.
Think that’s why Ted Lasso is such a big hit. It’s nice to have a “Wonder Years” type show that includes learned life lessons and morals to a story.
Faith is based on belief not identity.
It seems that with a society that's decided that's it's laughable to have faith in something greater than yourself, that the only alternative is a return to tribalism. Many it seems, reject tribalism but are looking for an alternative. Whether you are a believer or not, aspiring to something greater than yourself is very attractive and within limits, healthy
In a period where being part of a physical community has been replaced by staring with glazed eyes at Twitter/Tik Tok, Instagram, where proclaiming that “Math is racist” is considered a legitimate point of view, where what you choose to do with your genitals becomes a defining characteristic of your identity, it is easy to conclude that America has become a dystopian nightmare. This article inspires hope that this is not true.
As an aging Boomer, I grew up in the time after World War II where you started every school day with the Pledge of Allegiance, went to church/synagogue every Sunday and heard sermons that were all variations of the the Ten Commandments. This provided a framework of good/bad, right wrong, and acceptable/unacceptable behavior. You were part of a physical community. But then the 60’s arrived. Among many other changes, religion came under fire. Best personified by Madelyn Murray O’Hare’s crusade for atheism, the Crèche scene was disallowed in front of Churches, the Ten Commandments disappeared from the entrance to Courthouses, and Time magazine (a real magazine at the time) decided on a cover declaring “God is Dead”. This was replaced with “do your own thing”, “let it all hang out”, “power to the people”.
And now, 60 years later, here we are. The fact that these films are gaining popularity demonstrates that, increasingly, people are searching for a greater meaning in their life. There is hope for America after all.
60 years ago it was much easier to be part of a community. The average house cost twice the average income (11,000 and 5,600), not nine times the average income as it does today (450,000 and 53500). One person in a family could work and the family could still be comfortable. Rich people had better homes but didn't lock themselves in gated communities--they were part of the community. People didn't make a living betting that businesses would fail so they could get rich.
Most importantly, you could get a job just about anywhere and stay in that job and be part of a community. You didn't have to constantly move from place to place to chase work. Kids didn't think about being shot in school--guns were barely mentioned, not something yahoos paraded around with just because they could. Companies still tried to sell their products, but didn't hire psychologists to find ways to get people to shove more salt, sugar and fat down their gullets.
As for "God is Dead," Nietzsche said this in the 1800s so it wasn't a new concept in the 1960s by any means.
With blind faith in tech and progress (and individual rights) we let the State and the Market redesign our institutions and our relationships. The changes have been profoundly alienating and dehumanizing. Arguably evil, with the worst imaginable feedback loops. Instead of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness we've embraced death, bondage and mental illness.
Just so. The advance of technology also allowed American companies to begin sourcing products overseas from totalitarian regimes that paid a fraction of the cost to produce and resulted in two positive results - less expensive products and greater profits for American companies and one horrific result - the off-shoring of production in America which decimated good paying jobs and wiped out communities primarily in mid-America and the South. I graduated in 1968 and, in a class of 95, I was one of two that went on to college. All my friends in school who didn't go to college were able to find good jobs with decent wages. Graduates from High School who don't go to be indoctrinated in what passes for "Higher Education" face few, if any, opportunities to find meaningful employment. Deaths from Fentanyl in the 18-30 age bracket have now claimed more than double the lives lost in that age group than in World War II.
Yes, but also we were in an extremely lucky position after World War II when most of Europe was in ruins and we ramped up production to basically rebuild an entire continent. It's unlikely we'll be in that position again.
A once in a lifetime opportunity not seen as it was, and squandered.
"God is dead. God remains dead, and we have killed him." Now we have secularism which takes the place of God. It is not pretty.
It's not just the secularization of human life. It's the outright profanity of it. Some of us are 100% convinced that they are the divine gods now. They are mistaken.
But Nietzsche warned us what would follow the death of God.
I get Rainn Wilson's point.
White Christian preachers are almost always depicted in film and TV as Bible-thumping, Southern, gun-loving, repressed, wild-eyed zealots that hate gays but are secretly closeted or have inappropriate contact with minors or affairs with congregants or parishioners.
Conversely, Black preachers are almost always depicted as being in deep and joyous communion with their creator, welcoming any and all to their congregation.
I don't practice any religion and the loathsome term "spiritual" also doesn't apply to me, but I hate the way Christians and Catholics are depicted in media.
Yep. You summed it up. The black preachers will probably have pretty wives and cute kids, too, while the white preachers have dour wives and children with blank states.
(Though it’s “Christians, including Catholics,” not “Christians and Catholics.”)
And to be clear, this isn't to say that Black preachers aren't kind and good or not in communion with their creator, but there must be one white preacher that is.
I remember liking this movie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apostle
Spoiler Alert.
Not sure whether it fits those tropes, but it does in part considering Duvall's character starts the movie out by killing his wife's lover in a drunken jealous fit. But, then he becomes "depicted as being in deep and joyous communion with their creator, welcoming any and all to their congregation" by the end of the movie.
That was a good movie.
It's human nature that when someone acts morally superior, we like to see them taken down a peg. As for the Catholic Church, what garnered the most negative press was not that some priests turned out to be child molesters, it's that the church KNEW this and just rotated them around from parish to parish.
Christ didn't build the Church you describe. Human beings....very fallible, sinful human beings (priests/others) did that to Christ's Church. This is true in other institutions as well
--schools, Boy Scouts, etc. Humans are capable of heinous things, regardless of their position, their vows, or their knowledge and that is Satan working too diligently to bring Christ's Church to an end. For practicing Catholics like myself, we're well aware that the man in the collar can be as much as sinner as us and instead of relishing in their "take down" I pray for them to repent and change. Then, I leave it to God.
Thank you, I had no knowledge of these movies, nor the men and women producing them. Reading your piece this morning warmed this old man’s heart.
I graduated high school in 1970 and remember well the faith based movement of the time.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
The Gospel.
The “Cliff notes” of the Bible: love God and love others.
In that order. And tell him so all the time. Or else.
love "and serve" others