The Free Speech Apocalypse (2015)

[As a note, I was able to see this movie early by being an All-Access Member of Apologia Radio. I highly recommend this ministry, and have learned much because of it.  Thanks!]

My high school government teacher told us that the definition of a Conservative was someone who wanted to go back to the old ways of doing things, including slavery.  He emphasized that – conservatives like slavery.  I thought it was odd even then that, in conservative Texas, no one in class seemed to really think that was an odd definition.  Or maybe we were just all afraid of the grade so kept our mouths shut.  Little did I know that this was just the way things were going to be from now on.

But did anyone really expect what is happening now?  I mean, sure, there has always been an effort by people to shut down discussion by calling other people names.  I’m talking about the people who take any criticism of Obama as “racism,” or those who talk about a “war on women” when we want to end the murder of babies.  These people have always been around, and they are so blinded by their own rhetoric that it’s nearly impossible to have a conversation with them.

But they’ve always been the kooks, the fringe, the blind followers.  These are the people who make the news out of their incredible silliness, not because they have a point.  But when people near me – friends, neighbors, coworkers, etc. – start repeating the same nonsense, it starts to concern me.  When I see people at work who really thought that voting against Obama meant that Big Bird would go off the air, I start to really wonder about where we’re going as a people. 

Mercy Rule (2014)

I’ve been pretty excited to watch Darren Doane’s Free Speech Apocalypse for a few months now, especially after noting that he directed Collision, which is my favorite C

hristian movie that I haven’t actually seen.  Not that I don’t want to.  And I’ve seen enough clips to make me feel like I actually have seen it.  Even though I haven’t.  And I really like it.  Despite having not seen it.

Nevertheless, to tide me over, I looked up a few of his other works to tide me over.  Unstoppable was good – seen that one.  Saving Christmas?  Er, word around the block (and I mean by that people who would actually appreciate the theology of this movie – not the general assessment of the world) is that it was pretty bad.  Mercy Rule?  Haven’t heard of that one, but why not?  Let’s give it a try.

What was interesting about it is that it wasn’t what we would call a “Christian” film.  It is a self-described “family” film, but we would not immediately say it is “Christian” except that Doane directed and Kirk Cameron stars in it.

Does that mean it’s not Christian?  Well, the whole point of this blog is to point out that just because we label something as “Christian” doesn’t mean that it is good theology, or even really that it is at all Christian.  At the same time, here we have a film that stands thoroughly on a Christian worldview as its foundation.  It is about things – truth, honestly, community, family, righteousness, a good work ethic – that God loves.  The antagonists in this movie are not only the bad guys trying to take what isn’t theirs.  It’s also the pride of life and the desire for wealth or recognition that is part of the main characters themselves. 

Children of Men (2006)

Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.

-Psalm 90:3, KJV

The most astonishing things about the recent Planned Parenthood videos are not the videos themselves.  We always knew they were killing people, so it shouldn’t be a surprise when we find out that they are selling the bodies of the people they slaughter.  No, that revelation is interesting to watch, but it shouldn’t surprise it.

Make us ashamed, angry, and sick to the stomach?  Yes.  Surprised?  No.

But the surprising part is watching people defend it.  We’ve had defenders of death for some time, of course.  We’ve had the same arguments for decades now, and some people seem really sincere in presenting them.  The only thing that has really changed is the level of self-denial inherent in these arguments as medical science continues to make it more and more obvious that which the Bible taught us from the beginning – that a fetus (Latin for “baby”) is a living human.  And the Bible goes further still with the statement that not only is the baby a living human, but is also made in the image of God, and therefore worthy of dignity and respect.

The arguments become more desperate as that fact is becoming more obvious.  For many of us, who genuinely thought that the world would come around once it was proven that the baby is alive, it is a bit of a shock when we watch people still cling to death because they love it.

We love death.

