Tag Christian

Sound of Hope: Movie Thoughts

Todd R 2 Comments

Tagged as “Christian Propaganda” on IMDB.com, Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot is a powerful movie based on the true story of a small black church in East Texas where 22 families adopted 77 of the most difficult children in the local foster care system.  If this is propaganda, I wish there was more like it.

Donna Martin is one of 18 children but has only 2 children of her own and hears God speaking to her, telling her to share the love her mother had with more children.  She begins exploring how to adopt children in the foster care system.  Her husband, Reverend WC Martin, reluctantly agrees after considering their limited resources and the fact that they already had one special needs child.  However, WC eventually preaches to the small congregation of his church that Jesus calls His people to sacrifice themselves for the needs of others, and quotes James 1:27 – “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” – to show that orphans are often the neediest among us.

WC gives a clear spiritual message, but the movie doesn’t delude us into thinking God’s call for us is easy, if we decide to follow it.  For me, the best part of the story is that it doesn’t shy away from the terrible experiences of these foster children, who have often suffered beyond what many of us can imagine.  It also doesn’t shy away from the difficulty of bringing these children into a Christian home and the struggles to convince them that they are truly loved, both by their adoptive parents and by God.  Donna, as the story’s narrator as well as a main character, says that we only really understand the depths of God’s love for us and His power when we are stretched by faith to our breaking point.  There are many temptations for them to give up along the way.

The movie doesn’t stop at its own story.  It challenges everyone to do something, to not just look away from the pain of children in the foster system.  While not everyone can, or will, adopt a child, those who do adopt have many needs that other Christians can help meet.  Those needs may be physical and financial, or they may just be emotional and spiritual support through relationship and prayer.

The movie, from Angel Studios, is still in theaters and I highly recommend you see it while you can!  It may inspire and challenge you to listen for God’s call for your life.

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.”

The Miracle of the Toothpicks

Todd R 4 Comments

In 1989, Rain Man, a movie starring Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman, won the Oscar for Best Picture and Hoffman won for Best Actor in a Leading Role, playing Raymond, an autistic-savant.  Long before autism was widely recognized, Raymond showed that those with autism have amazing talents, personalities, and human dignity just like anyone else.  In the movie, Raymond wins the affection of his selfish, arrogant brother Charlie, played by Cruise, who was initially only interested in Raymond because of his inheritance.

In one of the movie’s more well-known scenes, Raymond performs what in another context might be considered a miracle.  You can watch the 1 ½ minute clip here or read my summary below it.

In the clip, a waitress drops most of a box of toothpicks on the floor and in just a couple of seconds, Raymond counts that 246 of them scattered on the floor (he also counts three groups of 82).  At this point of the movie, Charlie still sees Raymond as someone he has to put up while he chases down his inheritance.  The waitress says the box had 250 toothpicks, so Charlie says Raymond guessed “pretty close” because he just wants to leave.  But when the waitress says, “there’s 4 left in the box”, Charlie realizes something amazing has just happened.  It wasn’t a guess.

It’s easy to be skeptical of miracles, or to choose to ignore them, but some of the Bible’s miracles aren’t much different than Raymond counting toothpicks at super-human speed.  We can’t explain why some people count faster than others, or run faster than others, or have photographic memories while others don’t, yet if we call something a “miracle,” many people will demand an explanation.  Other very abnormal things we just take for granted.

One miracle is recorded in Matthew 21:18-19, which says: “In the morning, as [Jesus] was returning to the city, he became hungry.  And seeing a fig tree by the wayside, he went to it and found nothing on it but only leaves. And he said to it, ‘May no fruit ever come from you again!’ And the fig tree withered at once.”  This tree was eventually going to wither anyway, so all Jesus did was change the speed of a natural process.  True, Raymond was special because of his own speed, and Jesus controlled the speed of something other than himself, but still part of what makes it a miracle is the speed.

