Page 2383 – Christianity Today (2024)

What do Mel Gibson, vampires and green aliens have in common? They all caught my eye this week…

Welcome to what will be a regular feature here at the Christianity Today Movies blog. Things That Caught My Eye This Week is exactly what it sounds like — short snippets of movie news and gossip that I thought was interesting enough to pass along. Enjoy!

The Passion of the Mel Gibson?

What do you do if you’ve directed an extraordinarily successful (if controversial) blockbuster and need to refurbish your tarnished image after a DUI and an embarrassing racist rant? Mel Gibson’s answer may surprise you!

Jesus Christ Superstar to be remade?

Jesus Christ has always been a hot attraction on the big screen, even when films about him are controversial. Now it looks like the Son of God might become a cineplex superstar yet again – literally. Talks are underway for a “modern, hipstery take” in a remake of Jesus Christ, Superstar from (500) Days of Summer director Marc Webb.

Not-So-Little Green Men

It’s no secret around here that we’re very excited about Andrew Stanton’s (the director of WALL*E and a Christian) new live action film John Carter of Mars, based on the novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Well some new casting news appeared this week. In addition to those already set in stone, including Friday Night Lights‘ Taylor Kitsch and Lynn Collins (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) are newcomers James Purefoy (Mansfield Park, Vanity Fair), Mark Strong (Stardust, Body of Lies) and Thomas Hayden Church (Sideways, Spider-Man 3). The latter two will be playing aliens, among them the green-skinned, four-armed Tharks!

We Thee Wed

Christianity Today‘s August cover story, “The Case for Early Marriage,” much impressed me. My husband and I commenced a life of hardship at ages 20 and 18, respectively. We married because we felt we were supposed to, and stayed together for the same reason. Family and friends believed our marriage was doomed.

Eight years later, I can see that all of our troubles were rooted in the curse words of marriage: opinions, preferences, and rights. If we train our children to lay these things down and devote themselves to showing their spouses the love of Christ, early marriage won’t be so controversial.

Adrienne MichelsonRome, Ohio

Mark Regnerus does a great job of describing what’s going on in Christian culture. But his solution—”weddings all around, except for the leftover Christian women”—doesn’t correspond to the problem. This is because he fails to address the spiritual aspect of unchastity. Marriage may make sex okay, but it does not make a spiritual posture of disobedience okay.

That’s why I found his dismissal, “It is unreasonable to expect [young Christians] to refrain from sex,” so discouraging. In fact, our reasonable act of worship goes far beyond abstinence. We can’t strengthen marriage until we encourage each other with the fact that we can resist any temptation. But who is telling unmarried Christians that it’s not too hard to be a virgin indefinitely? By extension, who is telling them that a lifelong, faithful marriage is possible? And who is telling them that Christ trumps every other need in their lives? Sadly, no one in this cover package does.

Susan WunderinkCT Contributing EditorDurham, North Carolina

Regnerus nailed the problem as articulately as anyone I’ve read. But outside of comments like, “Generosity … and godliness live on far longer than do high testosterone and estrogen levels,” he provided few answers. My proposal: Instead of segregating youth ministries from adult ministries, why not encourage adult/youth discipleship? Train the older men to guide the younger into biblical manhood (Titus 2:2, 6), and to look forward to their responsibilities as husbands and fathers.

Doug KnoxE-mail

Regnerus writes, “[W]hen people wait until their mid- to late-20s to marry, it is unreasonable to expect them to refrain from sex. It’s battling our Creator’s reproductive designs.” Has fornication stopped being a sin? Pop culture has so fanned the flames of our national libido that sex is now on par with air to breathe as being an undeniable human need. I reject this utterly, as any Christian should.

As to “battling our Creator’s reproductive designs,” I can’t imagine giving this counsel to Joseph when he was tempted by Potiphar’s wife. God often has important purposes for his followers that may well run against “reproductive designs.”

Darwin DunhamMinneola, Florida

Easing Praise Tension

I much enjoyed Brad Harper and Paul Louis Metzger’s “Here We Are to Worship” [August]. The tragedy of the worship wars is that neither set of tastes precludes the other. The authors characterize traditional hymns as retellings of salvation’s story and praise music as intending to transport the soul. Yet both theological record and personal transformation are important aspects of worship. The question regarding any worship music is not, “What form does this represent?” but rather, “Does this honor God?”

If the answer is yes, shouldn’t we, young or old, accept with humility all expressions of God’s saving work, whether played on an organ or a guitar?

Penny BiddyAbilene, Texas

After being in church music for 40 years, I think both sides in the worship wars need to change. Contemporary music tends to be theologically and technically simplistic, loud, and egocentric. Roughly the same could be said of traditional music: boring, relying on a repertoire of 20 hymns, “we”-centered, and increasingly shallow in theology. For both, the temptation is to entertain rather than to point people to the triune God.

Unfortunately, musicians are trying to get the attention of an audience that is spiritually asleep—which leads me to conclude that a spiritual awakening is needed before anything meaningful can come out of the music program. Pastors, take it from here.

Ron WhiteBloomington, Minnesota

New Views on Worldview

As the lone survivor of the four worldview advocates that James K. A. Smith apparently names in his book Desiring the Kingdom [CT Review, August], I question some of his charges. According to Eric Miller’s review, we worldview proponents see humans as “primarily rational creatures, moved and animated mainly by ideas.” On the contrary, I have maintained for over half a century that all our thinking is “perspectival,” that worldview beliefs are rooted in pre-theoretical attitudes.

In writing on Christian higher education, therefore, I have described persons as “reflective” rather than “rational” (to avoid Enlightenment connotations), as well as relational beings (to God and other persons) and valuing beings.

Arthur F. HolmesWheaton, Illinois

The title of Miller’s review seems sensationalized. Fortunately, Jamie Smith is more balanced than it suggests regarding worldview. That “there is something more important than our intellectual framework” is a no-brainer. Few among the most ardent worldview rationalists would disagree. There are nuanced articulations of worldview that address the rationalist charge, as I did in Worldview: The History of a Concept. There, I claim that the heart of the matter is that worldview is a matter of the heart. So let’s not throw out the worldview baby with the rationalist bathwater.

David K. NaugleChair of Philosophy, Dallas Baptist University Dallas, Texas

Correction:August’s “School’s Out Forever” [HeadLines, p. 13] incorrectly stated the number of member schools in the Association of Christian Schools International. The correct number is 5,500 schools.

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Fax: 630.260.8428

A couple of years ago, I received a flier in the mail:

A new flavor of church is in town! Whether you prefer church with a more traditional blend or a robust contemporary flavor, at [church name], we have a style just for you! Casual atmosphere, relevant messages, great music, dynamic kids’ programs, and yes, you can choose your own flavor!

The “flavors” were described with phrases intended to attract the unchurched: “Real-life messages,” “Safe and fun children’s program,” “Friendly people,” and the marketing coup de grace, “Fresh coffee and doughnuts!”

What pagan could resist?

I poke fun, yes, but I also recognize two realities. First, we must not mock the desire to reach the unchurched. Second, any evangelical worth his or her evangelistic salt has from time to time succumbed to the cultural pressure, in personal conversations or creating outreach programs, to say things that make the gospel seem small.

In our better moments, we recall with the apostle Paul that it is the gospel of Jesus Christ that reaches the world. But we often find ourselves thinking the theology of one character in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, who said, “If you want to get anywheres in religion, you got to keep it sweet.”

A New Evangelical Creed

There are various ways that we “keep it sweet”—that is, try to make the gospel inviting to as many as possible. The results have been mixed. Who hasn’t met a new believer who came to faith in Jesus Christ, miraculously, through the most superficial means? For God’s mercy on our often foolish attempts at contextualization, we should be ever thankful.

This doesn’t excuse us from the hard task of self-criticism as we seek to be more faithful. In fact, in the last couple of decades, our self-criticism has practically become an addiction. But it is worth rehearsing some of the more devastating critiques of our movement—both to recall the wonder of God’s mercy, and to put into context our various efforts at reform.

Historian Mark Noll addressed one concern in his Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, writing, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.” He was arguing not for mere intellectualism but for a use of the mind that would, in the end, give us a greater vision of God.

Theologian Ron Sider aimed wider in The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World? Sider was called up short for not clearly defining evangelical and for sometimes relying on questionable statistics, but overall his outrage over evangelical morals and lifestyle is commendable. God forbid that we should ever not be scandalized by nominal Christianity!

And then there are the titles that suggest not just flaws but something much more serious: Frank Viola and George Barna’s Pagan Christianity? and Michael Horton’s Christless Christianity. Yikes!

