Saving Christian Movies: Bringing Respectable Christian Films Back From the Dead

With numerous Christian films like God's Not Dead, Heaven Is For Real and Saving Christmas, it seems that Christians are getting a larger say in hollywood, largely because of all the money these films are making. And yet, strangely, secular and Christian reviewers are staunchly critical of these movies. The most recent of these; Saving Christmas, actually has been recognized by IMDB as the worst movie ever in terms of user reviews on their site. Likewise, in the case of God's Not Dead, Christian reviewers tended to see the movie as shallow and uncharitable. Having watched at least some of these movies myself, I can't help but feel the same way. There seems to be a huge disconnect between what these movies are arguing for and reality, let alone the truth of the Christian viewpoint historically. This has had the ironic result of discrediting Christianity even more by demonstrating Christians who don't seem to understand atheists, homosexuals or the nonreligious in general. But why is this the case?

Centrally, I believe this is because the Evangelical Church as a whole has committed a fundamental miscalculation as to how best to relate to its surrounding culture. Evangelical leaders see pop-culture as the language through which ideas are now communicated. So they reason, it seems logical that we have to explain the gospel through the language or medium of pop-culture in order for it to make sense to the unbeliever. Hence, churches began selling t-shirts, having bands play on stages in their newly built auditoriums and producing all sorts of other merchandise. The problem is pop-culture doesn't operate this way at all. Pop-culture does not allow ideas in general to be communicated but specifically, ideas that are entertaining. Pop-culture acts as the hub for all things fun, entertaining, pleasurable and delicious. Thus it is impossible to communicate the gospel through this hub without making it into something fun and entertaining.

Well of course this doesn't work out very well, especially when churches are also committed to taking the gospel seriously and devoting their lives to Christ. And so this creates an equally awkward and confused tone in everything Evangelicals try to say to, in and through pop-culture. The message of the gospel sounds at one minute to be something beneficial and attractive and a matter of life or death at another. Christianity is simultaneously displayed as a "relationship" that is hip and a serious commitment filled with obligations and huge intellectual and ethical questions. Likewise non-believers are seen as fun loving one moment and heartless, sadistic, Godless heathens the next.

Evangelicals themselves then have their language confused. We just haven't nailed down how we relate to our culture.

To offer a different approach I think on the nature of language our culture uses different mediums to communicate different kinds of ideas. For ideas in entertainment we use pop-culture, music and commercials, for intellectual ideas, news outlets, journals, magazines and documentaries are used. Here, Christians have engaged in these kinds of mediums, but often with little theological education or understanding (i.e. the 700 club or Glen Beck on Fox News). Here the failure is just on understanding and utilizing the enormous intellectual resources at our disposal. The Church has existed for 2 millennia, and over this time numerous thinkers have defended and explained brilliantly the Christian faith. Even today thinkers like N.T. Wright, James K.A. Smith, Alvin Plantinga and James Sire among numerous others are presenting the case for Christianity and the cogency of Christian beliefs and yet few Christians seem to be listening, despite their interest in communicating the truth of Christianity to our society.

Malicious Misunderstandings: A Postmodern Critique of Kurt Echenwald's Newsweek Article

Newsweek has posted a piece on the Bible that has gained a lot of attention. The author, Kurt Echenwald clearly has a bone to pick with Evangelicals.

I do sympathize with some of the frustrations he has, such as evangelicals refusal to entertain the notion that evolution and conservative Christian faith might actually be compatible. But overall Kurt is just plain uncharitable. This can be seen in the very beginning of his article;

"They wave their Bibles at passersby, screaming their condemnations of homosexuals. They fall on their knees, worshipping at the base of granite monuments to the Ten Commandments while demanding prayer in school. They appeal to God to save America from their political opponents, mostly Democrats. They gather in football stadiums by the thousands to pray for the country’s salvation.

They are God’s frauds, cafeteria Christians who pick and choose which Bible verses they heed with less care than they exercise in selecting side orders for lunch. They are joined by religious rationalizers—fundamentalists who, unable to find Scripture supporting their biases and beliefs, twist phrases and modify translations to prove they are honoring the Bible’s words.

This is no longer a matter of personal or private faith. With politicians, social leaders and even some clergy invoking a book they seem to have never read and whose phrases they don’t understand, America is being besieged by Biblical illiteracy."

I mean really, claiming that there is some serious problems in evangelical subculture is one thing, but to commit such blatant ad-hominem like this and then have the audacity to claim that it is evangelicals who are the hateful bigots totally unwilling to see past their own opinions is just downright hypocritical.

Kurt really shows how much nerve he has when he further writes; "Newsweek’s exploration here of the Bible’s history and meaning is not intended to advance a particular theology or debate the existence of God."

