"Hollywood's war on God," or cringing Christians?

Fearful Christianity has shied away from the "big questions" posed by the secular arts. Perhaps the time has come for the followers of Christ to face squarely the issues raised by a world desperate for answers, instead of wasting their energy straining out gnats while swallowing the camel. 

Hollywood's War on God takes the blue pill
It is in the fearful "Cringing Christian" spirit that the documentary Hollywood’s War on God was conceived. This film has much to say about the evils of Gnosticism which have crept into modern filmmaking, looking behind the scenes at the lives and philosophies of the actors and directors of these films. What seems to cause most offense is the portrayal of a false messianic or Christ-like theme in many of these films. This is, however, exactly what makes them good and thought-provoking. As the Wachowski brothers, who directed The Matrix are quoted in HWOG: “We think the most important sort of fiction attempts to answer some of the big questions.”

In Acts 17 Paul addresses the Athenians, using the statue of “The Unknown God” as the opportunity to speak on a non-Christian forum, quoting from an Athenian poet as part of this discussion. We also need to do this: where the “big questions” are being raised, we should be there to answer them with “salty words.” We run away from these things in a spirit of fear and panic, when we can be using the Christian narratives within them about an "unknown" god to show vital truths that they contain. Christ himself used stories (parables) to illustrate truths about life, as will be seen later in the “Hope, the human condition and Shawshank Redemption” post.

Fearful Christianity assumes that we will be polluted by the ideas and philosophies presented by these works of art, whereas if we approach them in the fearless Christian spirit, they can be really valid discussion points about the real Christ: at least there is a Christ in them, someone who points to a reality outside of the current material world. The Matrix is a film where this theme is prevalent. I love the image of the red pill and the blue pill: fearfulness, the desire to be safe and not have our thinking challenged is like taking the blue pill. We are meant to live red-pill-dangerously, taking every opportunity to challenge the reality presented to us by the media and mainstream religion. In The Truman Show we see how we can be manipulated by these forces (“principalities and powers” according to the Bible) beyond our awareness, puppet masters hiding behind the smokescreen of our everyday, TV-manipulated life. The list goes on: V for Vendetta questions totalitarian religious authority, Lord of the Flies spells out human evil as opposed to human (and spiritual) good. In an interview on the DVD version of the South African film Spud, John Cleese talks about The Life of Brian as making fun, not of Christianity, but of the kind of people who misinterpret and twist Christianity around to suit their own needs. He talks about how, in the United States, Obama had to convince rich people that nowhere in the Bible does Christ say that the rich should not pay more tax than the poor. The Life of Brian does a splendid job of pointing out this kind of hypocrisy.

Yet the producers of Hollywood’s War on God have chosen the fearful, blue pill position, ignoring the Christian narratives in these works, playing straight into the hands of those who want to see Christians in paranoid stereotype. If we are to be vilified and persecuted, let it at least be for the right reasons: not because we rant against homosexuals, “Gnostic” film directors and the like, but rather because we stand for God’s justice in being a voice for the voiceless, taking care of those in need without expecting their bums on the seats of our church. Let it be because we are taking a stand against unrighteous worldly institutions that cause people to wage war on one another for the sake of the enrichment of the few and the impoverishment of the many, a stand against principalities and powers using politics and mass media to keep the world population in the static unthinking safety of the matrix. Let it be because we stand for a real, eye-opening education in a world that seeks to create stupid, blind consumers of mass culture aimed at the lowest common denominator. The words of George Carlin ring very true here: “Governments don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. That is against their interests. They want obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept it.” Thank God for art, music, cinematography and literature that still seeks to provoke thought, teaching us to question the status quo in a world of bland, shallow values. Let us not shy away from these works of art in a cringing spirit of fear, but let us rather apply these sound minds that God has given us so that we can show his glory in a real dialogue with a world that is hungry for answers to the "big questions."

"Oolon Colluphid's" question, "Who is this God person, anyway?" will be addressed in the next post, where the person of Jesus Christ will be discussed in the light of Stephen King's character Andy Dufresne in the Frank Darabont film The Shawshank Redemption.