Such sweeping critiques hinge on what the critic means by evangelical. Some use strict definitions that include a complex set of beliefs and behaviors, and so define evangelicals as a step above the ordinary mortal. Others use loose definitions in which the word seems to mean nothing more than “nice religious person.” Evangelicals by these definitions fare pretty badly when compared with the rest of the world.

In this article, I lean toward the looser definition. We might feel better about ourselves as a movement if we restrict the word to the most committed—that would eliminate the problem of nominalism anyway. But talk to any evangelical pastor of any evangelical church, and they will tell you that the broad definition is what they work with week in and week out: people who think of themselves as “Bible believing” or “born again” or “evangelical” or “saved” and yet, except for the committed few, have beliefs and behaviors that fall far short of New Testament ideals. And if we as pastors, teachers, missionaries, parachurch leaders, and thought leaders—we who write most of the material decrying our movement—are honest with ourselves, we will admit that the enemy we’ve found is often us.

Such critiques are not merely subjective estimates of our spiritual state by a few disgruntled insiders. Our movement has also come under the rigorous scrutiny of sociologists of religion. Their studies confirm our suspicions.

Wade Clark Roof, in his Spiritual Marketplace: Baby Boomers and the Remaking of American Religion, described Christianity in the U.S. as he saw it 10 years ago:” … the drift over time, and still today, is in the direction of enhanced choices for individuals and toward a deeply personal, subjective understanding of faith and well-being.”

When he focused on our movement, he made the same point: “Evidence that the appeal of popular evangelicalism lies primarily in its attention to personal needs, and not dogma or even strict morality, is supported by careful analysis of national surveys. Psychological categories like ‘self,’ ‘fulfillment,’ ‘individuality,’ ‘journey,’ ‘walk,’ and ‘growth’ are all very prominent within evangelical Christianity.”

Many other studies say the same thing, but the most important is Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton’s Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. Published in 2005, it is already a classic.

Smith and Denton conducted extensive interviews with 267 American teenagers, and concluded that a new religion had emerged in America whose chief tenets are as follows:

• A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
• God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
• The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
• God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
• Good people go to heaven when they die.

Smith and Denton noticed that this “de facto creed” was particularly prominent among mainline Protestant and Catholic teenagers, “but is also visible among black and conservative Protestants.”

Since the authors found that this faith is learned from parents, they conclude, “We have come with some confidence to believe that a significant part of Christianity in the United States is actually only tenuously Christian in any sense that is seriously connected to the actual historical Christian tradition, but has rather substantially morphed into Christianity’s misbegotten step-cousin, Christian Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.”

This analysis resonates deeply with American evangelical church and parachurch leaders. While Smith and Denton intended to describe the state of teenage faith, they seem to have described large segments of evangelical faith.

‘God Hath A Controversy’

We find ourselves rightly and intensely concerned about our spiritual state, but such concerns are not new. The second-generation American Puritans saw a “declension” in religious fervor, and began adopting strategies to halt the decline. One strategy was the jeremiad, a sermon that rehearsed the sins of the people and the judgment of God, and called for repentance.

When that strategy failed, they gathered church leaders for the Reforming Synod of 1679, which produced a document titled “The Necessity of Reformation.” It said that “God hath a controversy with his New England people” and that he had “written his displeasure in dismal characters against us.”

The Great Awakenings were divine answers to these early pleadings. As much as the evangelistic crusades of George Whitefield, and later, Dwight L. Moody, Billy Sunday, and Billy Graham were meant for unbelievers, we know many Christians attended their events to revive their faith. The rhythm of declension and revival has been a regular feature in American Christianity. We seem to be in another downward part of the cycle as we enter the 21st century.

One reason for this rhythm is this continent’s distinct culture. After his visit to America from late 1831 to early 1832, Alexis de Tocqueville described in eerily contemporary terms two features of American life and the religious tension they produced. While extolling the American emphases on freedom and equality, he said:

It must be acknowledged that equality, which brings great benefits into the world, nevertheless suggests to men … some very dangerous propensities. It tends to isolate them from each other, to concentrate every man’s attention upon himself; and it lays open the soul to an inordinate love of material gratification. The greatest advantage of religion is to inspire diametrically contrary principles. [Emphasis added.]

Tocqueville had the prescience to see the individualism and consumerism that would ever plague American Christianity. But he seems to have had an unwarranted confidence in American religion’s ability to resist these temptations.

Kaleidoscope of Answers

There are other aspects of evangelical nominalism: poor ecclesiology, inattention to doctrine, racism, indifference to injustice, and so on. Because there are so many dimensions, a plethora of movements has arisen to address what each sees as the core issue.

Some of these movements focus on the lack of personal morality, and so champion accountability groups or the spiritual disciplines as the key to renewal. Others attack our individualism and strive to create a church life that is more meaningful, everything from “house church” to “simple church” to “deep church” to “missional church” to “ancient-future church.” Some are most concerned about the lack of spiritual fervor, and put their hope in the Holy Spirit as experienced in charismatic gifts. Some believe we’re not thinking right, and they experiment with new ways of framing the faith, from postmodern theology to new perspective to neo-Calvinism to theology of the kingdom. Some say evangelicals are captive to white culture, and so advocate multiculturalism. Some say we just need to get back to the basics and start following Jesus.

The kaleidoscope of answers—all of them spoken by people who identify themselves as evangelicals—suggests a number of things. First, it suggests that in one respect, the movement is alive and well. We have been from our beginnings a reform movement directed at the nominalism of mainstream Christianity. Now we’ve included ourselves among those who need reform! And in character with our entrepreneurial history and personality, we have launched out in a variety of directions, each movement trying to discern the leading of the Holy Spirit.

For some, such “confusion of tongues” suggests a movement in disarray. There is some truth to that, to which we will return.

For now we should note that the diverse solutions seem to share a common methodology: If evangelicals divorce too often, preach that they should not. If evangelicals are individualist, tell them to be more communal. If evangelicals are privatistic, tell them to get involved in social justice. If evangelicals are worldly, tell them to start practicing the spiritual disciplines. And so on.

In short, we frame the problem horizontally. We focus on what we fail to do, and then talk about what we should do differently. To be fair, such solutions often start with a strong vertical dimension: that is, a sense that we can address the horizontal only by first looking to God.

But our practical and activist sensibility—one of our movement’s stellar attributes—tends to undermine the vertical. This is the problem as I see it at the moment. Let’s note how this is playing out in three of our more impressive sub-movements.

The Spirit of Formation

One of the most promising developments in contemporary evangelicalism has been the re-emergence of spiritual formation, with its emphasis on practices that discipline mind and body so as to open ourselves to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit. Thanks to the pioneering work of Richard Foster and Dallas Willard, the movement has given shape and purpose to the lives of countless evangelicals, saving them from an indolent Christian existence.

The resurgence of interest in the spiritual disciplines began well enough with a strong focus on the vertical. Take Dallas Willard’s now classic The Spirit of the Disciplines: Understanding How God Changes Lives. The title is a play on words and suggests that the disciplines are a gift and grace of the Holy Spirit. The subtitle clearly states that the book is about understanding God’s ways.

But note the shift in emphasis as the genre has developed, with book titles and subtitles that highlight the spiritual disciplines’ horizontal value. They are about the means for “arranging our lives for spiritual transformation” or for “practices that transform us.” One group recently issued a call for Christians to take spiritual formation more seriously. All in all, it’s a positive move. Unfortunately it begins with a paragraph that features the first person plural 11 times: “God calls us … We experience … This lifelong transformation within and among us … We are called … We do not always …” To be fair, the second paragraph highlights the vertical dimension, but what is being communicated if it comes second?

The authors of such books and statements will, in a heartbeat, insist on the divine, gracious nature of the spiritual life. I’m not questioning anyone’s theology or motives. I’m only suggesting that the language we fall into to describe and promote spiritual formation will eventually have an effect. If we continually put the horizontal first, spiritual formation will, as it has in other ages, morph into an oppressive human religion.

The ‘Little’ Problem of the Will

The renewal of social concern also has been an essential correction to the life of the evangelical church. How did we ever forget the legacy of the abolitionists, the prison reformers, the Salvation Army, and others? We can never be too thankful for late-20th-century pioneers in this movement, like Carl Henry, Jim Wallis, and Ron Sider, for calling us to this crucial dimension of the Christian life. The renewal of social concern has turned many Christians and churches from a selfish spirituality to a faith characterized by justice and mercy.

I’ve been following the movement for three decades now—I was an early subscriber to Sojourners and the now defunct The Other Side—and in my experience it has been the rare social justice appeal that grounds itself in the gospel of grace, in the Cross and Resurrection, in the miraculous gift of forgiveness, and in the immense gratitude that naturally flows from that gift.