God's Not Dead! Part 2: My speech in front of the class

So a couple of weeks ago I reviewed the film God’s Not Dead, and in that review, I reported that it is my hope to write out a speech that I would have delivered to the class if given the chance.  This is the result. 

A lot of this is coming directly from points made in debates that I particularly liked.  I’m citing when I recall exactly where I heard it, but in general, please note that I listened to a lot of these debates, so I’ve been influenced by the thought of Greg Bahnsen, Sye Ten Bruggencate, James White, The Narrow Mind podcast, Apologia Radio, Douglas Wilson, etc.

I should also note that I have heard a hundred questions in response to this reasoning, and it would have taken me an additional month to write replies to all of them.  In lieu of that, I thought to just leave off the Q&A.  If you are interested more in this, I would recommend the Bahnsen/Stein debate in particular, but also any of the debates by the people and groups listed above.

Now on with the show! 

God’s Not Dead! part 1: Review of the Film

You may be asking yourself, “Why in the world would the Calvinist Nerd be reviewing God’s Not Dead when that was so last year.  He should be live tweeting Do You Believe like the cool people!”

And if you are thinking that, you have forgotten one of the rules of this blog – I ain’t spending money to do this stuff.  I don’t have a ton of readers, and so to leave my family for an evening, spend $12 on a movie ticket, to watch a bad movie, just so I can mock it here – that’s a really bad idea.

So God’s Not Dead hit Netflix, which meant that I don’t have to pay for it, and I didn’t have to leave the kids to see it.

When this movie first came out, I was intrigued.  It was a film that took apologetics seriously.  You know, most Christian movies just have someone who comes to a crisis in their lives so they turn to God to make it better.  But this is one that actually put a character in a situation where he needed to defend the Christian faith.

And then I saw the reviews, so I decided to wait for it to hit Netflix.  But now that I’ve seen it, let’s take a look.

As a note, I'm going to do this in two parts.  In the first one (this one), I will review the movie itself.  In the second, I'm going to write out the speech that I would give if I were in this kid's situation and was asked to prove God in a class.  Hoping to finish that next week.

Reflections on Spock and Star Trek

When I was a teen, I went to the Star Trek Experience in Vegas with my family.  The greeter took our tickets, gave us a Vulcan salute, and said, “Live long and prosper.”  Without thinking, I returned the gesture and quoted the lesser known reply, “Peace, and long life.”

My family was staring at me.  I was a little self-conscience, and so explained, “It’s a proper reply.”

They looked at the greeter, who nodded and confirmed, “He’s right; it is.” 

50 Shades of Q&A

This will be the sum of my blog post about 50 Shades of Grey, and then I’ll address some questions that are surely to come up:

Not only should you not read it or watch it, it is a sin to do so, and you need to repent of that sin.

Easy enough.  Now, on to the questions:

The Apostle Peter and the Last Supper (2012)

I’m seeing a lot of Pure Flix movies lately.  Mostly because they all seem to be on Netflix (and therefore free), but also because I’ve enjoyed at least a few of them.  They seem to have a decent budget, and the writing is not half bad, so I’ve been sticking with them.  There are some really bad ones (The Book of Ruth comes to mind), but also some more solid ones.

“More solid” being a relative term compared to most Christian movies.  They seem to all be at least problematic theological.  At worst, they succumb to bad TBN theology (Ruth).  At best they are just misguided (usually in eschatology and in Gospel presentation).

Peter, on the other hand, is actually pretty good.  Now, as with some of their other films, Jesus does appear on the screen, which is something that these movies do without even really considering the properness of it in light of the second commandment.  That being said, and this is something I’ve said before, I’m not going to review that point, because I haven’t studied it enough to really make a case on whether Jesus should appear in movies yet.  I hope to research that a bit more and do a blanket post that I can reference for any film that portrays the God-man. 

Revelation Road 2: The Sea of Glass and Fire (2013)

Previously, we did a review of the first part of the Revelation Road movie.  And when I say that it was the first part in this movie, that’s really what I mean.  This is a movie in two parts, not two separate movies with the same characters.  I just don’t want you to be disappointed when you reach the end of Part 1 and it doesn’t end.

