Low Budget "Faith" Films
Since my husband’s been working swing shifts, I’ve started watching tv in the evenings, usually one of those poorly produced “faith” films with a good story and really bad acting. When so much of what we see today focuses on hate, illicit sex, violence, vulgarity and blasphemy, these seem my only option for wholesome TV entertainment.
If these positive stories could be produced by movie studios with financial clout, they could get quality actors, directors, filmmakers and editors, but left with minimal budgets, these “good message” films fall far short of being monumental in the way that The Chosen (which is the largest crowd-funded film endeavor in history, as well as being the best Christian message film production ever!) is. I wonder why these small-time, “faith-based” stories rarely get told in a more professional way, then I think, “Why would God want to advance a ‘Christian faith’ movie that doesn’t share the true Gospel of Jesus Christ?”
Last night I watched “something… Heaven,” a movie I can’t even remember the title to. It was very obviously low budget, however, the story was endearing, if a little hard to swallow. These filmmakers went to the trouble of trying to make me believe that a Christian hospice nurse realizes that the grouchy, dying, atheist man she’s caring for is actually her biological father, and that the local handyman is her long-lost brother, yet they completely left Jesus out of the story -when He’s only element that would have made me believe it! (Reminds me of Miss Clara in War Room: “They’re always leaving Jesus out; that’s why we’re in the mess we’re in.”)
Back to the plot: The Christian nurse proclaims her “faith” -as with many films of this ilk- simply as a hope in heaven, a better life beyond this one. Christians in these stories always want everyone to go to heaven, yet they never tell how one really gets to heaven. I understand that the producers don’t want to offend anyone watching, but think about it- WHO’S WATCHING THESE CHEESY FILMS? People like me, (who’ve already watched The Chosen several times) and are looking for a message beyond the ugliness Hollywood is largely producing these days. If the audience for these films is primarily Christian, and the storyline is about eternal life in heaven, shouldn’t the Gospel be included somewhere?
Spoiler alert (as if you’re going to watch this when I can’t even think of the title): In the movie, the brother tells of a near-death experience and talking with “Him” in heaven, but he doesn’t elaborate on who “He” is: Jesus? God the Father? The Holy Spirit? We’re to believe that the brother and sister are Christian, yet they don’t tell their newly found father how to go to heaven. As their biological dad dies with a smile on his face, he simply points to the ceiling, “Aw, he decided to go to heaven, isn’t that nice?” But the truth is he didn’t need to point where he decided to spend eternity, but to believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, died, paying the penalty we deserve as sinners; he needed to realize that Jesus is the spotless, sinless Lamb of God. God’s people in the Old Testament had been sacrificing spotless lambs over and over for millennia, but Jesus is THE Lamb all those OT sacrifices pointed toward, fully God and fully man, who lived a sinless life and laid it down, paying the penalty once and for all, for all of us who believe and accept it. He rose from the grave, conquering death, ascending to heaven and bestowing the Holy Spirit on all believers, showing that as His followers we spend eternity with Him in heaven.
Allistair Begg’s current series on Ephesians, “Walk in Love,” speaks to this entirely! Our lives as Christians, no matter what we’re doing for a living or who we’re around, should leave no question as to Who we serve. In today’s message, Begg quotes James Stuart, a pastor from the School of Divinity of Edinburgh in the 1950’s: “A harmlessly vague and hopelessly accommodating Christianity will accomplish nothing anywhere, any time, except to undermine the Gospel itself.” And that is exactly what these movies often do- reduce the meaning of Christianity to a vague and accommodating “pointing to the sky” rather than proclaiming that God loves us so much that He sent His only begotten Son, Jesus to pay our debt and make a way for believers to live in heaven.
Without the Gospel, movies and messages by Christian filmmakers, pastors, writers or teachers fall not only short of conveying the true message of Christ, but they mislead people by falsely implying that Christian faith is merely a matter of choosing to go to heaven or not. This lulls nominal Christians into believing that a loved one is in heaven even though they claimed to be agnostic, or it furthers one’s assumption that being baptized, attending church, or portraying Mary in the nativity play makes you a Christian. If we depict an atheist man as becoming Christian simply by pointing to the ceiling with his dying breath and do not show him hearing or believing the Truth of the Gospel, I wonder whether we’re producing something far more harmful and misleading than a secular film completely void of faith.
As I was writing this this, I searched for an A.W. Tozer quote I read this morning on facebook (@A.W. Tozer, Man of God), and found this one instead: “Nothing that man has discovered about himself or God has revealed any shortcut to pure spirituality. It is still free, but tremendously costly. Of course, this supposes at least a fair amount of sound theological knowledge. To seek God apart from His own self-disclosure in the inspired Scriptures is not only futile, but dangerous. There must also be a knowledge of and complete trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Redeemer. Christ is not one of many ways to approach God, nor is He the best of several ways; He is the Only way. ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh to the Father but by Me’ (John 14:6). To believe otherwise is to be something less than a Christian.” (A.W. Tozer, Looking at God).
(And finding that quote is the "Holy Wow" to what I'm trying to say here.)