If the speed of a natural process, like counting or the growth of plants, can be variable and manipulated, why not also the direction of the process?  In Mark’s gospel, the word “immediately” appears in at least 5 references to healing miracles[1].  The word “immediately” means the speed was part of the miracle.  Jesus not only healed a paralytic in Mark chapter 2, but the paralytic “immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all,”[2] without months or years of physical rehabilitation therapy.  From everyday experience, we know that different people recover from injury at different rates, yet why do we demand an explanation when its immediate?  If we don’t know what process took place to make this man a paralytic, why is it hard to believe that process could go backwards, and quickly?  It’s partly a miracle of degree, not of kind.

Of course, we shouldn’t believe every miracle: some are mere hoaxes, and some signs are done in opposition to God.  But also, we should not be too quick to dismiss the possibility of miracles we didn’t expect or can’t explain.  And while Rain Man does not claim to be based on a true story[3], the Bible does.  And Jesus, the one who could control the speed and direction of what we consider “natural” processes, claimed to be the God who put those processes to work in the first place.

“As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.” – Ecclesiastes 11:5

[1] See Mark 1:42, 2:12, 5:29, 5:42, and 10:52
[2] Mark 2:12
[3] The movie was based on a novel, but Raymond’s abilities were modeled on a real person named Kim Peek, who you can read more about at this link.  https://allthatsinteresting.com/kim-peek-real-rain-man

Marlboro Man Needs the Gospel

Todd R 2 Comments

Marlboro Man was a character used to advertise Marlboro cigarettes starting in 1954.  He became a cliché of a rugged man, often shown on horseback with a cowboy hat and some rope, confidently smoking a cigarette, and was portrayed by several different actors until 1999.  However, the origin of this famous ad campaign isn’t as well known.

Before the manly Marlboro Man manifested in 1954, Marlboro was sold as a feminine cigarette, with a red-colored filter at the tip.  Ads had phrases like “Ivory Tips Protect the Lips,” and touted that lipstick on the cigarette wouldn’t matter since it was red anyway.  But later, when the health risks of cigarette smoking came to light, Philip Morris & Co. wanted to sell Marlboro to men on the idea that filters made smoking “safer.”  However, given Marlboro’s feminine image – created through advertising – Philip Morris had to overcome that connotation, so the red tips were removed, and Marlboro Man was born as a way to sell Marlboro cigarettes to men concerned about lung cancer and other health risks.

Marlboro Man ad on a Warsaw, Poland building.

With hindsight, we know that filters don’t make smoking safer.  Ironically, and sadly, five different men who appeared in Marlboro advertisements died of smoking-related diseases, earning Marlboro cigarettes the nickname “cowboy killers.”[1]

Also with hindsight, we can see the massive power of advertising to shape our perceptions.  The Marlboro Man campaign is considered in the ad industry to be one of the best of all time, changing a “feminine” product into one of stereotypical masculinity almost overnight.  But the campaign also shows us that “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death”, as Proverbs 14:12 and 16:25 say.  In this case, it was very literal death in this world.

To make Philip Morris money, the ads declared that smoking was not a “way to death,” but that it was “right to a man” to be like the Marlboro Man.  It’s not entirely unlike the line “the greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist,” which was spoken by Kevin Spacey’s character in the 1995 movie, The Usual Suspects.  This line was a paraphrase of a line at least as old as the 1850’s.[2]

I recently heard a sermon where the pastor said, “the culture is trying to kill you,” and I don’t think it was an exaggeration.  Just as Marlboro ads first convinced people it was a feminine product, then turned on a dime to convince people it was a masculine product, without any real change to what was being sold, we’re all bombarded by dangerous messages every day, and many will only be seen in the broader culture as dangerous with the benefit of hindsight.  Smoking used to be considered normal.

I’m not writing this to condemn smokers, because we all have our bad habits, but to spotlight the importance of an eternal perspective.  Any culture is limited to the perspective of its leaders in that time and circumstance, and the pull of peer pressure is real.  Every culture in this world has “a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death,” but also every culture needs the gospel more than it needs effective advertising campaigns.

Therefore, as the apostle Peter wrote in 1 Peter 3:8-9 – “Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind.  Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.”

