Why the worst critic of the Son of God movie will be the church.

Today we see the release of the movie “The Son of God”.  This movie has already been released on cable and available on DVD for several months now.  I’m grateful that that originators of this movie had the vision, courage and resources to bring to life a theatrical depiction of the life of Christ.

My biggest concerns for this movie is that (and you can mark my words on this) someone from the body of Christ is going to say this movie is not biblically accurate.  In other words, Christians are essentially going to throw rotten tomatoes at their own movie.

How do I know this?  Because one believer did this in my personal discussion with them.  They pointed out various ‘flaws’ in the movie. When this person and I discussed the Bible mini series and the particular section that dealt with Jesus’s life this was some of the commentary. Keep in mind this is a quote.

“Jesus calling Peter out of the boat instead of Peter asking Jesus if he can come out. Just ONE example. It’s not scriptural and that makes it a lie. It’s wrong no matter who produced it.”

This beloved person in my humble opinion threw the baby out with the bathwater.  To use a biblical phrase,  “Ye…strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.”.

Here is a movie that affirms the virgin birth, the deity of Christ, his atoning death on the cross for the sins of humanity, his miracles, angels and demons, his resurrection.  It affirms the triune nature of God. Yet despite all this.

“Its not scriptural.”

Bam.  There it is.  The Christian form of saying it was inspected by inspector 12 and given the rejection stamp.

This is what I see in every form of entertainment where a Christian attempts to influence.  For some it is simply not “godly” enough, it can be music (Christian rock and roll, Christian rap) for some these things are oxymoron’s.  Christian fiction?  How can fiction be Christian some say.

When I read comments like this I often wonder is this the type of Christian who believes that the only viable version of the Bible to read is the KJV.

I’m telling you that one of the criticism of this movie is that it’s not accurate enough for some believers.  Watch for this too especially with the upcoming Noah movie where we have even less source material to go on.

Here’s a quote from the Press Enterprise, that makes my point.  “…no major film about Jesus had been made after “Passion” because of the difficulty of making religious films that can sell millions of tickets.

“Finding a script that is written sensitively and that doesn’t offend certain groups, and that is not going to be wildly costly, is not easy to do,” she said.

Upcoming Hollywood films on Noah and Moses already are running into problems with Christians who say the movies are not faithful enough to the Bible, she said.”

The creators are trying to take a book that is over a millennia old, and make it relevant to today’s audience that keeps the spirit of the text.  They are trying to do that in two hours when some of us Christians won’t even take the same amount of time to sit and read the Bible for that long over the course of a week.

I have yet to see ANY movie which fully captures the book from which it is based on.  But some in the body have such high standards it can actually discourage other members of the body of creating anything.  And thus we get to the root of the problem.  We have not because we ask not.  We eat our own.  It’s true.  I hate to say it but its true.

How about we evaluate it using one of the standards the Jesus gave us. “ye shall know a tree by its fruit.” What is the fruit of the thing?  What does it produce?  Do people actually want to go and read the Bible more?  to see if those things are so? Does it open up discussion about Christ?  Does someone actually get saved from being exposed to the movie?  Do people repent?  I think when you get those kinds of results you really have to rethink how you see Christian entertainment.  Its kind of funny as I think about.  Jesus told stories called parables.  And everyone didn’t always get him either…go figure.

 

D

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