Movies For Teaching Worldview

When the Apostle Paul preached in Athens, he quoted Greek poets. (Acts 17:16-34). Paul was trying to connect with the Athenians by demonstrating he understood their worldview and using that point of connection as a segue to the Gospel.

In the United States movies, not poetry, are the prevailing cultural medium. That’s one of the reasons the wife and I are avid movie-goers. We want to understand the worldview of the prevailing culture so we can be more effective in sharing the Gospel.

With that, here are five movies one could use to teach a Sunday school or small group about worldview and modern culture.

1.  Crimes & Misdemeanors (1989). In this movie, writer and director Woody Allen asks the questions, “If on earth evil is not punished and virtue is not rewarded, is there really a God and how should we then live?” It’s a common question, for which Christians should have an answer.  This movie was nominated for 3 Academy Awards: Best Original Screenplay (Woody Allen), Best Director (Woody Allen) and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Martin Landau).

2.  Unforgiven (1992).  Clint Eastwood directed and starred in this anti-western western, which is a rebuttal to westerns where it was always clear who was the good guy and who was the bad guy. In it Eastwood asks, “What is the true nature of man?” Again, it’s a legitimate question. Do you agree with Eastwood’s answer or does Christianity provide a better one? This movie won an Academy Award for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Gene Hackman) and Best Film Editing.

3.  Up In The Air (2009).  George Clooney stars in this movie, which pits man’s quest for career success against his need for true community. I reviewed the movie here in a previous post. This movie was nominated for 6 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director (Jason Reitman) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Jason Reitman/Sheldon Turner) and Best Actor in a Leading Role (George Clooney).

4.  Match Point (2005).  This is a Woody Allen movie that explores the question of whether our lives are determined by chance.  Allen is one of my favorite filmmakers because he asks all the right questions and mixes in enough humor to make the discussion entertaining and profound at the same time. Unfortunately, Allen has all the wrong answers. This movie was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (Woody Allen).

5.  Burn After Reading (2008). This movie is from Joel and Ethan Coen, who like Woody Allen, ask the right questions, make you laugh, then suggest the wrong answers.  Don’t let the humor in their movies mislead you though because they ask serious questions. Burn After Reading suggests our lives are guided by chance and if there is a God who sees all, he is just a spectator.

By suggesting these are good movies for Sunday school or a small group, I’m not suggesting they are rated G.  If they were we wouldn’t be talking about using them to understand the prevailing non-Christian culture. You will have to decide how much to show and appropriately warn those who choose to watch them. They are instructive, and those Christians who are prepared to respond to the serious questions they posit will be better equipped to expand the kingdom of God in their sphere of influence. GS

Apologies, Muslims, Reagan & Communists

I don’t know if you read Nicholas Kristoff’s op-ed piece in the NY Times Saturday, Message To Muslims: I’m Sorry.

Mr. Kristoff is a Pulitzer Prize winning writer, known for bringing to light human rights abuses in Asia and Africa and has been referred to by Jeffrey Toobin as “the moral conscience of our generation of journalists.”

In the piece, Mr. Kristoff correctly states many Muslims are compassionate, peaceful, and altruistic. He expresses regret for Americans equating Muslims with terrorists, suggests Americans should not malign Islam because of the acts of Islamic terrorists, and apologizes to Muslims for those who have done so.

Mr. Kristoff is undoubtedly correct that there are many Muslims who are compassionate, peaceful, and altruistic and that they should be treated like human beings, not terrorist monsters. I’ll go further: Christians should love not only peaceful Muslims but Muslim terrorists.

But Mr. Kristoff is undoubtedly wrong in suggesting–as it seems he does–that the relative goodness of the Muslims he identifies as compassionate, peaceful, and altruistic should exempt Islam from public scrutiny.