Really? So saying evangelical's theology of the Bible is completely wrong and even dangerous to society is NOT itself the promotion of any sort of theology? I think a certain post-modern thinker; Lyotard, would have some important things to say at this point. This article, from the get go, is claiming to be completely unbiased and objective while at the same time clearly promoting an agenda that is equally questionable on an "objective" basis. Kurt is promoting a textbook example of a metanarrative. He is claiming that what he states here is just fact and requires no belief or assent to truth. As a result, evangelicals can be thought of as nothing else than those who would deny reality and reason for their own personal benefit. Well on modernist suppositions this cannot be tolerated! Evangelicalism must be phased, if not whiped out from all intellectual discussion because there is no discussion to be had. Clearly this is the absurdity of modern thinking and it is also why Christians should gladly accept the postmodern critique of modernism.

Moving on then, Kurt now turns to casting doubt on the Biblical text. He points out that all we have of the Bible are copies of copies of copies. If this is true he asks, then how can anyone know what the original Bible actually said? Furthermore he points out, what we know about these copies demonstrates that much has been changed from the originals. He throws out classic examples such as Matthew 7 and Mark 16. But bizarrely he acts as though evangelicals have never heard about these criticisms, let alone given a good response to them.

Here we see two further affects of getting sucked in to these metanarratives, as Lyotard calls them. Firstly, Kurt appears to contradict himself; if we have so many copies that we can track how they have changed from the original, and changed drastically, doesn't it seem to follow that we can construct at least a good amount of what the original probably looked like? It seems that Kurt has guzzled his own kool-aid spiked with "Misquoting Jesus." Secondly, Kurt also reveals himself to be quite disconnected with reality. The fact is virtually every evangelical apologist of the past half century has responded to these kinds of claims. These same evangelical apologists which Kurt claims have had so much of a negative impact on secular society. So much that Kurt has never apparently never bothered to read any of them.

So for those like Kurt here are some good responses to the kinds of arguments brought up in this Newsweek article;  http://www.patheos.com/blogs/frankviola/newsweek/, http://michaeljkruger.com/a-christmas-present-from-the-mainstream-media-newsweek-takes-a-desperate-swipe-at-the-integrity-of-the-bible-part-1/, http://www.albertmohler.com/2014/12/29/newsweek-on-the-bible-so-misrepresented-its-a-sin/.

There are further mishaps that are quite hilarious such as Kurts firm belief in the infamous Constantine Conspiracy. You know, the idea that Constantine was really the one who was responsible for forming the New Testament Canon and core Christian doctrines like the Trinity (even though he was an Arian who disagreed with much of what the Councils he organized concluded). None of these sorts of claims are all that new either and have been made and responded to by every skeptic and every defender of the Christian faith.

Existence of God Handout

My Apologies but God Does Exist

There are numerous issues and topics related to apologetics and only one of these is the existence of God. When it comes to God’s existence, the Christian apologetic has focused on philosophical and scientific arguments.

The Structure of Arguments:

Arguments for the existence of God are generally expressed as syllogisms. These are lists of claims from which a new claim or claims can be deduced. For example;

1)    All bread gets moldy

2)    Wheat is a form of bread

3)    Therefore, wheat gets moldy

There are 2 qualifications for all these kinds of arguments; that they are valid and sound. Validity means that the last statement follows from the last two statements. So the above argument would not be valid if it stated that some bread gets moldy, wheat is a form of bread, and therefore wheat gets moldy. If only some bread gets moldy, then it does not follow that wheat gets moldy just because it is a kind of bread. For an argument to be sound, it must be true. Here is where the debate for most arguments lie. An argument might be valid but make false claims. In the case above, someone might point to a kind of exotic or experimental kind of bread that can be made which never gets moldy.

All syllogisms have as their goal to start with uncontroversial claims and end with controversial claims. In other words, all arguments want to start with ideas everyone believes to be true and draw from those ideas new ideas which few people believe to be true.

A Reasonable Faith:

Kinds of Arguments for God’s Existence;

1)    Cosmological- Arguments from the existence of the universe.

2)    Teleological- Arguments from the purpose or function of the universe.

3)    Moral/Axiological- Arguments from the nature/existence of morals.

4)    Arguments from Reason/logic

5)    Ontological- Arguments from the idea or definition of God.

Cosmological

An example of a Cosmological argument is the Kalam Cosmological argument. It is named after the Islamic philosopher who developed it;

1)    Everything which begins to exist has a cause.

2)    The universe began to exist.

3)    Therefore the universe has a cause.

You’ll notice first of all that this argument doesn’t conclude that God exists. It only argues the modest claim that the universe was caused to exist. This is because there is actually a second part of the argument which operates differently than the first. This second part goes like this;

If something caused the universe to exist what must we say about it? First of all, we must say that whatever caused the universe, it must be timeless and spaceless, because it created space and time (i.e. the universe). This means that the cause is eternal and isn’t made of material (doesn’t have a body). What’s more, it must be enormously powerful and intelligent to create a universe this massive and complex. Finally, the cause of the universe must be personal, meaning it (or he/she) must be capable of making decisions and thereby has free will. This means that the cause of the universe is either God or something like God.

