Posted on 09/09/2015 8:21:42 AM PDT by fishtank
....Yes, it's true that when one submits to God, we will be blessed, but the biblical Stephen was 'blessed' with a vision of heaven before the last killing stone crushed his head. Paul was 'blessed' with a thorn in his side which tormented him God called sufficient grace. Peter was 'blessed' with a long career preaching in a persecuting world that ended with martyrdom on a cross. Facing the Giants bought into and promoted every Western Christian cliche imaginable. I would like to have seen the coach get fired even if he had won the championships. Or what would have happened to their faith if they hadn't won the championships. Or if they never had gotten pregnant. What then? Would THAT kind of faith hold true? But Facing the Giants isn't that kind of movie.
Then Fireproof came out and I was more discomfited. The hype was louder and tsunami-like this time. I can't tell you the pressure at churches when a new Kendrick Brothers movie is issued. It's like the second coming and this movie is gonna solve everything. I am not exaggerating. It was almost as if I would be blaspheming if I said that I didn't want to watch the movie or if I said that I didn't like it. There were parts in Fireproof I enjoyed but my discomfort with the doctrine in Fireproof was more coalesced this time.
First, I hated Catherine.....
(Excerpt) Read more at the-end-time.blogspot.com ...
Related post on the same blog:
http://the-end-time.blogspot.com/2015/09/christian-movies-are-there-any-good.html
Another loser with no real job pretending to know the pulse of viewers and in over his/her head.
Anyone here seen it? Was thinking about it.
He does a whole lot of nit-picking and guilt by association.
My family and I have seen all their films, enjoyed them immensely and recommended them to others.
This reviewer would complain that the Second Coming was too goody-goody.
I saw War Room on Saturday with my wife. We both thought it was excellent and definitely recommend it to anyone (especially couples).
Too many today treat their marriages as “throw away” items. Marriage is not bliss 100% of the time. It takes work to nourish it just as it does a garden.
The blogger gripes because the blessings shown in the movie are temporally positive. She then brings up blessings that are more eternally positive, and not so much here on earth.
Who does she think she is, dictating how blessings should be portrayed? There are different blessings, based on what God knows we need, or on what He wants to give to us.
This movie portrays one option. It cannot give all options available to God.
I just read what she had to say, and I must agree with her analysis. We are looking for “meat” and settling for gussied up soul candy.
Will everyone have the same experience as the characters in the story? No. It's a fictional story. But anything that encourages God's people to come to Him in prayer is a good thing. So many Christians see prayer as a last resort not the weapon of power God intentionally provided for us to use to get closer to Him and do greater things than we could even imagine or think.
I readily admit that I don't go to see many movies, but War Room is the best movie I've seen in a long time.
Highly recommend it.
I think she makes some good points. Too often Christianity is sold as a magic bullet: Become a Christian and everything will go smoothly for you. Easy answers to all prayers. Ask God in prayer and the answer will pop into your head.
From Dalrock:
One thing which is crucial to understand about Fireproof is that while it is widely considered the preeminent Christian movie on marriage, it is not a movie about Christian marriage. This subtlety is something the movie’s defenders will fairly quickly point out if you ask how the movie managed to ignore (or get backwards) nearly all of the key New Testament instruction on marriage. This they will explain is why Caleb was taught in the movie that his viewing pornography is a form of sexual sin, but Catherine isn’t taught that her denial of sex is in fact creating temptation for Caleb to commit sexual sin (1 Cor 7:2-5). They will further explain that when the movie shows Caleb submitting to his wife, it isn’t offering this as a Christian husband’s role in marriage but as a way for a man inspired by Christ’s sacrifice to win the love of his wife. Likewise, Catherine isn’t rebuked and never repents for lining up the doctor for either an affair or as husband #2 (adultery either way you read it) or for her decision to frivolously divorce, because she isn’t a Christian when she does all of this and her conversion occurs off-screen. If this were a movie on Christian marriage they will tell you, it would of course have to cover the core New Testament instructions on marriage. But it isn’t, so it doesn’t. If you think I’m making too fine a point of this, note how careful they are whenever describing the movie.More at the link.
But in real life, no matter how devout the believer, marriages break up, sick people sometimes don't recover, and good people go broke.
The Kendrick Brothers have done a great service, but they are preaching to the choir. I think it will take a major effort for them to move to the next level. They are incredibly successful, by normal industry standards, but it seems to have a low ceiling.
Mrs. jagusafr and I saw it the first weekend it came out. Acting was a little stilted at times, but as a firm belief in prayer warriors, I came away thinking, “This is a terrific movie to reinforce and build up Christians on the power and necessity of prayer, but I don’t know that a non-Christian would stick with it long enough.”
Awesome. Thanks! may go see it then. Don’t often go to the movies but this looked like it had potential. Thanks!
Thank you EVERYONE for the recommendation! I can’t respond to everyone so thank you all. Think I’ll go see it now!
To fully explore all the side themes she mentions and add material to clearly teach against possible misunderstandings and heresies, as she seems to want to do, would turn these movies into 15-hour long unwatchable messes.
Suffice to say that we shouldn't expect to learn precise doctrine from a movie. This critic would better serve the Christian community by producing a "Questions for discussion" type guide to go along WITH the movies in question, for churches and families and so forth to use as a tool for discussing the movie amongst themselves afterwards, what they can learn from it and what they should keep in mind is not always true in real life.
For example, such a guide could point out that God's blessings do not always come in this life, and may not by cushy prizes that we can sit on our rump and enjoy. But they are things that can help us grow in our faith or grow in other ways.
To give an example, a few years ago I faced debilitating pain from what turned out to be a classic case of a slipped lower lumbar disc. Rather than avoiding physical activities I learned to embrace hard physical labor around my rural property. It strengthens my trunk muscles, keeping my spinal column cinched down, which in turn keeps the disc in place better. And this in turn has made me much more fit and healthy than I as a middle-aged man with a sedentary desk job than I could otherwise expect. Sometimes blessings come with some pain. It's a fair point, and maybe a good one for the next Kendrick film...
Saw it last Sunday afternoon and highly recommend it!...when the movie was over there was applause and cheering!...
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