I’ve been watching Christian movies lately. I’m waiting for God’s Not Dead
to come out on Netflix, so, until then, I will satisfy my hunger for
Christian movies by watching other Christian movies. Here are three
that I recently saw:
1. The Gospel.
This movie came out in 2005. I was intrigued when I first saw the
trailer. One reason was that I saw that the actress who played Rudy
Huxtable in The Cosby Show was in it, and I often wonder what
happened to actors and actresses who played in the sitcoms of the past.
Another reason was that the movie seemed to be about people losing
their spiritual way in the church, amidst the trappings of religion, and
finding their way to an authentic spirituality.
The music in the movie was fantastic, let me tell you! I ordinarily
am not a fan of Gospel music, preferring Contemporary Christian Music
instead. But the music in The Gospel was very powerful!
The plot was all right, I guess. A guy leaves the church, becomes a
big-time music star, and returns to the church of his youth, where the
new pastor, his childhood rival, is building a personality cult around
himself, all in the name of God and his vision for the church. That was
interesting to watch, but, overall, the plot did not grab me that much.
2. Courageous.
This movie came out in 2011. It is about four police officers, and a
Hispanic friend named Javier, who resolve to be Christian men of
integrity. Javier was my favorite character. He loses his job, cries
out to God, and then someone he doesn’t even know calls his name and
gives him tools for a project to work on. It turned out that this guy
was expecting another Javier. Good thing the Javier who needed work
showed up!
I liked this movie because it was about leadership, and, by that, I
don’t mean telling others what to do, but rather working on yourself
(with the help of God and others) and leading by example. In this
movie, the characters experience challenges even to the end. One of
them passes the test of his character, while another does not. The plot
was meandering at times, but I still enjoyed spending time with the
characters.
3. Facing the Giants.
This movie came out in 2006. It was made by the same gentlemen who made Courageous, the Kendrick brothers. Alex Kendrick, who played in Courageous,
also played in this movie. It is about a high school football coach
who initially has problems: his car does not consistently work, his team
is consistently losing, people want to replace him with a new coach,
and he cannot give his wife a child. The coach then dedicates himself
to God and encourages his team to live for God’s glory, and things go
pretty smoothly then.
The first half of the movie was fantastic. I liked seeing how the
coach inspired his team to become winners when they saw themselves as
losers. While I was surprised that nobody complained that a coach in a public school
was teaching his players Christianity (I doubt that’s even legal), I
thought that he imparted a lot of wisdom, about cleaning up one’s own
side of the street, for instance. In one scene, the coach tells a
player that he cannot make him believe in Jesus, for this is the
player’s own decision, but that he hopes that the player will come to
see how much Jesus loves him. Another character, a puny soccer player
who joined the football team and struggles to kick the football over the
goal-post (I think that’s the right term), asks his Christian father
why God made him so weak, and his father responds that it’s so God can
show God’s strength through him.
The second half of the movie, however, was not so good. While the
main characters did experience challenges, on some level, things were
going very smoothly for them overall once they got on track. I felt
like I was eating too much ice cream. The reason that I like the other
Kendrick brothers’ movies that I saw (Courageous and Fireproof)
is that, on them, events do not necessarily go smoothly after the
protagonists make a Christian commitment, but the protagonists know how
to handle the events better, for they have been changed and now walk in
wisdom. If only I saw more of that in Facing the Giants!