This relative absence of the vertical—the redeeming work of God in Christ—in social justice rhetoric is matched by a focus on the horizontal. The rhetoric usually assumes that the problem is a lack of human will and that the job of the movement’s leaders is to cajole people out of social indifference with whatever psychological tactic is at hand:

• Guilt: Look at others’ poverty in comparison to our wealth.
• Fear: What will our world be like if we don’t do something about x now?
• Shame: How can we call ourselves disciples of Christ and not do x?
• Moralism: Exhortations littered with should, ought, do, and must.

Sometimes the appeal is less oppressive, but nonetheless optimistic about the human will. A new curriculum designed to help churches love the neighbor—specifically in terms of social concern and social justice—uses this line in an e-mail marketing piece: “For most of us caught up in the hectic demands on our lives, the biggest problem is not desiring to be the Good Samaritan—it’s acting on that desire! It’s starting!” The curriculum promises to solve what it seems to think is a little problem.

The new emphasis on kingdom theology—an eschatological vision that will drive our concerns for social justice—is a helpful vertical corrective. Still, there is optimism in even this corrective that suggests we think all will be well once we get people to think rightly. But the stubbornness of the human will is anything but a little problem. It is, in fact, the problem of fallen humankind, of deep-seated desire gone awry. As Willard put it in a Christianity Today interview, as Christians we are “learning to do the things that … Jesus is favorable toward out of a heart that has been changed into his” [emphasis added]. We cannot simply harangue people to change their wills; our wills need divine attention first.

The more mature leaders of the social justice movement know this spiritual reality all too well. They’ve watched too many activists burn out because they knew not the vertical dimension of social justice. But the language we use to describe our goals and to persuade others can so easily degenerate. The transformation of many liberal churches into social service agencies with a religious veneer is one result of fixating on the horizontal.

Dealing with Cultural Captivity

Another wonderful development is our increased awareness of the variety of races and ethnicities that make up our world. We’re still figuring out what a multiethnic evangelicalism looks like, but no one is arguing that we shouldn’t figure it out! For this we can thank not only America’s changing demographics but also the prophetic voices and examples of men like John Perkins and Rudy Carrasco.

Yet here too we see a constant horizontal temptation. A leading Asian evangelical has just released a book that seeks to “free the evangelical church from Western cultural captivity.” He begins with what everyone recognizes as entrenched problems: our individualism, consumerism, materialism, racism, and cultural imperialism.

But while acknowledging how firmly enslaved we are, the author repeatedly says things like, “Lessons from the black church or lessons arising out of the theology of suffering can lead to freedom from the Western, white captivity of the church.” And in an interview to publicize the book, he says, “In fact, the more diverse we become, Christianity will flourish.”

As if the flourishing of church depends on our ability to make it diverse. As if liberation from the thick chains of cultural captivity is had by learning lessons from others. As if blacks, Asians, and Native Americans are not themselves captive to entrenched cultural ideologies. Missing here and in many such worthy efforts is an emphasis on God’s power, not human example, to free us from the principalities and powers, and on the good news that it is not we who must build the shalom community but the ones who receive it as gift and promise.

Whatever Happened to God?

The same horizontal temptations face any one of us who seeks to directly or indirectly reform evangelicalism. Sider’s subtitle says a lot about what motivates many of us: Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World? Similarly, a website that crystallizes the theology and goal of what I call the “following Jesus movement” says, “Following Jesus is about listening and doing. It is about putting into practice the things that Jesus taught. It is about a lifestyle of peace and justice that sets one apart from others” [emphasis added].

In our righteous frustration lies a temptation that entices us when we start anxiously comparing ourselves with “the rest of the world.” This is the temptation of the devout that Jesus described, of the evangelical Pharisee who thanked God that he was no longer like sinners! We might do better to shift the comparison; the scandal is not that we are just like other people but that we are not more like Jesus.

Other examples abound of our temptation to shift our eyes to the horizontal. Take the missional movement—again, a crucial corrective for churches that have become nothing more than religious social clubs. It is a corrective that, in its better moments, focuses on the mission of God. Yet how easily the conversation slides into what we are doing. In an article in which he tried to clarify the nature and purpose of the missional church movement, Brian McLaren defined it as ” … an attempt by Western Christians to reclaim our identity as disciples—people learning to be like Jesus and ready to follow him into our world” [emphasis added].

To be sure, a book title or single remark cannot be used to indict a person or whole sub-movement. Each reform group within our movement has vocal advocates who, while recognizing God’s call to move into the horizontal, nonetheless thoroughly ground themselves in the vertical. Yet the overall impression one gets from self-critiques and studies by sociologists of religion is that we are increasingly uninterested in things vertical. As Wade Clark Roof noted in his study, ” … the ‘weightlessness’ of contemporary belief in God is a reality … for religious liberals and many evangelicals …”

Our Tower of Babel

The plethora of solutions suggests a confusion of tongues. Some say this signals the irreversible fragmentation of evangelicalism. There is no longer an evangelical center, and if there is one, it cannot hold. Many of us fear that we no longer hold enough in common, that we might as well go our separate ways. Not only do we not listen to each other any more, we can hardly understand one another when we do.

Yet even at this crucial moment in our movement’s history, if we stop long enough to listen, we can hear our Lord saying, “Fear not, for I am with you!” The way he is making his presence known clarifies our hope—not only that the movement will survive (which, in the larger scheme, doesn’t matter to the One for whom nations are but a drop in the bucket), but more importantly, in the renewal of God’s people in faith and obedience.

First, we can recognize that God is present in his judgment on us.

It’s easy to point fingers at others, noting how other parts of our movement are dysfunctional: too spiritual, too political, too privatized, or too whatever. But I’ve not met an evangelical leader of any stripe who doesn’t from time to time identify with those first “evangelicals” in Genesis 11, who made bricks and burned them thoroughly, who tried to build a tower of righteousness. We in our various movements are devout and pious, our various missions are godly, our desire is nothing less than to do on earth what is done in heaven, to build “a tower with its top in the heavens” (v. 4a, ESV).

While our various and sundry missions seem vertical, on our better days we know how horizontal we’ve become, how much we’ve done not in the name of Jesus, how much we’ve aspired to “make a name for ourselves” (v. 4b).

It’s never that blatant—we know how to dot our pious i‘s and cross our theological t‘s. But when we presume on the grace of God; when we act as if it is a given and not a daily miracle; when we quickly and thoughtlessly say that “everything depends on grace” and rush on to the real business at hand (what we have to do, and how we have to get other people to do, say, or experience something); when we assume that the problem is merely a matter of the will—we can be sure we are making a name for ourselves and no longer living and doing in the name of our Lord.

Is it any wonder that we reside in the midst of Babel, finding it increasingly difficult to hear and understand one another? I contend that the cacophony we hear is nothing less than the judgment of God. It is not a judgment only against the other parts of our movement, as if our part has learned to live in the grace and obedience of the gospel! Neither is it a judgment only against those Moralistic Therapeutic Deists in our midst, those who need to be reformed to become like us. No, it is a judgment against every strand within the evangelical movement, and every individual therein. It is a judgment against our making the horizontal an idol, against the “weightlessness” of our faith in God.

The place to begin is not more feverish doing, but acknowledging the complete inadequacy of any doing and the utter powerlessness of the horizontal to fix the horizontal.

A Place to Stand

Where the judgment of God is, that is where the mercy of God abides, and where our hope becomes manifest. We stand before God together in both judgment and grace.

Thus, we stand in the place where the cacophony of Babel can become the miracle of Pentecost, when we hear each other again, where we do not see incomprehensible foreigners in our midst but a variety of charisms, callings of the Holy Spirit.

It is where the incessant hectoring and nagging, the doing and striving, can be transformed into acts of love motivated by inexpressible gratitude. It is where our scatteredness can become the fulfillment of God’s mission in the world. It is where the horizontal can become not a denial of the vertical but the expression of it. Where we stand, in short, is Golgotha, under the shadow of the Cross, a sign of God’s judgment on our pretensions and God’s forgiveness of our sin.

This judgment and grace is the word of the Cross, the word that continues to scandalize not only the world, but us too.

The word of the Cross calls us to measure ourselves not against “the rest of the world” but against the righteousness of God. It calls us not to strive and do, but to acknowledge how much our striving and doing is an attempt to justify ourselves, to make a name for ourselves. It calls us to recognize that the problem with evangelicalism is not the piety of the spiritual formation folk, nor the activism of the social justice crowd, nor the ecclesiology of this group or that. No, the word of the Cross says the problem with evangelicalism, to allude to G. K. Chesterton, is me. It calls us not to do more but to cease worshiping idols.

