Responding to Christian Films

So there was a little bit of it that had an air of I thought in relationship the way the university really is unreality to it and that took away from the value of it to some degree. But that’s a complaint no different than my deist God in Noah. On the other hand, there were very substantive things said about worldviews in the exchanges that were very much appropriate to the conversation our culture has with itself when it’s in debate on various worldviews.

And that’s even part of what I said about Noah, I’m like you’ve got to know your audience. And in each one of these, you have to know your audience. So in that respect, God is Not Dead is a movie made to encourage believers and to encourage Christians. And I know they would say, “Well, you know, you take your nonbeliever friend and you have this dialogue about atheism versus” – you know, yeah, I mean you have this dialogue atheism versus Christianity and that kind of thing.

But truthfully, if I were to take my atheist friend to go and see it, they would, you know, like why’d you – why you bring me – you know what I mean?

It was more of a rally-the-troops, something that’s very encouraging to our faith. In the theater that we were in, there was an amen corner. So I mean, seriously. [Laughter]

I remember the first time – this film was a re- a packaging of stuff that was done for the series The Bible, and in fact, it struck me as a film that looked like it was more made as an adaptation for TV that now is on the big screen. That shouldn’t surprise us.

The Passion imagery was about shock, okay. I describe The Passion as a shock-and-awe Jesus movie. [Laughter] You know because it was designed – the violence of Jesus’ death was in your face all the way through.

I haven’t had enough time to process that reaction. But that’s how the Son of God struck me. Again, good film.

Now again, this is something that people may or may not know about, but theologians might be aware of it. And so what – it was an anti-Last Supper story, okay, by the way it was portrayed, whether intentional or not. Two things about that. One is the issue of sin is very much in the movie because the first miracle that Jesus performs early on is the healing of the paralytic in which the story of sin is very much about what Jesus is about and that shadows then the rest of the conversation. Okay, so that’s incident number one.

And the idea that this is somehow Gnostic totally ignores that also at the beginning of the movie in which Jesus is seen as having been present even at the creation. And the creation in the Bible is positive and the creation in Gnosticism is negative. Jesus wouldn’t have had anything to do with it as a Creator God. So it can’t be Gnostic. The interpretation will not allow you to go there.

So that’s about the first thing. The second scene that I’ve heard bring up is the calling of Peter, the fishers of men. And here, the story’s been simplified. We don’t have the coworkers of Peter with him. It’s just Jesus and Peter. It’s very focused. And the remark that’s made at the end isn’t nearly that I will make you fishers of men, but we will change the world. And there was an objection to the insertion of that idea into the text.

With this one, you have a situation where you filmed hundreds of hours of film and you did it for a television series, but then you go, “You know what? People across the world are not able to watch a 10-hour miniseries. Let’s re-cut it down to two hours and do a film.” Then you are piece together and you still have the footage, so you can still make a story out of it, but that’s a very different process than we’re going to shoot this film and –

So you know, that’s when Hollywood perked up and said, “Whoa, wait a minute, there’s an audience here.” Now, fast-forward, if we compare that, now, The Bible series did very good on the History Channel. In re-cutting it into Son of God, it hasn’t had as much of that same push or impact yet that Passion did because that kind of central through-line is missing and because a lot of people already saw The Bible series.

So if you’ve already seen the series on TV, and now I’m going to come and pay $15.00 to see – I’m going to go see it in the movie, so it was almost like a – you know, I don’t know if they kind of put an obstacle in their own way so to speak, but audiences still, of course, go – have gone out to see it. And for me, I’ll say this and this is just – I mean, I kind of got it in my own Hollywood Christian community because as a community, we all really try as best we can to support one another. But I went on my blog and because they had said that they had worked really hard to try to keep this very close to the narrative, I actually went in, again, expecting that it would be very close to the narrative.

And so for me, I had an adjustment period when I first started watching at least the series on television, I had to adjust and go, “Okay, this – you know, this is not quite that.” So I have to adjust and the little things like that with the conversation with Peter. I’m like, well, if the language is there, the text is there, like he did not say, “We’re going to go change the world.” Like what are we – you know, [laughter] [singing]. Change the world. I was like, oh man.

So in that regard, I probably originally just really just had some – you know, just some wrestlings. And Roma is being honored at the conference that I’m speaking at this week, and so I hope to be able to chat and dialogue a little bit more in that regard. But again, a real big kind of whopping hey we’ve got Hollywood’s attention because when that miniseries blew up on the History Channel and those numbers poured in and it was something like 13 million views or something like that, I was invited to a conference probably within four to five months where it was a room full of studios and executives and people going, “How do we do that kind of series? We want those numbers.”

“How do we do this? Who’s got the next story?” It’s seen as how do we get a piece of that pie. And they were asking the family-friendly faith community how do we recreate this because obviously you guys want this kind of material. So when it’s all said and done, the series, at least by way of the television series, made huge waves, and the movie has not done as well. But again, a lot of people saw the series.

And in the screening that we were in, quick note – in the screening that we were in, there was an atheist in the room, and she said, “I have to call myself a lapsed atheist. I wanted to hate this movie. But the portrayals are so authentic and so real and the way that this movie was handled,” she said, “I’m just – wow. Wow.” And so you know what I mean? So in that degree –

God is Not Dead, Heaven is For Real. They’re more able to do that because you are financing your own idea – like you’re the person that’s financing them when you’re doing it independently and you don’t have a studio with 50 people that have to sign off on whether or not this goes to screen or not. Does that make sense?

Now, will it make as much as Noah? Probably not. But they also didn’t spend as much as Noah.

So it’s not just Hollywood is making these anti-God movies. No. they’re making movies that they know we identify with and telling the story in a different way, right, telling the story in a different way. As a community, we come to the table and say, “Hey, that story in Avatar right there? That’s our story.”

We get that story. We say, “Hey, that’s our story. That is the story.” But if we’re not – if we’re not engaged in the dialogue, if we’re not at that table, we can’t even say, “Like hey, that’s our story.” Right?