In Which I Review a Movie Poorly

I’m a Coke drinker. I always have been, and I always will be. Growing up in Atlanta, this preference comes naturally. In fact, when Andy and I bought our first house, we used some Coke stock that had been given to me as part of our down payment. Occasionally, I’ll order Coke in a restaurant and the server will bring me Pepsi. The server looks at me with a “what difference does it make?” look as she removes the offending drink. After all, they are both brownish, sugary, cola soft drinks. Diehard fans of either Coke and Pepsi know that there is a tremendous difference between the two drinks.

This is why I’m usually very slow to read popular Christian literature or watch popular Christian films. (Bear with me here.) There are so many different flavors of Christianity, and often the popular things are from the Pepsi branch of our faith family. Just because it’s labelled “Christian” doesn’t mean that it reflects how I experience Christianity. There have been the occasional happy surprises, such as “The Shack.” And there have been the things that have made me embarrassed to share the name “Christian,” either because of the quality or the theology of the work.

I went to see “God’s Not Dead” with some trepidation, after being asked about it by some folks at church. By the time the movie was over, I was a huddled, cringing mess. As I walked out, the theatre worker looked at me and asked if I was okay. I appreciate that he was truly caring, concerned that I might be in some spiritual crisis. Perhaps I was, because I’m still having flashbacks to that movie today.  I’ll share a few thoughts for the record, and I’ll try to keep some balance, because I know this movie has spoken to some people.

1.       The music is good.

2.       If any of my children ever were to have a professor force them to sign a statement that says “God is dead,” please report them to the academic dean asap.  (The same goes if a professor forces the entire class to sign a statement that says “Jesus Christ is my Savior.”) Likewise if said professor corners them in an elevator, or collars them in a hallway, and whispers angry threats, go to the dean right away and file a complaint. The threats and intimidation that are shown in this movie are not acceptable on any campus, and there are policies in place to prevent it. Why did the filmmakers feel the need to manufacture this sense of persecution?

3.       Loved the music, although it was one long commercial for Newsboys, beginning with the opening scene when the protagonist is wearing a Newsboys t-shirt and ending with the climactic scene outside of a Newsboys concert.

4.       The only real-life evangelist that was named in this movie was Franklin Graham. Franklin is in today’s newspaper for his comments praising Putin for his strong anti-homosexuality position, and he has made other attention-grabbing political statements in the past. (As I’ve said before, in my opinion Franklin is not the man his daddy is.)  There are other folks out there who preach the Gospel boldly without overt politicizing, by the way.

5.       I’m still humming the music.

6.       The non-Christians were portrayed as so achingly bad, and the Christians were so achingly good. It would be nice if the world were divided as neatly and cleanly into Bad Guys and Good Guys, but we’re all mostly a mix of good and bad. It seems to me that the main difference is that we Christians know that we’re a bunch of sinners saved by grace through faith.

7.       There was music by Superchick, and my daughters loved them when they were young.

8.       The final scene?  (Spoiler alert.) Couldn’t they have at least put an umbrella over the dying man’s face as they were bringing him to Jesus? There were many umbrellas being held in the watching crowd, did no one have enough compassion to keep the downpour out of his mouth, nose, and eyes?  Please don’t misunderstand- it was good to see that he knew that Christ was with him in his final moments, but all I could focus on was Why Couldn’t Someone Put An Umbrella Over His Face?

9.       Did I mention I liked the music?

Perhaps the power of this movie is that it gets the conversation going and allows people to think about how far they are willing to go for their faith. For us Christians blessed to live in the US, the greatest challenges to our faith do not come from apocryphal professors demanding that we renounce our faith. No, my reality is that I find the greatest challenges to my Christianity occur in multitudes of mundane ways. Am I willing to wait patiently as the driver in front of me drives well below the speed limit? Will I cede my place in the checkout line to the impatient line jumper? Will I greet the stranger at church seeking financial assistance with genuine love or surly suspicion? Will I take the time to listen to someone who needs to talk? Will I fret about the daily trivialities rather than jump joyously into God’s design for the day?  Give me a ridiculously over-the-top atheist professor any day; I’ll be glad to argue my point from the safety of a lectern for hours.  It is the day-to-day living that I fail to prove my faith all too often.  

These daily challenges will not make great cinema, but they are much more real than anything I’ve seen in the theatres lately.

Parking spaces and bird poop

There is a cardinal that poops on my car every Sunday morning. Seriously, I am not imagining or exaggerating, and it has been going on for at least 6 months, probably much longer. (It took me awhile to figure out what was going on.) 

Our church has ample parking, except that, like every building constrained by the limitations of space and time, there are a limited number of spaces close to the church on Sunday morning. You can always find a place to park, but you may have to hike a bit.  Choong-Ho does a wonderful job of teaching our new member class to “park far, sit close,” thereby leaving the prime church real estate of front-row parking and back-row seating to visitors, and I quote him frequently. Since I try not to ask people not to do things that I’m not willing to do myself, I park in the back corner of the lot by the recycling bins on Sundays. 