At the same time, the word of the Cross is called folly because it assumes that the vertically-impaired, the horizontally-addicted, the very people whose habits deny the presence and power of grace—especially those who are made aware of and thus grieve their idolatry—are given the grace that makes all things new. Grace makes the horizontal possible in a whole new way.

The One Thing Necessary

The word of the Cross is found, of course, in simplicity and fullness, in clarity and wonder only in the Word of God. That means the living Word, Jesus Christ, the written Word that reveals the living Word, and the preached Word, where Jesus speaks to us afresh (“The one who hears you hears me” [Luke 10:16]). Martin Luther summed it up well when he said, “One thing, and only one thing, is necessary for Christian life, righteousness, and freedom. That one thing is the most holy Word of God, the gospel of Christ.”

This is why the Bible has been central to evangelical life and faith throughout our history, why expository preaching and inductive Bible studies characterize us. Yes, we have often succumbed to bibliolatry. Yes, we often misuse the Bible. Yes, we have a nasty habit of making this means of grace into the weight of law—sometimes even the law of grace! But the Word of God written and preached is first a gift that reveals the crucified Christ, as well as the risen Christ.

In short, it is where the vertical meets and transforms us. When evangelicals have offered the Bible not as a proof text but as the Word that proves and judges and forgives us, that’s when our movement has been transformed and been a transforming agent in the world.

The first thing to do when we confront the dysfunctional horizontal, then, is not to address it as a horizontal problem. That would be to deny the word of the Cross; it would be to pretend we can, of our own wisdom and strength, attend successfully to the problem. The Word of God says the way to start working on the horizontal is to look up, in particular, at the one hanging on the Cross. The place to begin is not more feverish doing but a type of non-doing, acknowledging the complete inadequacy of any doing and the utter powerlessness of the horizontal to fix the horizontal. It means to allow oneself to be borne up by the Word of grace.

At this point, the careful evangelical reader wants to know exactly what that looks like—”What should I do next?” The question is legitimate at one level. It is one we plan to address more specifically in forthcoming issues of Christianity Today. But the righteous desire to do something immediately to fix the problem of the horizontal is itself another symptom of the problem. Sometimes, just when we’re excited about doing God’s work, we are called to first wait, in particular for the judgment and grace of God to become manifest among us again (Acts 1 and 2).

When we meet God in his paradoxical presence, we will once again know that great paradox of the Christian faith: with our focus on the vertical, when the weightlessness of belief becomes for us the weight of glory, that’s when we are born again, born in the Word and for the world. This is something that happens once, yes, at one’s conversion. But it also happens daily, at one’s reconversion each morning and each Sunday. Then we become new creations, blessed with vertical life and energy and grace to do the horizontal thing we are called and gifted to do.

Mark Galli is senior managing editor of Christianity Today. He is author of A Great and Terrible Love: A Spiritual Journey into the Attributes of God (Baker).

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Books mentioned in this essay include: Wise Blood, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience, Pagan Christianity, Christless Christianity, Spiritual Marketplace, Soul Searching, The Next Evangelicalism,Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World?, and The Spirit of the Disciplines. They are available at ChristianBook.com, Amazon.com, and other book retailers.

This article appeared in the October 2009 issue of Christianity Today with the sidebar, “Preaching as a Vertical Discipline.” A version of that article originally appeared online in 2008.

Previous articles on evangelicalism include:

The Case for Christendom | A renewed sense of Christian culture could be the key to younger evangelicals’ angst. (August 24, 2009)

The Great Evangelical Anxiety | Why change is not our most important product. (July 16, 2009)

Who Do You Think You Are? | The global church needs to ground youth in their true, deepest identity. (February 23, 2009)

Mark Galli writes a regular column called SoulWork. His most recent columns include:

A Pretty Good Religion | Be wary of anyone who starts praising Christianity. (August 27, 2009)

Danger: God | What should we think about a deity who gives us sticks of dynamite to play with? (August 13, 2009)

We’ve Won the Lottery—Now What? | The meaning of evangelical scandals—including our own. (July 30, 2009)

As a children’s ministry leader, you are making a difference. To love and guide a child is an opportunity to not only influence a generation, but to change the world. It may seem like a big job with small recognition. It may seem overwhelming. But what you are doing matters. This month’s “For Your Soul” column is an excerpt from my new book, Simple Compassion: Devotions to Make a Difference in Your Neighborhood and Your World (Zondervan). I hope you’ll be encouraged and equipped to continue changing the world one life at a time.

I love reading the gospels. They tell the story of Jesus’ life on earth. After a brief mention of his birth and childhood, they focus on the last three years of his life, when he traveled around, teaching and preaching, just living life with a band of followers. Everything from bread to bushes provided object lessons as Jesus tried to tell them about the kingdom of God. Which, he said, was not a someday pie-in-the-sky promise, but a here and now reality. The kingdom of God is among you, he said. It’s within you.

Jesus leaned into his calling, which, according to Luke 4:18-19, was to “preach the good news to the poor, proclaim freedom for the prisoners, give sight to the blind, release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” As he did what God had called him to do, the people around changed. They were, in many ways, reborn. Not by saying a certain prayer, but by simply engaging in relationship with him. Their priorities shifted, and nothing was the same—it was as if they were all new people. In part, because he taught and helped them; but also—and this is the amazing part of love—because of their role in helping him as well.

Luke’s account of Jesus’ life reflects the meticulous attention to detail that you’d expect from a physician (Luke’s profession). He provides more detail about Jesus’ disciples than the other gospels. In addition to the twelve followers which he had designated as “apostles”—those who could pass his teachings along to others—he also had a larger group of disciples—people who followed him, who participated in his ministry, who believed or at least hoped he was the Messiah.

In Luke 6:12-16, we read that Jesus “called disciples to him, and chose twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles.” Clearly the group of people called “disciples” was bigger than twelve. Acts 1 also talks about the disciples choosing a replacement for Judas after Jesus’ death from among those disciples who had “been with us the whole time.”

That larger group included both men and women. All of them tried to live as their rabbi did. They didn’t just agree with him theologically or philosophically; they dedicated themselves to doing what he did, living has he lived. They wanted to be like him. They literally followed him.

Luke 8:1-3 notes: After this, Jesus traveled about from one town and village to another, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases: Mary (called Magdalene) from whom seven demons had come out; Joanna the wife of Chuza, the manager of Herod’s household; Susanna; and many others. These women were helping to support them out of their own means.

Jesus quit his day job, carpentry, to go into full time ministry. He was poor to begin with, even as a working guy. When he started just being a rabbi, he didn’t have any income at all. Some verses indicate that he was homeless, or at least that that he depended on the hospitality of various strangers and friends when he traveled about. He didn’t come to preach to the wealthy, although certainly some people of means believed in him, followed him, even supported him. He came to preach to everyone, and he did not exclude the poor.

Among his followers were some women. Jesus needed them. He chose to depend on others, which is an amazing style of leadership. What’s more empowering to a follower than being needed? Did you ever consider that just as Jesus needed these women to support his cause, he needs you too? I’m not saying this to load on the guilt. I want to give you a glimpse of what an important part you play as one of his disciples. You were meant to shine.

It’s funny that some churches don’t allow women to serve on their board of directors, when Jesus’ “board of directors” was predominately female. The women were not perfect. The text says Jesus had healed some of them, from disease, from “evil spirits”—afflictions of their emotional and spiritual health—which perhaps manifested themselves in what we would label depression, or worse. Jesus gives them new life. He invites them not just to follow him, but to minister to him. To care for him, provide for him. These women aren’t just told that they matter—they know it experientially. These women quit worrying about what others would think because they had become a part of something more important.

It’s interesting where in his narrative that Luke decides to include this information about these women. Notice the chapter begins, “After this. … ” After what? The previous passage describes Jesus being anointed by a sinful woman. She comes to him in repentance, and he offers her forgiveness and acceptance. The juxtaposition is not accidental. Luke is pointing out that all women matter—whether they are prostitutes or wives of political leaders.

Take a look at Luke 24:10. These same women are the very first people to encounter the risen Christ.

If you have trouble believing that you can make a difference, think of those women who kept Jesus’ ministry going. Before encountering Jesus, many of them suffered from mental illness. I’m guessing they didn’t have much self-esteem. Their society perhaps didn’t value them. Yet Jesus invited them to make a difference. They mattered to him. They helped change the world.

Keri Wyatt Kent is an author and speaker. She’ll be giving away some free copies of the book at her blog this month, so stop by www.keriwyattkent.com/soul/ to find out how you can win one.

Whip It does not have an exclamation point in its title, but this mistake—made by more than a few blogs, interviews, and reviews—is understandable. Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut is such an energetic celebration of grrrl power that it seems the spirited punctuation should be a given.

