Facing the Giants

Kate Looney sent me a news story yesterday about a movie coming out in September entitled "Facing the Giants." This is a low-budget movie made by Christian filmmakers that is something of a cross between a homemade “Hoosiers,” a small- school “Friday Night Lights” and the Book of Job. The Motion Picture Association of America created a small stir when they gave the movies a PG rating. The MPAA describes a “PG” rating like this—

The theme of a PG-rated film may itself call for parental guidance," states the online explanation of the rating system. "There may be some profanity in these films. There may be some violence or brief nudity. ... The PG rating, suggesting parental guidance, is thus an alert for examination of a film by parents before deciding on its viewing by their children. Obviously such a line is difficult to draw.

"Facing the Giants" is a about a burned-out, depressed football coach whose life on and off the field takes a turn for the better… a miraculous turn. There is none of the violence, language, brief nudity or adult themes in the film that generall cuases ratings disputes. So why the rating? The movie is simply too Christian and too evangelistic. The word they used was “proselytizing.” The MPAA decided that this little movie “was heavily laden with messages from one religion and that this might offend people from other religions.” As the article observes, “Faith has joined that list of deadly sins that the MPAA board wants to warn parents to worry about.”

Well, I guess we should be thankful that the movie was only rated PG and not PG-13… or worse. It wasn’t so many years ago that non-religious parents would send their kids to Sunday School or VBS because they wanted their children exposed to religious and moral training. Now the MPAA is wants to warn parents that exposing their kids to Christian messages in a movie might be dangerous and damaging. The world has changed. I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto!

And we need to realize that. We need to understand that our world is a post-Christian, secular culture that no longer accepts Christian values as good or a Christian heritage as the common experience of most. There are some people who cannot understand why anyone would share religious faith with someone. Oh, they see an ill-defined, abstract spirituality as a good thing, but be serious enough about Christian faith to want to share it with someone else? Well that is just not done in polite company.

But at the same time, there are many others who are desperately seeking God. They want someone to show them truth and meaning in their life, even if they don’t yet realize that this is what they are wanting. We need to be God’s messengers of meaning to those who are seeking. That may mean running the risk of being looked down as passé and informed by the cultural elite. It may mean getting a PG rating on you life. But that is what we must risk to be God’s harbingers of good news in a world that needs it!