This may sound like the end of the argument, but there are always ways of critiquing or “attacking” arguments. Here the critic of this argument could attack either (1) or (2) as unsound aka false claims. But the theist can also provide further arguments in support of both claims.

In supporting (1) we can argue that everything we observe that begins to exist was caused to exist. We might further argue that if things did come into out of existence out of nothing then it makes no sense why just anything and everything doesn’t pop into existence around us.

In supporting (2) we can point to the overwhelming scientific consensus that the Big Bang marked the beginning of our universe. As an aside the Big Bang theory is not a theory of what caused the universe to come into existence but merely a theory that the universe expanded from a singularity (something like a black hole) 14 billion years ago. In reality, the Big Bang theory is evidence for Christianity more than it is evidence 

against it.

Teleological argument

An example of a Teleological argument is Anthropic (Fine-Tuning) Argument;

If the speed of expansion of the universe had been one part in one million million slower than the universe would have collapsed in on itself before temperatures cooled below ten thousand degrees. If the speed of expansion had increased that same amount would have prevented the formation of galaxies, stars and planets.

Had the gravitational force been slightly greater, then every star in the universe would be a blue giant and would go supernova long before habitable planets could develop. Had it been slightly lower, then heavier elements essential to the formation of life would have never formed.

If the electric charge of electrons had been only slightly different then stars would not have been able to burn hydrogen, or they would have never exploded. In both cases heavier elements necessary for life to evolve.

The difficulty in providing a natural explanation to this kind of fine tuning is that whatever natural explanation you come up with would probably be incredibly fine-tuned itself. This seems to lend positive evidence to the claim that a supernatural entity of supreme intelligence and power created the universe we see today.

Moral Argument

Moral arguments generally run as follows;

1)    If objective moral values and duties exist then God must exist.

2)    Objective moral values and duties do exist.

3)    Therefore, God must exist.

In support of (1) theists argue that because objective moral duties are not just descriptive but also prescriptive then there must be a prescriber for them. We could also say that moral duties operate like laws and so must have been established by a law giver. This law giver must have both the goodness and the power to uphold and enforce these laws. Thus this law giver must be God.

In support of (2) theists argue that it seems apparent that moral values and duties are objective. It seems impossible to believe that if someone murders children they are actually only breaking a social norm and not doing something that is objectively evil.

Argument From Reason

Arguments from reason usually are negative, meaning that they try to disprove naturalism (the belief that nature is all that exists) more than they prove God exists.

A simplified version of this argument would look like this;

1)    If naturalism is true then no beliefs form on the basis of claims or ideas.

2)    But beliefs do form on –the basis of claims (like the claim that God does not exist).

3)    Therefore naturalism is false.

As odd as this argument might seem it is actually a powerful argument. The key statement is (1) and the argument behind it is this; if naturalism is true then all beliefs and thoughts in the mind are really just byproducts of physical reactions in the brain. But if this is true then no belief is really justified on the basis of evidence and arguments, but is only believed because of physical reactions in the brain.

But clearly we do form beliefs on the basis of evidence or claims that are true. This is what every self-respecting atheist and skeptic of all things supernatural thinks! So it is equally clear that naturalism must be false.

Recommended Resources:

Apologetics:

1)    Reasonablefaith.org- Dr. William Lane Craig answers numerous questions about the existence of God and Christianity in an easily accessible way

2)    Peterkreeft.com- Peter Kreeft presents a long list and defense of arguments for God’s existence.

3)    Premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable?- Hosted by Justin Brierley, “Unbelievable?” gathers both Christian and nonChristian scholars together to discuss challenging theological and philosophical questions on a weekly basis.

4)    Biologos.org- Scientists and scholars wrestle with reconciling science with scripture and doctrine from an evolutionary creationist perspective.

5)    Equip.org- Scientists and scholars wrestle with reconciling science with scripture and doctrine from a young/old earth creationist perspective.

6)    Bethinking.org- A website with a large database of articles from a wide range of topics written by scholars in various fields to answer tough questions about the Christian faith.

Theology and Church:

7)    Whitehorseinn.org- a website with numerous podcasts and articles related to Christian theology developed by the well-respected theologian; Michael Horton.

8)    Barna.org- a useful site discussing the Christian sub-culture of America. Numerous studies provide valuable insights into issues such as why high school and college students are leaving the church in such high numbers.

9)    Ccel.org- Christian Classics Ethereal Library is a massive database of classic Christian writings from throughout the past 2,000 years of church history, and it’s all available for free.

 Theopedia.com- Sort of like Wikipedia, but for all things related to Christian doctrine.