Knowing the real deal - when we see it

I have mentioned in a previous blog that I am a regular subscriber to Breakpoint, and always find their commentaries stimulating. Since the passing of Chuck Colson, Eric Metaxas has become the primary contributor, and I found one of his posts this week particularly intriguing.  Here it is, in part:

Here’s a particularly egregious case [of Christian curmudgeoning] in point: the recent campaign to remove a great movie, The Blind Side, from the shelves of LifeWay Christian stores. Remember, The Blind Side was denounced as Christian propaganda by many liberal critics.

It explicitly depicts an affluent white Christian family devoting itself to helping an impoverished black kid because it’s the Christian thing to do.

The film’s offense, according to a Florida pastor who started the campaign to have LifeWay stores pull the DVD, is that the movie contains “explicit profanity, God's name in vain, and racial slurs.” It doesn’t seem to matter that the objectionable language is used to depict the palpably unpleasant world from which the young black man, Michael, was rescued by his adoptive family.

What seems to matter to this pastor is that if we “tolerate” the presence of this movie in Christian bookstores, our children and grandchildren will “embrace” this kind of behavior. I’m not making this up – this is the exact reason given by the pastor. And frankly, I think it’s insane. I saw the movie myself. I even let my 12-year-old daughter see it. That’s because it is a great film and I recommend it highly.

But sadly, LifeWay caved in and removed the “offensive” discs from their shelves.

For outsiders looking in, the moral of the story is that “there is no pleasing Christians. They always seem to be looking for something to be mad about.”

We complain about the calumnies and caricatures of Christians on the big screen; and then, when an Academy Award-winning film shows us at our very best, we complain that scenes depicting harsh, inner-city reality are too true to life!

We are, in effect, making our participation contingent on all our possible objections being met beforehand. Since there are many people who would be happy if we stayed within our cultural and religious ghettos, it’s difficult to imagine how we Christians can hope to be taken seriously in cultural discussions and debates with this kind of an approach.

Concerns about the language in the film also miss the larger point: what made the Tuohys — the family depicted in the film — such great Christian exemplars wasn’t their non-use of profanity; it was their willingness to reach out and embrace someone in need.

If we Christians can’t get this, then maybe we really should refrain from commenting on culture in the first place.

For more on this subject of Christians in the arts and culture, visit BreakPoint.org.