First, Mr. Kristoff’s premise is fuzzy. Does he mean by “equating Muslims with terrorists” that he believes Americans are accusing all Muslims of being terrorists? I’ve not heard anyone suggest that. I have heard people say Islam is not a “religion of peace” and question the earnestness of Muslims who say it is. There is nothing persecutory or bigoted about that. It’s a fair question.

Second, Americans believe the public square is the marketplace of ideas. Islam is an idea, just as Christianity is. Ideas can be true, false, good or bad. But the American experiment is rooted in the supposition that discussion is the means by which we arrive at the proper conclusion about any idea. Mr. Kristoff seems to suggest Islam should be exempt from that discussion. (By the way, in a typical Islamic state there is no such discussion).

There should be no surprise that Islam’s stock is currently down in America. It could have something to do with Muslims flying planes into buildings, threatening, in the name of Allah, to kill cartoonists and would-be book burners. Even if that is the impetus for the discussion, it doesn’t delegitimize the argument.

I get the impression Mr. Kristoff wants to make sure people are treated fairly and humanely and that he believes by exempting Islam from the public discussion it is more likely we will all get along. He seems like a good and thoughtful man, and his intent should be lauded. We need men and women like Mr. Kristoff who can talk people off the ledge of bigotry and xenophobia. But at some point Truth matters, and refusing to talk about the underlying idea at issue doesn’t bring resolution or peace; it just postpones them.

I remember the media raging at Ronald Reagan  for calling the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” I’m sure there were Soviet communist party members who were compassionate, peaceful, and altruistic people at the time, and there were plenty of journalists–probably some who worked for the New York Times–who suggested the answer to the Cold War standoff was to seek a better understanding of the Soviet people and their needs and fears.

Instead Reagan thrust the question into the public square.Does the tens of millions murdered by Stalin, the tens of million imprisoned for their political or religious beliefs, or the hundreds of millions robbed of their freedom by the Soviet empire qualify it for the label, “evil”? It was a legitimate question, and we are all the better for having asked it. GS

On Intolerance

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There’s much talk today of the evils of intolerance. It’s the one thing our increasingly post-modern culture agrees is morally wrong. I think they are wrong, which I suppose makes me intolerant of their tolerance.

“Tolerance” means “the capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs of others.” (The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Ed.) “Respect” means “[t]o feel or show deferential regard for; esteem.” Id. So, to be intolerant means to fail to esteem the beliefs of others.

If I affirm some things, I am necessarily rejecting–or being intolerant–of other things. For example, for me to say my iMac mouse is white is to also say it is not black. To esteem the belief that the mouse is black when I know it is white is insanity. Likewise, for me, as a Christian, to esteem a religion that asserts there are many ways to God, or a way other than Jesus, when Jesus said no one comes to God except through Him, is to cut off the branch upon which I sit. Intolerance then is not evil but a logical necessity.

Intolerance is amoral. It is its object that determines in any given situation whether intolerance is good or evil. If I’m intolerant to injustice committed against the poor, my intolerance is good; if I’m intolerant of righteous acts my intolerance is bad.

There is something else wrong with the clarion call to tolerance. Tolerance is utterly impotent to inspire men to great acts. Who has ever laid down his life for tolerance? It is intolerance we have to thank for many of our heroes; it is the fuel of bravery. It was intolerance for Nazi fascism that inspired Americans to volunteer and risk their lives in World War II. It was intolerance for racism and injustice that inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. into the streets to mobilize the peaceful protests that would transform a nation. Tolerance compels no such action.

That is why tolerance will never abide as a virtue. It’s a chimera of a humanistic culture, unable to inspire men to greatness and so devoid of content as to make it useless as a virtue. The answer to bigotry is not tolerance but righteousness, or put another way, intolerance for bigotry.