Featuring Ellen Page in her first post-Juno role (Smart People was filmed before her career-making turn as the eponymous pregnant teen), Whip It tells the story of Bliss Cavendar, a bored Texas teen on the beauty pageant circuit who discovers roller derby and kick-starts her life. What is it about eight wheels and some kneepads that brings out the inner bodaciousness in even the most meek girl? It’s unclear, but it sure is fun to watch.

For the uninitiated, the current incarnation of roller derby (a term that dates back to 1922) comes out of a revival of the sport, a restart that got rolling in Austin, Texas in 2000. The mostly female athletes strap on skates and whiz around tracks (some flat, some banked) in competitions called bouts. Teams score points when their appointed “jammer” successfully laps and then passes a member of the opposite team. Roller derby is a full-contact sport and all manner of shenanigans are employed to keep the jammers from passing skaters. While Whip It amps things up a bit for the cameras, bruises and bloody noses are par for the course. (Think of it as championship wrestling … for women … on wheels.)

Also par for the course is the campy theater of roller derby. Protective gear is worn along with fishnet stockings, bloomers, pigtails, ribbons, pleated skirts, and whatever else strikes the whimsy of the skaters. The culture of roller derby is steeped in third-wave feminism and a punk rock-do-it-yourself ethos, and the skaters adopt alter egos individually and as a team that are sardonically menacing.

At the rink, Bliss becomes Babe Ruthless and skates alongside Smashley Simpson (Barrymore), Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig), Rosa Sparks (Eve), and Bloody Holly (Zoë Bell) on a team called the Hurl Scouts. Andrew Wilson (big brother to Luke and Owen) plays Razor, their hapless coach. Their big rivals are the Holy Rollers, a team lead by the delightfully nasty Iron Maven (Juliette Lewis).

Bliss realizes that her mother, a former beauty queen trying to guide her daughter to similar glory, would not approve of roller derby. She enlists the help of her best friend Pash (Alia Shawkat), to drive her to her first bout. And when she joins the team, she goes to great lengths to keep her parents from finding out about her new passion and her team from finding out that she’s only 17 (21 is the minimum age requirement for skaters). Throw in a budding romance with Oliver, a local rocker and derby fan, and Bliss has a lot of balls to juggle.

Whip It, based on the novel Derby Girl by Shauna Cross, isn’t a particularly inventive movie. You’ve seen this kind of teenage empowerment drama before. But Barrymore hits her marks with energy and confidence, making it easy for viewers to shrug off sequences that verge on cliché. More importantly, she has Marcia Gay Harden as Bliss’s mom, Brooke. Page is likeable as Bliss, a good girl who loves her mom and wants to please her but is also trying to figure out how to make her own way in the world. But the movie is all-but-stolen by the remarkable Harden as a working woman who has learned the hard way how to make her own way in the world—and hopes to help her daughter avoid some of her own disappointments. In a small scene that might portend a particularly bright future for Barrymore as a director, we learn everything we need to know about Brooke in simple scenes that offhandedly juxtapose her life as a pageant mother (and former beauty queen herself) and a mail carrier.

Whip It pits two different visions of femininity against each other—and while beauty pageants are easy targets for the derision with their absurdly superficial rituals, it’s hard to say that roller derby is less absurd. Hardly. Instead, the tension here is between a system that values conformity and one that celebrates individuality. It’s the tension that is at the core of the transition from childhood to adulthood—moving from an identity that is largely chosen for you by your family to one that you choose for yourself.

Bliss’s family is a rounded out by her affable father Earl (Daniel Stern) and a little sister played by Harden’s real-life daughter. This is a good family, and the movie never asks you to forget it. There are no villains here. Even Juliette Lewis’s Iron Maven is a sympathetic soul underneath all the taunting. In a way she presents a challenge to Babe Ruthless—roller derby might be fun and good, but, just like one’s reign as a beauty queen, it doesn’t last forever. Who will you be when this comes to an end? Some might argue that the genteel world of beauty pageants is the better ground for answering this question, for developing into a woman of character, than the black-and-blue world of roller derby. The derby culture is certainly brash and sexually aggressive (cf. fishnet stockings), but a pageant’s swimsuit contest is rather sexually aggressive too, no?

Whip It manages to challenge conventions without dismissing those conventions or the family in which they developed. And that seems to me to be the big triumph of this recast of the familiar coming-of-age trope. Bliss and her mom are two women who are figuring out how to make their way in the world. And they are lucky to have each other.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. Why do you think Bliss was drawn to roller derby? Why do you think the sport is attractive to so many women?
2. Beauty pageants and roller derby seem to be polar opposites, but what attributes do they actually share?
3. If you were Bliss’s mom, how would you feel about her doing roller derby? Would you approve? Why or why not?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Whip It is rated PG-13 for sexual content including crude dialogue, language and drug material. Bliss engages in a number of immoral activities, including lying to her parents and friends, underage drinking, and sexual activity with her boyfriend. Derby scenes involve strong language, athletic violence—body blocks, elbows, pratfalls on wheels, etc.—and the team parties with alcohol and references to drug use. Bliss and Pash are teased about being lesbians by classmates.

Photos © Fox Searchlight

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Hoop Dreams, one of my favorite documentaries, created quite a stir when it released in 1994. The film features two high school basketball players who hope to make it to the NBA and follows them through a series of highs and lows. It’s remarkable for its scope—spanning five years—and its intimate perspective into these young men and their families. When it was shut out of the Best Feature Documentary category at the Oscars, people raised a fuss. (Since when do people care about documentaries?) And in 2007, the International Documentary Association named Hoop Dreams as the greatest documentary film in history.

The new documentary More Than a Game is a cousin to Hoop Dreams. It tells the story of NBA superstar LeBron James’s high school basketball team in Akron, Ohio, and their quest to win a national championship. The film’s six main characters are: LeBron; teammates Dru Joyce III, Sian Cotton, Willie McGee, and Romeo Travis; and their coach, Dru Joyce II. (Read our interview with Coach Joyce here.)

As in Hoop Dreams, the narrative of More Than Game spans several years. Also, in both films the main characters share a goal, and the players’ off-the-court stories add weight to their on-the-court successes and failures. Furthermore, both started out as smaller projects that grew into feature-length films. Hoop Dreams was meant to be a 30-minute PBS feature, and More Than a Game was originally just a 10-minute class project for then-college student Kristopher Belman.

But while the style of Hoop Dreams reflects its PBS origins, More Than a Game feels more like a child of ESPN. The editing is faster, rap music enlivens the in-game highlights, and the story arc is neater and tidier. There’s also a guy named LeBron who dunks the ball a lot. Much of this comes at the cost of the thoughtfulness and intimacy which made Hoop Dreams so compelling. Plus, and perhaps most notably, More Than a Game tells much of its multi-year story through backward-looking interviews, but Hoop Dreams captures its subjects in the present at every step along the way. Thus, in Hoop Dreams the changes over time in each character are much more pronounced.

Still, More Than a Game succeeds on its own terms. It’s a fun, entertaining ride, and its central message—that relationships are the most important part of a game like basketball—is worth telling.

The movie opens in the middle of the action. The St. Vincent-St. Mary High School boys basketball team, headlined by senior LeBron James, is in the locker room just moments away from playing for a national championship. The coach is giving his players a pep talk. The anticipation builds, the players walk onto the court, the ref throws up the ball for the tip-off …

And then we cut away, and for the next hour and a half, we learn about the nine years that led up to this game. Only at the end of the film, after we’ve gotten to know each of these characters, do we get to see what happens to them and their championship dream.

One remarkable aspect of this story is that four of the five high school teammates—LeBron, Dru III (or “Little Dru”), Sian, and Willie—actually played basketball together as early as fifth grade. They started out on the same youth traveling team, and as they spent more time together, grew into a group of close (and talented) friends dubbed “The Fab Four.” This young set of friendships forms the emotional core of More Than a Game.

Just as remarkably, “The Fab Four” were led at that early age by Coach Joyce, who had wanted the chance to coach his son, Little Dru. No one could have guessed that Joyce would coach these players again years later at St. Vincent-St. Mary.

To see clips of a scrawny, preteen LeBron in action is undeniably cool, especially if you’re a basketball fan. Indeed, it’s fun to watch his in-game highlights and see him blossom throughout the film into the athletic marvel he is today. Every other basketball highlight in the film includes LeBron.

Nevertheless, I was pleasantly surprised by how balanced the overall attention toward each character is. It could have easily become the LeBron & Co. Show, which would have been a real problem for a film that celebrates relationships. And one of the chief pleasures of More Than a Game is not just getting to know each of these guys, but getting to know them through each other. One teammate laughs about how Little Dru “was 4’10” on a good day” his freshman year. Another mentions more soberly that Willie, who was raised by his siblings, came in as the most mature of the bunch. Each interview in the film gives another glimpse into someone’s personality or character, and the composite picture shows how much these young men leaned on one another. LeBron, who moved ten times between the ages of five and eight, admits that he was desperate to make these friendships last.

