{"id":19953,"date":"2014-10-03T06:00:23","date_gmt":"2014-10-03T10:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=19953"},"modified":"2014-10-02T20:00:32","modified_gmt":"2014-10-03T00:00:32","slug":"a-christian-movie-without-the-christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2014\/10\/a-christian-movie-without-the-christianity\/","title":{"rendered":"A Christian movie without the Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

A new \u201cLeft Behind\u201d movie comes out today, this one with Nicholas Cage and big Hollywood studio connections.\u00a0 But, according to Christianity Today<\/em> movie critic Jackson Cuidon, this story\u2013supposedly, like the novels and earlier movies it is based on, about the Last Days according to premillennial theology\u2013has NO Christianity in it.\u00a0 Yes, one might say that about the other renditions, but this one leaves out virtually all references to Christianity (except for a few negative ones) and is played as just another disaster movie!\u00a0 And yet it\u2019s being marketed to churches in the hopes that they will buy up big blocks of tickets!<\/p>\n

After the jump, an excerpt from Mr. Cuidon\u2019s review.\u00a0 At the end, he gets to the real problem about how desperate Christians are to have their identity acknowledged.<\/p>\n

From Jackson Cuidon, <\/span>Left Behind | Christianity Today<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

The books favored political intrigue, a form that better suited the medium of books; the film, in response, is just a run-of-the-mill disaster flick, where the Rapture is the MacGuffin driving the plot. Consider: one of the characters proposes that the Rapture was caused by aliens, and the movie would be no different if this were true.<\/p>\n

Or consider this line from director Vic Armstrong:<\/p>\n

[My agent] David Gersh said, \u201cWell, what about the religious aspect?\u201d And I said, \u201cWhat religious aspect?\u201d He said, \u201cDidn\u2019t you find it strange when people disappeared on the plane and everything?\u201d I said, \u201cDavid, I did Starship Troopers, and I didn\u2019t question it when great big bugs came climbing over the hill and ripped people\u2019s heads off. That\u2019s the world I live in!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In fact, most Christians within the world of the movie\u2014whether the street-preacher lady at the airport or Rayford Steele\u2019s wife\u2014are portrayed as insistent, crazy, delusional, or at the very least just really annoying. Steele\u2019s wife\u2019s conversion to Christianity is shown to have pushed her and her husband apart; we see that she\u2019s decorated her house with crosses, throw-pillows that say \u201cPray\u201d across the front, and encouraging posters.<\/p>\n

That is the deepest conception of Christianity that this movie has: posters, pillows, and crucifixes.<\/p>\n

If the Left Behind books were just pulp novels injected with Christianity, then the Left Behind movie is just a disaster flick injected with the slightest, most infinitesimal amount of Christianity possible. This is, in one way, good\u2014no one needs to be upset, or get angry, or be offended, or question their beliefs, or the beliefs of those around them, or anything, because the film takes no stance on anything. The film is so inept, confused, and involuted that there\u2019s no danger of even accidentally cobbling together something that could necessitate a defense of Christianity.You know how you feel when you hear the name of your hometown, and your ears perk up, and you want to talk about it? Or a band you love, that means a lot to you? Or a book that changed your life? We all bond over these little things, which become pieces of us, which we want to represent, which we want to support somehow, any way we can.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a bad thing.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s a bad thing is that Hollywood producers now know that American Christians feel that way about their faith\u2014that Christians so desperately want to participate in the mainstream, that they\u2019re tired of having sanctioned music that\u2019s like other music and movies like other movies and politicians like other politicians but always still being on the outside, that Christians just want to feel identified without having to carve out little alcoves or niche markets that exist alongside the Big Boys. And, now that they know it\u2014that is, now that they know they can make back 5x their initial financial investment\u2014they want to exploit that, by pumping out garbage (not moral garbage, just quality garbage), slapping the \u201cChristian\u201d label on it, and watching the dollars pour in.They want churches to book whole theaters and take their congregations, want it to be a Youth Group event, want magazines like this one to publish Discussion Questions at the end of their reviews\u2014want the system to churn churn away, all the while netting them cash, without ever having to have cared a shred about actual Christian belief.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

HT:\u00a0 Paul McCain<\/p>\n

This also explains Noah<\/em> and all but the first Narnia<\/em> movies.<\/p>\n

Has anyone seen HBO\u2019s Leftovers?\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>I haven\u2019t, but I understand that it\u2019s also about a \u201cRapture\u201d and those left behind without any Christian pretensions.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new \u201cLeft Behind\u201d movie comes out today, this one with Nicholas Cage and big Hollywood studio connections.\u00a0 But, according to Christianity Today movie critic Jackson Cuidon, this story\u2013supposedly, like the novels and earlier movies it is based on, about the Last Days according to premillennial theology\u2013has NO Christianity in it.\u00a0 Yes, one might say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[3379,3378],"class_list":["post-19953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","tag-christian-movies","tag-left-behind"],"yoast_head":"\nA Christian movie without the Christianity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A new "Left Behind" movie comes out today, this one with Nicholas Cage and big Hollywood studio connections.\u00a0 But, according to 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