Part 1, you will remember, was about this salesman who enters into the most unfriendly town ever (both because of the criminals and also the annoying Christians).  Some bikers try to kill him, and he suddenly reveals that he is some awesome Jack Bauer-like kung fu beast and kills them all.  It was actually pretty cool.  I very much enjoyed the movie, except the “Christian” parts of it, which were almost all bad.

The first part ended with the rapture, which had been building up for hours in a massive electrical storm, then ended with the Christians glowing for several minutes, then being fried into a pile of ash.

Then Jesus appeared beside a road and was hiding from everyone.  Because that’s what He does according to Dispensationalism – comes back and hides.

So let’s get to this one!

Revelation Road: The Beginning of the End (2013)

I don’t know why I watch Christian end-times movies.  I know what they will be.  They will be

Dispensational, because the actual historic and orthodox views of the Eschatology wouldn’t make for good movies.  In those views (A-millennialism, Post-millennialism, and Historic Pre-millennialism), things either get steadily better until the end or worse until the end, but once that trumpet blows, that’s it.  It’s difficult to make that into a two-hour movie, especially one that is artistically satisfying.

Dispensational Pre-millennialism is different.  In that scheme, Jesus returns in a secret rapture either at the beginning of the Tribulation or in the middle of it, takes away his believers, and leaves the rest for the remaining part of the seven year Tribulation.  Then He returns again and starts the millennial reign on the earth.

This view is not at all historic.  No Christian ever has believed it until the 1800s.  Beyond that, it is simply not biblical.  And I don’t have time here to explain why, though I do recommend Kim Riddlebarger’s extended lectures on this topic.  I’ve listened to all of them, but if you get through the first few of them, you’ll get the gist of what is being said.  Scroll halfway down the page and you’ll see them on the right.

But that makes for interesting movies, because Jesus coming back and things end is actually the very definition of a Deus ex Machina, which is something you’re not supposed to do when telling a story.  But if part of the world disappears, leaving the rest in a terrible Tribulation with all sort of problems and craziness, then that’s more interesting. 

Bruce Lee’s The Big Boss (1971)

One of the things I want to do on this blog is not just review “Christian” “art” for theology, but also to point out when secular art really hits on something important.  In a lot of cases, unfortunately, I’m finding that the world expresses better theology, at least in part, than a lot of the Christian products we review here do.

The reason for this is simple.  The Bible teaches us that we all have an inherent understanding that there is a God and something of His nature.  In Romans, we find this statement: “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse” (1:19-20).  Again, “They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts” (2:15).

We are made in God’s image, and we reflect something of Him.  That is why we have concepts like justice, mercy, and love in even the most secular of places.  Evolution cannot explain things like morality, good, and evil, and yet we know that these things exist and that they are universal.

So it should come as no surprise to us when the world advocates Christian values without acknowledging that they are necessarily Christian.  When I wrote a book about Christianity and the show Firefly, some people criticized me because the creator of the show, Joss Whedon, is an atheist, so clearly didn’t mean to reflect Christian values in it.  But Christianity is true.  It is the only worldview that actually works.  So we should not be surprised when an atheist writer denies his atheism by writing about good and evil, love and justice.  We should actually expect him to do so.  Their understand of God’s revelation is incomplete, and damningly so, but there is an understanding there.

Which brings me to The Big Boss with Bruce Lee.  I’m a huge martial arts movie fan, so I really look forward to anything with Lee in it.  Even when the budget is very low and the plot is cheesy, it’s a pleasure to watch that guy do his thing.

The Book of Esther (2013)

I do have to say that starting this blog has made watching bad “Christian” “art” a lot easier.  Now, it’s

actually enjoyable thinking about what I’m going to write about these films.  I used to dread any time that I would find myself sitting in front of some “Christian” film, but now I almost have a glee about it, just trying to figure out what better theology can be taught through the bad theology on the screen.