Still, these younger voices need a counterbalance, which is where Coach Joyce comes in. He is the film’s chief spokesman. At one point he tells his players, “Basketball is a vehicle—use it, don’t let it use you.” At another he tells us, “The love they had for the game was because of one another.” Yet Joyce, who is a Christian, says it took a disappointing finish to his stars’ junior year (by their high standards) to realize God was calling him to teach them more than basketball. “It was about helping them become men,” he explains.

Joyce then begins to impress seven character traits on his team: humility, unity, discipline, thankfulness, servanthood, integrity, and passion. These values are a change of pace for a team that had fully embraced its escalating celebrity status, but they bring a turning point in the team’s story, illustrating how an emphasis on character can bring a greater sum from the same parts.

As already mentioned, More Than a Game started out as just a 10-minute short for Kristopher Belman’s film class. But the team kept doing remarkable things, and Belman kept hanging around. Some of the footage he captures is uncomfortable, like when LeBron sharply rebukes a sulking Little Dru in a team huddle. Some is deeply moving, like when Willie leaves the court after a big win and makes a beeline for the older brother who raised him. Some is just funny. More Than a Game doesn’t lack for tonal variety.

But in the interest of a neat and tidy story, most of these tonal shifts come in neat and tidy chapters, which feels too simple for a documentary about several different characters. I left wishing that the film could have probed a little more deeply into each person’s individual story. But with 105 minutes, six main characters, and some basketball to show, there is only so much time to go around. On top of that, the overall story arc is predictable.

So it’s a fairly conventional film, and it doesn’t give much fodder for thought. But it is an entertaining record of an unusual sports saga and one of the most remarkable dynasties in high school basketball. And it also delivers an inspirational message about friendship that many young athletes need to hear.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. At what point does a famous athlete become an idol instead of a role model?
2. Do you think sports activities for youth more often engender good or bad character?
3. How can we teach younger athletes to prioritize relationships?
4. Which of the players in More Than a Game most impressed you? Why?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

More Than a Game is rated PG for brief mild language and incidental smoking.

Photos © Lionsgate Media

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Grief is a fickle and demanding companion. And it can inspire really lame movies that cheapen our very understanding of grief, or it can inspire movies that richly explore the complicated relationship between fickle, demanding grief and frail yet resilient human beings. Thankfully, The Boys Are Back is a lovely example of the latter.

Inspired by Simon Carr’s 2001 memoir, The Boys Are Back in Town, this film tells the story of witty, on-the-go sportswriter Joe Warr (Clive Owen) and the way grief shapes him and his two boys. Due to divorce and remarriage, Joe has sons on two continents—his homeland of England and his current home in the beautiful Australian countryside. Though he loves both boys, Joe rarely sees either due to his constant work travels.

Days after returning from another trip, his world is rocked when his wife Katy (Laura Fraser) collapses in the middle of a co*cktail party. It’s an aggressive cancer that steals her away within weeks. Joe is left to help their six-year-old son, Artie (Nicholas McAnulty), who doesn’t quite grasp the gravity of the situation, navigate this loss even as Joe struggles to do so himself.

Despite protests from his play-it-safe mother-in-law (Julia Blake), Joe decides a road trip is in order. He needs to escape—and get better acquainted with his son. So he packs up Artie and Artie’s favorite stuffed monkey in their Range Rover and drives to a succession of lonely hotel rooms, trying to evade the grief that follows them like a dark shadow.

Both on the road and back at home, Joe gets better acquainted with single fatherhood—the constancy of dirty dishes and dirty clothes (which he largely ignores) and the non-stop energy of a precocious six-year-old (which feels like a life-giving balm in the midst of death and grief). So Joe embraces this wild-child approach to life, participating in in-house water balloon fights and late-night games of flashlight tag.

And just when Joe and Artie are falling into a new, almost feral existence, Joe’s other son, angsty teen Harry (George MacKay), comes for a visit. Harry brings an intriguing and unexpected plotline to the mix, as he questions his father about why he left his first family for the new one he created so far away. Despite this angst, Harry joins in the fray, until all the trio’s emotions—grief, abandonment, fear, love, anger—finally come bubbling to the surface.

Though this might all sound heavy and depressing, it’s really not. When tough emotions are portrayed honestly—instead of sanitized (see Love Happens for a recent example) or manipulated for most gut-wrenching effect (see Legends of the Fall for a classic example)—it’s gratifying. We’ve all experienced staggering loss or other difficult situations, so we know honest grief from the imitators. This is the real deal. In all its messy, sometimes funny, transcendent, healing reality.

The fact that this portrayal is also engaging and entertaining is a huge credit to the original material by Simon Carr, the great screenplay by Allan Cubitt, and also to the wonderful acting. Clive Owen gives an award-worthy performance here, emotionally fraught but never overdone. He offers so many emotions—grief, child-like joy, anger, remorse, cluelessness, affection, awakening. All are believable, and so enjoyable to watch. And how intriguing to see male characters navigate these emotions on film and not get all embarrassed by the display—or lapse into crude bro-mance humor to make up for it.

Six-year-old Nicholas McAnulty makes an impressive feature film debut. His angry, wordless tantrum in the car in one scene just breaks your heart. Then he’s all boyish danger and glee as he zip-lines from a tree in their front yard. Let’s hope he finds more complex childhood roles to enchant us with in the future.

The cinematography is sumptuous. Shot in the South Australian countryside, The Boys Are Back‘s far-flung emotions are mirrored in the beautiful rolling hills lined with dry, dusty roads. And the sea provides both play and perspective, as our boys frolic in and contemplate alongside it in various scenes.

The realistic messiness inside offers a needed contrast to the grandeur outside. Joe’s “just say yes” approach to life takes its toll on the house. And though it’s a lovely structure, it feels very lived in. The hotels Joe and Artie visit, Artie’s classroom, and a single mom-friend’s house all seem realistic—again, not the typical Hollywood sheen.

It’s not just the settings that are believably messy—the people are, too. Joe makes mistakes. He has to confront the consequences of his previous decisions. He’s clueless when interacting with Artie’s classmate’s mom, Laura (Emma Booth). You’ll likely disagree with some of his parenting decisions. But he’s doing the best he can. And trying his best to move himself and his boys forward under devastating circ*mstances. As he says in a voice-over in the opening scenes of the film, “Life is a journey to be traveled no matter how bad the road.” In the end, The Boys Are Back is a highly satisfying ride.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. Do you think Joe was wise or unwise to go on the road trip with Artie after Katy’s death? What were the benefits and/or drawbacks of that trip?
2. Talk about how the different characters—Joe, Artie, Katy’s mom—deal with Katy’s death. How have you dealt with significant loss in your life? How has that coping been effective or ineffective?
3. What do you think about Joe’s parenting choices and style in the wake of his wife’s death? Is “just say yes” a good approach to parenting? To life?
4. Do you think Katy’s mom is wise to question Joe’s parenting? Or is she being too strict and perhaps stifling them?
5. In what ways do the three male characters grow and change during the course of the film? Where do you see these guys in five years?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

The Boys Are Back is rated PG-13 for some sexual language (mainly in a humorous scene in which Joe tells Harry which swear words kids aren’t allowed to use in his home) and for thematic elements of death and grief. After her death, Katy “visits” Joe and they have conversations (it’s understated and not portrayed as a spooky or ghostly thing). Six-year-old Artie sees his mom get really sick and frail and eventually die. Teenaged Harry wrestles with being abandoned by his dad when he was a young boy. Both of the boys’ plotlines could inspire interesting conversations with your kids.

Photos © Miramax Films

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

What would it be like to live in a world without lying? I expected the universe depicted in The Invention of Lying to present a reverse image of the Jim Carrey comedy Liar Liar, in which the main character finds himself uncomfortably compelled to tell the truth. I expected, that is, one more brash, noisy, agitated film, replete with insults and gross-out jokes. I wasn’t expecting the sweetness in this film, its quietness and thoughtful core. It feels, in spirit, more like a fable, in the mold of mid-century films like It’s a Wonderful Life or Miracle on 34th Street.

I just wish it were better. I wish the early promise didn’t grow gradually thinner and less authentic—less true.

You could imagine a world without lying taking any number of forms. Screenwriters and directors Ricky Gervais (who also stars) and Matthew Robinson give us a world where people not only speak the absolute truth, but also have no internal controls to restrain blurting of uncomfortable and hurtful thoughts. At a restaurant, the hostess looks at gorgeous Jennifer and says, “Hi, I’m threatened by you.” The waiter tells Mark and Jennifer, “I’m very embarrassed that I work here.” And Jennifer is completely, devastatingly upfront with Mark over dinner: “You’re overweight, you have a pug nose, and no job. You’re not good enough for me,” she says, with the blank honesty of a child and not a bit of (intentional) cruelty.

