05.06
Former Christianity Today film critic Jeffrey Overstreet recently was asked to compile a list of "Five Movies Christians Hated for All the Wrong Reasons" for Seattle's CityArts magazine. Here's what he said...
1. Monty Python’s Life of Brian
The Charge: It mocks Jesus.
The Defense: Not true. It makes us laugh as we watch gullible, fickle, arrogant humans chase a false messiah, exploit religious teaching for their own gain and misunderstand Jesus.
2. Harry Potter
The Charge: It’s witchcraft.
The Defense: No, it’s make-believe guiding kids to consider their own gifts. Rowling, a Christian, wove scripture into the stories.
3. Brokeback Mountain
The Charge: It promotes homosexuality.
The Defense: The film shows the evils of homophobic hatred, and also demonstrates that obsession can blind us and true love sometimes requires self-denial for the greater good.
4. Natural Born Killers
The Charge: It’s obscene, violent, blasphemous.
The Defense: It’s a brilliant lampoon. It exposes our national obsession with criminals, crime and scandal. Anybody who commits “copycat” violence missed the point.
5. Saved!
The Charge: It satirizes Christians.
The Defense: I attended a Christian high school. Christian teens (and their teachers) are prone to the same pride, peer-pressure games, hypocrisy and cruelty as any teens – and this wouldn’t surprise Jesus, whose disciples behaved the same way. Admittedly, the film’s conclusion – that Jesus wanted nothing more than kindness and tolerance – is severely insufficient.
The piece was written partly in response to Seattle pastor Mark Driscoll's well-publicized rant against Avatar as the "most demonic, satanic movie I've ever seen." (I guess this brings the list to six.) Driscoll's mega church is well known in the Seattle area and is one of the very few churches with an attendance of 10,000+ in the Pacific Northwest. To keep his quote in context, here is a video clip of the message it came from...
Jeffrey Overstreet, who also reviewed Driscoll’s review said, “Avatar's script sounds like it was written by a sixth grader. It’s like a Happy Meal. But if you’re going to call a Happy Meal ‘demonic,’ then I’m going to defend it.” Overstreet says believers should know movies, just as St. Paul knew and quoted pagan poetry in Athens. “And what’s the place where Paul did this?” Overstreet asks. “Mars Hill!” And what is Driscoll's church name? Mars Hill.
So what do you think? Feel free to comment...
I think preachers – TV/evangelists in particular tend toward sensationalism much like movies tend to push the sensationalism envelope in production, special effects, and social commentary. When we as Christians remember that we are called to be in the world but not of it, to be salt and light instead of God’s defender, we will learn to be far more effective Christian witnesses. In my opinion it is so sad to see Christians expecting to be treated like anything other than foreigners in a strange land! Why is this so easy for us to forget?
I am probably one of two people who hasn’t seen “Avatar” (the other being my husband), so I can’t comment on this sermon. However, I did want to add that a movie that I have always thought Christians should be upset about is “Pleasantville.” It basically says that in order to be “alive” (shown by characters going from black and white to color in the movie), you need to sin. There is a scene with an apple where the main characters are told that they should take a bite out of it and that being told not to is where all of our problems started. There is another scene where a character chooses divorce because she should get to be “happy”–oh well, that she has kids and a husband who doesn’t understand why she is leaving because she doesn’t talk with him about it. As you can tell, I hated it!
I agree, “Pleasantville” had this warm fuzzy feeling to it that really masked some difficult content. Many Christians I discussed it with found it cute. The ones who didn’t like Avatar said it was because the Navi “looked” like demons. The reason “Saved” was disliked was because it was too real and the filmmakers were making fun of Christians. Religious preference is a funny thing. I really think the core issues of morality and story in a movie are lost because we often get distracted by whose acting, the movie’s genre, or technology. I agree. Thanks for your comments.