Marlboro Man needs the good news of the gospel, not condemnation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlboro_Man
[2] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/03/20/devil/

Walking Safely with God

Todd R 1 Comment

Many people, both Christian and non-Christian, think of obedience to God as a dreadful chore, something that robs us of our autonomy and joy.  Sometimes people refuse to believe in God because they reject His requirements, and sometimes people resent God because they see Him as making them labor in futility for the perfection He requires.  However, we know that salvation does not come from our obedience, but Christ’s, and through God’s grace He reveals Himself to us.  Then we learn that the rules we should follow come from a God who loves us and perfectly knows what is good and bad for us – far beyond our own knowledge.  Therefore, those rules become our freedom and joy when we follow them willingly.  He always knows the best and right choice to make.

Psalm 119 (the longest chapter in the Bible) is a meditation on the benefits of God’s laws for us, and verses 44-45 give us a picture of those benefits:

“I will keep your law continually,
            forever and ever,
and I shall walk in a wide place,
            for I have sought your precepts.”

The central idea here is that when we are obedient to God, we “shall walk in a wide place,” but what does that mean?  How does that benefit us?

Think about walking along a mountain path, or on stones crossing a river.  Does it make a difference how wide that path is, or how big and flat the stones are?  If we trip and fall on a narrow place, we may fall into a river or off a cliff.  However, if we fall in a wide place on a mountain path or on a very large rock, we may scrape a knee or our hands, but the consequences won’t be as severe as falling off a cliff!

Photo by Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash

The idea of walking in a wide place brings to mind the contrast between the consequences of following our own way versus following God’s.  Going our own way can not only have worse consequences now, in this world, but it can also have consequences in eternity.  Never repenting of going our own way at all leads to an eternity banished from God’s presence and blessings.  But even if we are saved, failure to follow God can rob others of God’s blessings for them that He intends through us and can influence our experience in heaven.  Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 3:12-15 that there are rewards in heaven for those who follow Him, as well as “loss” for not doing so.  So, doing whatever we please has consequences, some of which may be eternal.

In contrast, obedience to God is like walking in a safe place, where any negative consequence is temporary, or comes with a corresponding blessing.  We may get a scraped knee, but we don’t fall off a cliff, suffering permanent damage, death or other loss.  Following God’s word can’t keep all bad things from happening to you, but it can limit the worldly consequences, and eliminate the eternal consequences.

Therefore, seek God’s guidance and follow it, and we “shall walk in a wide place, for I have sought your precepts.”

It’s a better path to follow than any other.

Weeds are Good for You

Todd R 1 Comment

Are there people in the church, either in your own church, another local church, or somewhere in the global church, that seem a bit un-Christian?  Perhaps their doctrine is a bit different than yours, or perhaps they behave a bit differently.  Maybe they dress differently or have different standards in music.  They could have different political beliefs.  It could be anything.

Within a parable Jesus told in Matthew 13:24-30 is some wisdom about “those people.”  The parable is:

“He put another parable before them, saying, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field, but while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared also.  And the servants of the master of the house came and said to him, ‘Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have weeds?’  He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ So the servants said to him, ‘Then do you want us to go and gather them?’  But he said, ‘No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them.  Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”

For this post, the key phrase in the parable is “No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them.”  The wheat in the parable represents God’s people, and the weeds represent unbelievers in the midst of them.  The servants ask the master whether they should pull up all the weeds immediately, which seems like a sensible thing to do.  Weeds are bad for crops, right?

The surprising response is that the servants should “Let both grow together until the harvest.”  Why?  Because in the master’s judgment it is better for the wheat if the weeds are allowed to grow.  In other words, removing the weeds before the harvest – when God will separate the wheat from the weeds – would be bad for the wheat harvest.  Until the harvest, the master warns that we could “root up the wheat along with them.”

In Matthew 25 where Jesus tells of the final judgment in verses 31-46, it’s strongly implied that some of the “wheat” will be surprised about being wheat and some “weeds” will be surprised about being weeds.  In verses 37-39 Christians say: “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?  And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?  And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?”  In verse 44, unbelievers say: “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?”

Therefore, if the wheat and the weeds themselves can be unsure which they are, how can anyone else definitively decide who doesn’t belong, especially to risk damaging those who do belong.  There will always be true and false believers in churches until Christ returns, so remember: According to the Master, the wheat is better off with the weeds than without.  Especially if sometimes what we think are weeds actually aren’t.