There are plenty of good laughs in the opening sequences as we get to observe what such an unadorned world would be like. co*ke’s slogan is “It’s very famous.” Pepsi’s slogan is, “When they don’t have co*ke.” A newspaper is named “Printed Publication” and a nursing home is “A Sad Place for Hopeless Old People.” Movies consist of big-star readers, rather than actors, delivering factual lectures about history—because there’s no fiction in this world, remember, even in the movies. (See if you recognize the famous “reader” Nathan Goldfrappe; this film is full of cameos.)

Mark is a screenwriter for Lecture Films, as a matter of fact, and has been assigned the fourteenth century. Worse luck for him, because the Black Plague doesn’t sell tickets. As the story opens he is on the verge of being fired, and, down to only $300, about to be evicted from his apartment. But at the bank the computers are down, and when the teller asks how much he wants to withdraw, we see synapses firing deep in Mark’s brain. He tells her that he wants the entire $800 in his account. The next moment, the computers are back online, and the teller sees only $300 there. Must be something wrong with the computer, she says, and hands Mark $800.

How you know this isn’t a Jim Carrey movie is that Mark uses his power for good—well, mostly. At first he tries to scare a beautiful stranger into having sex with him, but her panic is so heartbreaking that he can’t go through with it. So instead he begins to say kind and encouraging (and untrue) things to unhappy strangers, who instantly cheer up, given new hope and incapable of doubting his words.

The plot gets into gear when he is at his mother’s deathbed. She tells Mark how frightened she is, and can’t bear the thought of going into an “eternity of nothingness.” Profoundly moved, Mark tells her that’s not how it is: “You will go to your favorite place in the whole world. Everyone you love will be there. You’ll dance—run and dance.” Mark’s eyes stream with tears. “There’s no pain. Say hello to Dad for me. Tell him I love him.” His mother dies full of joy and hope.

But the doctor and nurses have been looking on in astonishment. “What else happens?” “I’m going to see my mother again, when I die!” “Tell us more, please!”

Word spreads fast. Mark holes up for days as reporters and crowds gather outside his home, and eventually he comes forth with ten assertions about “the man in the sky” and his rules for living (scribbled on the backs of stone-tablet-shaped pizza boxes). His hearers are perplexed by some of the assertions and take note of apparent inconsistencies, but instantly accept whatever explanation Mark hands them; they are unable to doubt.

As I’ve read about this film I’ve gained the impression that it is intended to be ajabatreligion (and, some have said, at Christianity in particular). I didn’t sense that while watching, though. It seemed rather a touching depiction of the human desire to know something more—the mysterious sense we are born with that this life is not all there is (see Eccl. 3:11b). Because, in fact, we are not unable to doubt. We know about the existence of good and evil, truth and lies. We are able to respond to religious truth because something deep inside resonates when it appears, like a gong shimmering in the air.

Faith is not just a matter of forcing belief in “what you know ain’t so” (as Mark Twain said). It is an inner meeting that brings with it its own implicit validation—”the ring of truth.” (Pondering this lately, I think a source of confusion is that our English word “mind” does not correspond to the biblical Greek word “nous.” The nous is not the cogitating intellect but rather the understanding or comprehension, the receptive, perceptive faculty designed to enable direct contact with God.) People of faith recognize truth, rather than reason (or emote) their way to it. To people who don’t hear that ring, religious belief must look very odd, and Gervais counts himself an atheist.

As the film progressed, it has morphed from being a comic depiction of the fortunes of the only liar in a world of unvarnished truth, into something of a statement on religion, though not one recognizable to people of faith. Having Gervais’ character posture as Moses or comically resemble Jesus during a dip into unshaven, unshorn depression is by definition superficial, and doesn’t pose any challenge to belief. Then the film gets sidetracked again by becoming a will-he-get-the-girl story, wholly unconnected to either the lies-vs-truth or questioning-religion themes. There is, of course, no doubt about whether he will get the girl. In its concluding scenes the movie becomes so predictable that, dramatic tension squandered, it is uninteresting and palpably untrue.

I wish this movie had clung to its initial focus more closely, because the sweetness of trying to do good by the invention of lying, and the paradoxes and dangers that would pose, could have been explored much more effectively. I hope that Gervais and Robinson, having crafted a good premise in this film, will in later ones be able to follow a thought to greater depth rather than scattering too many different intentions into an ineffective stew.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. The premise that people in this world are capable only of truth is taken to mean that they interact only superficially, for example, judging others on their appearance. What other forms might a compulsively truthful world take?
2. Some people believe that lying can be ethical, for example, when seeking to spare someone’s feelings, or to protect someone in danger. Can you remember a time that you told a lie with the goal of doing good?
3. Christ taught that the DEevil is “the father of lies” (John 8:44), the true inventor of lying, while he himself is “the Truth” (John 14:6). In some ages, people have felt moved to take on the challenge of “absolute veracity” and never telling a lie. Is this a good thing? Is it necessary, in light of Christ’s words? Or would it tempt toward shading the truth and omitting elements, in order to meet the letter of the law?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

The Invention of Lying is rated PG-13 for language including some sexual material and a drug reference. There is frank talk about sex, and one obscenity. It’s not a film for children.

Photos © Warner Bros.

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

By now we all know that if Michael Moore makes a film called Capitalism: A Love Story, he’s going to play the third wheel. The documentary filmmaker revealed his liberal leanings in his feature film debut, Roger & Me (1989), which stood up for the blue-collar workers abandoned by General Motors in Moore’s hometown of Flint, Michigan. Since then Moore has established himself as a spokesman of the Left, fighting for gun control (Bowling for Columbine) and against the Bush administration (Fahrenheit 9/11), and, in his last film, attempting to expose the woes of the American healthcare system (Sicko).

In Capitalism, Moore circles back to Roger & Me‘s theme of corporate greed. Only this time he sets his sights on not just a company, but—in the context of the recent financial crisis—our entire economic system. It’s an ambitious target and, as it turns out, rather elusive for Moore.

“If you wish to converse with me,” said the French philosopher Voltaire, “define your terms.” I imagine that Moore might feel some kinship with Voltaire—think of the satirical bent and progressive stance—but in Capitalism his standard for conversation is lower. The film’s most frustrating aspect is Moore’s sloppy use of terms—namely, “capitalism” and “democracy.”

He assumes we know what capitalism is. Indeed, heargues that our country’s history is “a love story” with capitalism, as Americans have let themselves be force-fed an affection for its fundamental principles. To illustrate this, he shows clips fromcheesy 1950s education films that fawn overfree markets and private ownership. But Moore’s definition of capitalism (narrated over images of abandoned homes and businesses across the country) is a little different: “a system of giving and taking … mostly taking.”

So the ostensible purpose of Moore’s film is to discredit capitalism. But many of his representative targets—Reagan’s tax cuts, or the deregulation of our banks—are not so much capitalism as they are fiscally conservative ways of operating within the system. Moore spends a lot of time skewering last year’s Bush-led bailout bill, claiming that it was a robbery of the American people facilitated by some of Wall Street’s close connections with Washington D.C. But even if he’s right, that isn’t capitalism per se, but rather political corruption. So what is Moore actually after: capitalism, Republican policies, backdoor politics, or something else?

At points in the film, Moore actually does touch on some dangers at the core of capitalism. In one troubling example, he shows how a number of companies take out life insurance policies on their employees. Whether or not it makes economic sense for the employer, Moore highlights how morally perverse it feels for a company to profit from someone’s death—especially when a widow is suddenly strapped for cash while the giant corporation lands a cool million. Even more, Moore points out how companies talk about this policy in internal memos. One report shows certain companies failing to achieve their “expected mortality rates” for the year, and another refers to the deceased employees as “Dead Peasants.”

Here Moore is getting at something: the way in which capitalism’s profit motive can too easily slap a dollar sign on just about anything. Our ingenuity can be a frightening thing. But just when you think the film is as radical as it purports—going after the very heart of capitalism—Moore shows us something he likes: Capitalism.

Okay, it’s admittedly an unconventional variety. Moore spotlights a couple of co-op firms in which every employee is part-owner, profits are equally or more equally shared, and the decision-making hierarchy is flattened. Everybody’s happy. It’s an intriguing model that looks very different from most American businesses. But aren’t these still privately owned, profit-driven companies? That sounds like capitalism, but Moore tries to make a distinction by calling it “democracy” instead. Yes, he’s using a metaphor, but it’s not a helpful one. Moore’s decision to be rhetorically cute rather than clear makes it hard to nail down exactly what he’s proposing in lieu of our current system.

