Live.Awake

Evaluating Film as a Christian

// June 28th, 2007 // Christian Living, Movies

I read an interesting post over at The Resurgence. Greg Wright is discussing how Christians should be evaluating films and wondering whether or not we have lost the plot (sorry… couldn’t resist the wordplay there). He brings up an interesting point.

Consider this graphic Hollywood plotline: A man travels to Las Vegas to retrieve his cheating wife. On the way back to Los Angeles, the two stop at a rundown motel in Death Valley. During the night, a mob of sexual degenerates surrounds their cabin, threatening to sodomize the man. Hoping to appease the bloodlust, the man throws his wife outside—and when morning comes, the mob has left nothing of her but a corpse. The man cuts up her body and sends pieces of it to his friends… But that’s nothing compared to the bloodbath that follows.

This is actually a modern synopsis of Judges 20-21. And it would have been avoided by every good church-goer and reamed by Christian film critics. Yet there it is in our Holy Bible.

Greg comes to the conclusion that context is everything. It is the context of Judges that makes the above story meaningful to us. It shows us what happens when a society does what it wants and gets its way. He says the same is true for modern film.

Why did no one balk at the violence of Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ or the R rating? Context. It’s the story of the cross for crying out loud! The violence and seedy story line is part of what makes it what it is.

I’d like to hear from you guys on this. How do you evalute the movies you watch? What films do you avoid? Why?

What do you think of Greg’s thoughts?

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