Risky Faith

Something to discuss...

I was reading this blog entry which referenced this blog entry and then I thought some things. For those of you too lazy to click the links let me quickly get you up to speed...

Back in January there was an episode of ER that featured an old dying man looking for forgiveness and answers (he administered lethal injection to a convicted man who was later discovered to have been innocent and was troubled by this) and was visited by the hospital chaplain. This chaplain was a young woman who said things to the man like, "I think it's up to each one of us to interpret what God wants." The man called it "one size fits all crap." He wanted "a real chaplain who believes in a real God and real hell." The article criticizes the episode and goes on to say the following...

"Still, it is refreshing to see Hollywood frame the question and the issue fairly vividly, isn't it? Yet even in that framing, the picture is blurred. The "cause" being championed is yet another Hollywood favorite: opposition to the death penalty. Did the doctor actually do anything immoral? He had come to think so, and his grief is turned as a comment against capital punishment." (unrelated side note: lately I have begun to think how someone can be a Christian and be for the death penalty (side note: and against abortion))

"As I've often observed and remarked: the most gifted screenwriters can concoct believable monsters, deviants, heroes, regular-joes, atheists, agnostics, all sorts of characters. But the believable depiction of a full-orbed Christian character is simply beyond them. Evidently they have never known (much less understood nor liked) even one credible, practicing, Biblically-faithful Christian. It's the one color missing from their palate — as starved for ideas as they are."

"But Hollywood, for all that does captivate it, is not captivated by the beauty of the Gospel.

Nor, probably, can it be (1 Corinthians 1:18 — 2:14)."

This at first disturbed and, annoyed me; then challenged me, and scared me, and lastly made me think and feel many contrasting ideas all at once. As someone currently floating into the world of "Hollywood" I am often confronted with the idea that Christians cannot work in Hollywood. That Hollywood does not accept Christians, nor support them. I have been told that I need to be a light in a very dark place.

Is it true that "Hollywood" is screwed up? I would say a very loud YES, BUT the whole world is screwed up- not just Hollywood. I could get a job as a reporter, a social worker, a child care provider, a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer, a businessman/ woman and STILL face a messed up world/ workplace that rejects the gospel and rejects what they think they know of Christianity. I might even go so far as to say that I could work in the church and STILL there face those issues. No matter what we cannot seem to escape this reality- SIN IS EVERYWHERE and THE WORLD AT LARGE WHICH WE MUST SURVIVE AND WORK IN REJECTS GOD. And yet- what does this mean? For me it means being a light in a dark place. Does it challenge me to write/ direct/ produce/ whatever something for Hollywood that does as the article put it: present a "believable depiction of a full-orbed Christian character?" Yes, yes it does. Am I capable? I quickly and frightfully say NO. But then I stop and say. The question is much larger. It is not- can I make a Christian piece for Hollywood, it is- will I be a Christian.

Did I take too big of a leap there. Do you disagree? I struggle with this idea often because most of the "Christian" film out there is terrible and I hate it. Movies that I might point out as presenting a very moral and Christian idea might be called garbage and inappropriate by most "Christians."

Where do we draw the line? This could become a very philosophical debate. We could go so far as to make this a discussion on relativism and say- Am I a Christian for what I present as my final product or what I indented in the making of it? If I work on a porno, but I do so with all glory to God what does that mean? Is it even possible?

I do not want you to answer that.

What I am really struggling to spit out is that the article caused me to feel things that contradict each other and I don't think I can accept all of them at the same time. It also stirred up thoughts I have been pondering and struggling with recently. I have been struggling to act on an impulse or notion. To step out in faith- To take a risk- to be bold and courageous. Is God calling me to be a bold Christian in Hollywood. I shutter at the thought. That would be just about the hardest thing ever. But how exactly do w go about being a both a Christian and working adult in the world. Can I both love and hate my job and what would it truly mean to be a working Christian in "Hollywood"?

I am reading James 2 and the above mentioned passage in Corinthians and pondering this.