So, next time someone accuses you of being intolerant just consider it an affirmation of your sanity. GS

Lessons From Threatened Book Burning

2010 (c)iStockphoto/wildcat78

Pastor Terry Jones’s 15 minutes of fame has stretched into a reality tv mini-series. If you haven’t heard the latest, Pastor Jones met with an imam who, Jones insists, promised him the planned Islamic center near ground zero would relocate if Jones would call off the book burning. Jones says he agreed and announced he was canceling, but not long after the meeting, the imam claimed he had made no such promise. Jones responded by saying the imam had lied and that the book burning was no longer cancelled but suspended.

I blogged on Jones’s inflammatory intentions recently and suggested he may have had more in common with Islamic terrorists than he realized. I also blogged on the proposed Islamic center near ground zero, contending the most popular arguments against are missing the point. But I think there is something more significant here than either individual incident.

In response to his plan to burn a Quran, Jones claims he and his people have received over 100 death threats, and there is concern around the world of bloody repercussions by Muslims against Christians, and even the American military. So serious were these threats, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called Jones and encouraged him to call off the book burning. And all of because Jones threatened to burn a book.

But I don’t recall hearing of death threats against Muslims in response to plans to build an Islamic center near ground zero. Many Christians disagreed for sure, but they tried to reason and persuade. They didn’t threaten to kill people.

Or look at the response of the Christian community to Jones. Christians from every conceivable denomination called on Jones not to go ahead with the book burning, and they did so publicly. They went on the record to make it clear what Jones proposed to do was not representative of Christianity or its Founder.

But in response to plans to build an Islamic center and mosque near ground zero, Muslim leaders have been silent. I didn’t hear them calling on their fellow Muslims to build at a different place or suggesting love or respect for the feelings of others is required of them by their Islamic beliefs. If they have spoken publicly its been to claim victim status or first amendment rights.

Obviously, there are exceptions on both sides, but my point is there has been a substantive difference between the response of Christendom and Muslims which reveals more about both than the underlying controversies that spawned them.

What do you think? Do you see moral equivalency here or a difference in the responses? GS

Work Is Great, Beer Is Good And People Are Crazy

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“I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have.”  These are purportedly Leonardo DaVinci’s last words.  Five hundred years of art critics would disagree with DaVinci’s assessment of his work, but that is not the point here.

What is intriguing is DaVinci, perhaps the greatest painter who ever lived, had such a high standard of excellence, he believed what he produced was offensive to God.  It would be easy to write-off DaVinci’s statement as false humility, but I think there is more here.

DaVinci would not have thought his effort offensive to God unless he believed God saw work as something sacred that demanded excellence.  On this point he was right.  The first two chapters of Genesis record God working (“…and by the seventh day God completed His work…”) and then commenting on the quality of His work (“…God saw all that He had made and behold it was very good.”).  (Gen. 2:2).

When religious leaders criticized Jesus for working on the Sabbath Jesus said, “My Father is working until now, and I Myself am working.” (John 5:17).  That must mean God was working from the time of creation until the time of Jesus, and I suspect He has continued to work since then. If God has been working continuously there must be something right about it.

And then there are numerous admonitions in the Bible about hard work and excellence like, “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might” (Eccl. 9:10), “Whatever you do, do your work with all your heart, as for the Lord and not for men…” (Col. 3:23) and “Do you see a man skilled in his work, he will stand before kings” (Prov. 22:29). Even after the kingdom of God has transformed the earth, people will be working, building houses and planting vineyards. (Isaiah 65:21). God has a very high view of labor.

It’s man who has denigrated and despised labor.  We live for the weekends and look forward to the holidays.  We can’t wait until five o’clock so we can leave the office.  We work and save and work and save so we can retire as soon as possible.  We act as if work is a necessary evil and that the higher calling is rest and relaxation.  We have it backwards.  In this respect we are the ones who are crazy. Rest is essential and holidays like Labor Day are nice, i.e. “beer is good.” Even God rested after He had worked. (Gen. 2:2).  But rest is not the highest calling.

So, have a great Labor Day–if I haven’t ruined it for you–but look forward to getting back to work on Tuesday where you can please God with your hard work and excellence. GS