Every Sunday morning (literally every week) when I pull into my spot, there is a red cardinal sitting on the rearview mirrors of the other two cars that park with me in the hinterlands. The bird flies into the trees as I pull in, and by the time I return to my car in the afternoon, there is a trail of bird poop on my car beneath my rearview mirror.  Every week.

Yesterday, the cardinal was nowhere to be seen when I arrived at church. I actually found myself worrying a bit about this little fellow. When I walked out to my car after church, though, there he was. Sitting on my rearview mirror. As if to greet me, he pooped on my car and flew away while I watched. 

I’ve been trying to make sense of my avian friend’s actions.  It seems really unusual that a bird would be so regular about these weekly visits.  If I belonged to a different faith heritage, perhaps I would consider that my father has reincarnated into his favorite species and is communicating with me in the only way now available to him. While I’m not sure exactly when this bird started visiting my car, it’s possible that it coincides with my father’s death.  However, if that really is the reality, I’ll have to get on the other side of eternity before I’m convinced.

My main thinking is much more pedestrian, almost pre-schoolishly petulant.  “It’s just not fair. I park all this way away from the church, putting others’ needs first, hiking through an often-icy parking lot in a skirt and my church shoes.  And what do I get? Weekly bird poop!  Where is my gold medal?  After all, I’m being selfless and generous and Christian, right?”

Apparently, I do pre-schooler pretty well. At a local business that I go to most days, the parking lot is crowded.  However, the owners of another business inside the building park their two cars in the closest available spots. How do I know? They have vanity plates on their cars that have the business’ name on them.  I try to turn off my inner Pharisee, but I can’t help but think that they care more about their own comfort than the comfort of their customers. 

Right about then, when my superiority starts to run amok, the better voices in my head chime in. I know there are a lot of folks with handicap plates on their car that would exchange their disability gladly for a long walk and a little bird poop.  There are a lot worse things in this world than having to walk across a large parking lot.

In fact, I have found great blessing parking so far away. I’ve learned not to bring my laptop on Sundays, so that I don’t have to carry it so far. As I tread carefully through the icy patches, it reminds me to pray for the others who will be dealing with that same ice as they come to worship.  On my way through the building, I get a chance to peruse the parking lot for trash and make a quick walk-through to check the bathrooms.  

Which reminds me once again that I need to practice getting over myself.  There is such great joy that surrounds me every day of my life, if I’ll only see the good stuff. After all, how many folks have a personal bird to sing them into worship each week?

And if you ever wonder what car your pastor drives, it’s a cute little red Ford C-Max. You’ll know it’s mine by the bird poop underneath the rearview mirrors.

Olympic Rock Stars

The stars of this year’s Olympics aren’t in medal contention. In fact, they are in dead last place in their event. Regardless, they are rock stars wherever they go around the Olympic village.  Mainline news organizations can’t get enough of them, and videos of them dancing with folks around the Olympic Village are going viral on Twitter.  Long before they arrived in Sochi, we worried for their weather-disrupted travel and lost luggage.

They are the Jamaican Bobsled Team.

Their immense popularity doesn’t stem from their medal chances. Much of it is due to the beloved Disney film, “Cool Runnings,” that detailed (loosely) the travails of the very first Jamaican bobsled team.  But there has got to be more to this current crush of love than simply an old movie. Why are they so popular?

My hunch is that it is the incongruity of these Olympic athletes that is drawing the world’s adulation.  It is one thing to admire the honed skill of a bobsledder who grew up in a long tradition of winter sports in a cold weather clime.  It is something else entirely to watch someone competing from a country that has never seen a snowflake.  Would you have been able to imagine that Jamaica would be able to field a bobsled team? Ever? It’s just not the way that we expect it to work out.  We are impressed with the many Jamaicans who have excelled in the summer Olympics, but we are amazed at the daring improbability of Jamaicans who bobsled. 

The cross in on my mind these days, probably since I’m in the thick of worship planning for Lent, Easter, and beyond. Thinking about the Jamaicans has gotten me thinking that maybe that’s why we Christians are so taken with the cross.  It’s not the typical story of faith and redemption. It involves lots of unexpected elements, and victory doesn’t come about in the usual way. Our story involves outsiders, like tax collectors and prostitutes and others shut out totally from religion.  The culmination of our story involves no gold medals.  There are no victory speeches for the cameras, only words of love and pain spoken from the cross. Yet the power of that story endures, because it is our story. 

Who ever thought someone from Jamaica could bobsled in the Olympics? Who ever thought that a bunch of flawed and broken people would be worth dying for?   Isn't it wonderful when reality is so much bigger than our imagination?