Another thing about Moore is that it’s hard to trust him. He’s drawn a lot of criticism for distorting the truth in previous films (here and here, for instance), and he blurs the facts in at least one part of Capitalism. As part of his effort to demonstrate unethical ties between Washington and Wall Street, Moore interviews a mortgage officer who handled VIP loans for Countrywide Financial. This officer alleges that Senator Chris Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, got more than $1 million in loan discounts that he shouldn’t have. That would be a big conflict of interest. But in the film, Moore doesn’t mention that the Senate Ethics Committee investigated this very issue and dismissed it.

But there’s no denying that Moore is an entertaining and often clever filmmaker. In one segment, he reminds us of the hero status given to “Sully,” the pilot who saved 155 lives on the Hudson River in January, and Moore mixes in some appropriately patriotic music. But as we watch Sully testify before Congress about the problem of low salaries for pilots (a union issue), Moore turns up the volume on his brass band to drown Sully out. The effect is funny, and underscores well the irony in Congress’s alleged disregard of Sully.

Moore also looks at how Christianity has fed our country’s affection for capitalism. He finds more 1950s clips, this time of people correlating capitalism with “God’s laws and the teaching of the Bible.” Moore is reaching for the most extreme examples once again, but unfortunately this kind of Christian-political syncretism is not that rare even today, or necessarily any more subtle. Nonetheless, Moore finds a couple of priests from his hometown who condemn capitalism, so (thank goodness!) it appears that we Christians are also able to get with the program. (And as a matter of fact, Moore calls himself a Catholic.)

“Capitalism is an evil, and you can’t regulate something that’s evil,” says Moore at the end. “You have to replace it with something that’s good. And that thing is democracy.”

It’s really too much to expect a two-hour film to thoroughly dismantle a model of economics. And in fact, Moore raises some tough issues for our country, like how wide the gap between the rich and poor is, or how some companies will do crazy things for a profit. But it fails on too many counts. Moore’s historical analysis is too selective; he doesn’t acknowledge the evidence for other positions or counter their arguments; and, most fundamentally, he doesn’t draw a clear distinction between our capitalist system and his vision of an economic “democracy.” And all of it would be easier to forgive if Moore didn’t seem so sure how of much he accomplishes in Capitalism.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. Can one economic system be more “Christian” than another?
2. How has your church talked about politics in the past? Are you comfortable with that?
3. In your opinion, why does or doesn’t capitalism work?
4. How should Scripture’s teachings on money shape our understanding of capitalism?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

Capitalism: A Love Story is rated R for language. There’s not a lot of bad language in the film, but it is choice enough to earn the rating.

Photos © Dog Eat Dog Films

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

It is 1967, and Larry Gopnik’s got problems. His wife Judith is leaving him for Sy Ableman, a maddeningly self-assured family friend with an impossibly mellifluous voice. His brother Arthur is living with him, spending most of his time scribbling in a notebook and suctioning the sebaceous cyst on his neck. His children are filching money from him: Sarah for a nose job, and Danny for pot and records. A student is either bribing or threatening him over a failing grade. One of his neighbors is encroaching on his property line; the other, Bathsheba-like, is sunbathing naked. And the pesky guy from the record-of-the-month club won’t stop calling, insisting Larry pay up on an account he doesn’t remember opening.

Until last week, Larry’s life was straightforward, comfortable, even pleasant. He’s in good health and up for tenure at the Midwestern university at which he teaches physics. His children attend school, more or less. The Gopniks are upstanding members of their local Jewish committee. Danny’s bar mitzvah is fast approaching.

Now, as Judith and Sy blithely make living arrangements for everyone, his children ignore him completely, and threatening anonymous letters are being mailed to the tenure committee, Larry’s comfortable world is disintegrating, and he simply cannot figure out what to do. He turns for guidance to his rabbis, but their help is cryptic, at best. Is this God’s will? What is God trying to tell him? What can he do to appease the Almighty and let things be put to right again? And unfortunately for Larry—who simply wants to be a mensch, a serious man, a good man with a normal life—his woes are far from over.

A Serious Man, it seems, is the most direct that the Coen brothers have been about their idea of the way the world operates. Their body of work is rife with characters who meet untimely and seemingly random ends, who simply cannot catch a break. But whereas some of them (notably, the Dude in The Big Lebowski) manage to keep their troubles from getting in the way of having a good time, Larry is just snowed under. We’re made to understand that Larry will never again be able to live a normal life. As in No Country for Old Men or Burn After Reading or Fargo or nearly any other Coen movie, tragedy and comedy strike simultaneously and at random; life is absurd, and it might be senseless.

Except, Larry senses something purposeful to the senselessness—and so do we. After all, Larry’s tribulations all show up at once. Needing answers, Larry consults one rabbi after another, getting only unsatisfactory maxims: You need a new perspective! You must see this as God’s will! Asking questions will get you nowhere! And your problems are just not that important.

Here the Coens show their hand—it’s not precisely nihilism, but it certainly isn’t cheery. Larry’s problems (and by extension, ours) might be a product of God’s cruel will, or the caprice of some other nasty and detached deity, or the whim of the vindictive fates, but in the end, it really doesn’t matter. The questions you ask are not going to be answered. If you think they’ve been answered, just wait a little while. You’ll see. God or fate or somebody’s got your number. Whatever else this is, it is not random—so we’d better find the comedy in it.

It’s hard to put such a film into a category. It sounds like a very depressing drama, except it’s somehow also hilarious. (Those who haven’t the stomach for such juxtaposition need not apply.) It begins with a sort of Yiddish pseudo-fable that doesn’t have much to do with what follows, except that someone comes to a sudden an untimely end (or do they?), and then Larry’s tale of woe plays out.

Set against the backdrop of the Coens’ own Jewish upbringing in the Midwest, the film is set in the late sixties, but not in the least dated—it could have happened yesterday, and it could have happened pretty much anywhere. Creatively shot by one of today’s most accomplished working cinematographers, Roger Deakins, the film somehow simultaneously feels like a painfully realistic story and a kind of small town yarn. Larry’s problems unfold at a very deliberate pace, and as a result, they occasionally plod—who can bear this much ignominy?—but the characters are rich enough to keep us engaged.

The Coens shot in Minnesota and cast mostly actors from the area (as they did with Fargo), all of whom acquit themselves well. Richard Kind (who plays Uncle Arthur) will likely be the only familiar one to moviegoers. Michael Stuhlbarg, on the other hand, a Tony Award winner and celebrated theatre actor, is unfamiliar to cinemagoers, but won’t be for long. His hapless Larry is nuanced, comedic, and full of pathos—a joy to watch even as he’s sinking into despair.

I have a hunch that after No Country for Old Men, every movie the Coens make cannot help but be a bit of a disappointment. A Serious Man is no exception. It won’t be remembered as a major part of the Coen canon. But it is far more relatable than their recent work, and one cannot watch it without pondering deeply some inherently biblical questions about the meaning of trials and the nature of fate—and without wondering if it’s secretly a kind of adaptation of the book of Job, with a trick ending. It takes pieces that the Coens have been playing with for years and puts them together in one very dark, very funny, very human package—and for that, it’s a film worth seeing.

Talk About It

Discussion starters

1. The first rabbi tells Larry that he needs a new perspective—that he should see everything as God’s will, but he doesn’t need to like it. How does this view of tribulation square with Scripture?
2. The second rabbi’s story seems to imply that we need not ask questions of God, and that too much questioning is fruitless. Is he right? What do the Psalms tell us about questioning God?
3. Larry proves the “uncertainty principle” to the class and says it proves that you can’t ever know what is going on—then tells them that it will be on the midterm. Can we ever know “what is going on”? What does 1 Corinthians 13:9-12 say about this?
4. When Arthur breaks down, what does he say to Larry? What does this say about the problem of comparing one person’s pain to another’s?
5. Do you think God cares about us when we have seemingly senseless troubles, like Larry? What does the book of Job tell us about afflictions?

The Family Corner

For parents to consider

A Serious Man is rated R for language, some sexuality/nudity and brief violence. There is a lot of profanity, mostly from teenagers. Several characters—including teens—smoke pot. Larry sees his attractive female neighbor sunbathing in the nude—and we do, too. One of the male characters was found soliciting a man for sex, and this is alluded to. The violence is very brief: someone is stabbed in the chest with a stake, Larry’s head gets slammed against the wall a few times, and a dream sequence involves an unexpected shot in the head. There is also a brief but completely non-graphic sex scene in a dream sequence.

Photos © Focus Features

Copyright © 2009 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.