I probably wouldn’t have even watched The Book of Esther if it weren’t for this blog, but I saw it on Netflix, and grinned as I thought about what a train wreck it would be.  But it really wasn’t, at least as a film.  The production itself really isn’t all that bad.  It was entertaining as movies go, and the acting wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be.

But on the theology side (which is really the only thing we’re worried about here), the movie is easy to review because it makes the same critical change that almost everyone makes when narrating this story – the removal crucial pieces of plot and substitute something less, well, lurid.

The post where I go off on something I haven’t even seen

(or: What am I looking for in “Christian” movies?)

So I haven’t seen Noah.  Not planning to see it.  It’s just not one that interests me.  Besides the fact that I’m very suspicious of Hollywood trying to do either Christian or biblical movies, it just doesn’t look very good to me.

I may be wrong.  I’ve been wrong before.  When I was a kid, my parents took me to the theater to see “Crocodile” Dundee, and I literally cried in the car because I didn’t want to see it.  Turns out I really enjoyed it, and when the second one came out, I was first in line.

So maybe it’s brilliant.  Maybe it’s a masterpiece.  Maybe someone will convince me to see it when it’s on Netflix.  But right now, I’m counting down the days to Captain America: Winter Solider, and Noah is not on my radar.

But I’m interested in the Christian world’s response to the film.  The filmmaker admits he’s not trying to make a terribly accurate movie.  This is not some devout Christian who is trying to translate the text to the screen.  Someone is using the story as a jumping-off point to tell a different sort of movie.

Island of Grace (2010)

I’ve started a series on DC Talk’s Free at Last, but we’re going to interject a movie review here, because

this movie is an illustration of exactly why I started this blog.

It seems that the Christian movie world, much like the Christian music world, most often runs to cliché and vague “spiritual-sounding” lines rather than dealing with theological meat.  Well, we cannot blame the film-makers completely for that.  I’m sure a movie explaining Reformed theology would be a flop, while something that is just vaguely “Christianish” would do fairly well.  After all, Hollywood runs to the lowest common denominator all the time, but then Hollywood does not purport to answer to any higher authority besides themselves, while we do.

And there is a second difference between that Christian art should be and what Hollywood does.  An action film does not attempt to do much else besides entertain us.  A feel-good romantic comedy shoots squarely at the emotions, and so it doesn’t have to be more than ankle deep.  But if we are to make a movie that hopes to draw us closer to God, it should present a God that is distinguishable from any generic false god the world has created.

Which brings us to Island of Grace.  There’s nothing particularly wrong with this production, besides the acting.  The script isn’t bad, the pacing and tension fairly decent.  Why, it is even “Dove Family Approved.”

The problem here is that the understanding of God is so vague that it could quite easily be the Muslim or Mormon god that they are talking about.

But wait.  It is.

Island of Grace is really a repackaged Mormon film called Rescued with only a few scenes changed (I would direct you to this Mormon site for the specific changes, though their conclusions are obviously wrong).

They have literally taken a Mormon movie, changed a couple of lines and scenes, and called it Christian.  And it’s not the only movie they’ve double-released like that.  This particular media outlet has figured out that they can make more money with their Mormon films by changing some lines and convincing Christians that they are talking about the true God rather than the Mormon one.

Which isn’t a comment about them.  Mormons these days tend to think that they are Christian, and so this group probably thinks they are just helping merge the groups.  It is a comment on us.  When we have accepted such drivel and think it to be honoring to our God, we have set ourselves up to be fooled by false ones.

If you’re wondering why I’m doing this site – this is the reason.  Our art has become so bad and watered down that we watch a movie about a false god and think that it is about the true one.  We need to change, and we need to demand better.  I’ll say this – God demands better, and if we are going to honor God, then we need to get to know Him better.  This site is designed to call us out on this point and ask that we step up our game a little.  No more Mormon gods in disguise – we worship the true God.