Amazing Love, Starring Sean Astin

I watched a Christian movie last night.  It’s called Amazing Love, and it dates to 2012.  Sean Astin stars in it.  You probably know him from such movies as The Goonies, Rudy, Lord of the Rings, and Fifty First Dates.  Patty Duke also had a role at the beginning of the movie, and I was interested to learn that she is Sean Astin’s mother.  Moreover, I learned that Astin’s step-father, John Astin, played the father in the Addams Family series.  But John Astin was not in the movie that I watched last night.

In Amazing Love, Sean Astin plays a youth minister named Stuart.  He and his wife Beth (played by Erin Bethea, whom I know from the Christian movie Fireproof) go on a camping trip with some kids.  One of the girls on the trip, Ashley, is stuck-up, but she is also suffering because of her parent’s divorce.  She does not get along with another girl, Carrie, who believes that Ashley thinks she’s too good for the group.  Even though Carrie is told that she as a Christian needs to love Ashley, Carrie simply does not want to do so.

On the last day of the camping trip, Stuart tells the kids the biblical story of Hosea, with some poetic license added in.  Hosea was a prophet to Northern Israel, and he criticized Israel’s worship of pagan gods instead of the God of Israel.  He was commanded by God to marry a prostitute, Gomer, for that would symbolize how God felt: God was married to Northern Israel and loved her, yet she committed adultery with other gods.  In the course of the story, Gomer leaves her husband to be with a rich man, who gives her beautiful jewelry.  One night, the rich man wants to sleep with her, but she is not in the mood, so the rich man throws her out.  She is then auctioned off, and Hosea lovingly buys her back.

Stuart likens Hosea’s buying Gomer back to Christ paying the price for our sins and buying us back.  When some of the kids are baffled that Hosea had such love for Gomer, notwithstanding her unfaithfulness, Stuart replies that all of us fall short of that kind of love, and yet Jesus inside of us can help us to love people unconditionally.  At the end of the movie, Ashley and Carrie are getting along, and the other kids are reading their Bibles!

I liked this movie for a variety of reasons.  Sean Astin did a good job portraying an accepting youth pastor, one who valued what all of the kids had to say and included them in the group’s discussions.  The movie also addressed the issue of unconditional love: how can we love those whom we don’t want to love?  According to the movie, Jesus inside of us is what enables us to do so.  I’ll try to keep that in mind.  There are some people, though, whom I don’t want in my life, so the closest I can come to love in that case is to wish them well and to live my own life, as they live theirs!

I did some reading about Sean Astin’s religion.  See here, where he talks about his own faith journey, as well as his mother’s struggle with Catholicism.  In this article, he discusses Christian films.  I should also note that, although he has been in evangelical movies, he leans toward the Democratic Party politically.  He supported John Kerry in 2004 and Hillary Clinton in 2008, and he was campaign manager for Democrat Dan Adler, who ran for Congress in 2011.

Fireproof: Is Compatibility Important?

This will be another post on the Christian movie Fireproof.  The last post that I wrote about this movie was in November.

The movie is about a firefighter named Caleb who tries to save his marriage.  It's a daunting task for him, for he and his wife are extremely estranged from each other, such that she is surprised when he calls her while she's at work just to see how she is doing (this was assigned to him in a book that he was reading on how to save a marriage).  And she is quite cold towards him and rebuffs him for some time whenever he reaches out to her.  You'd think that saving this marriage would be a hopeless cause.  But, as Caleb perseveres in doing good things for his wife and caring for her (even bringing food from the famous Chick-Fil-A franchise!), she eventually sees that he really does care for her, and she finally comes around.

I guess my question is this: Should every marriage be saved?  If two people are miserable around each other such that life together is continually an uphill battle, is there any reason for the two of them to stay married?  Maybe they can find someone else with whom life is not perfect, mind you, but less of an uphill battle.  In the movie, Caleb is at his wits end until he receives Jesus' love, and then things become easier for him: he's willing to do good things for his wife (i.e., wash the dishes, leave her roses, etc.), even if his wife is still unappreciative.  He's sustained by Jesus' love for him, and perhaps also by the realization that Jesus loves her, too.

So you'd think that Jesus' love can enable a Christian to endure any marriage until death.  And there are plenty of evangelicals who believe that.  One evangelical woman I know remarked that a godly person should be able to be married to anyone (and I'm sure she meant of the opposite gender), for, even if the spouse is a jerk, the godly person is sustained by God's love and can treat that spouse with love and kindness.

But then there are evangelicals who actually think that compatibility is important.  Granted, they probably have conservative views on divorce, but they still see value in compatibility when it comes to looking for a spouse.  They may express desire for a Christian mate, or feel that their previous romantic relationships did not work out because God was trying to lead them to someone better for them.  I mean, try going onto a Christian dating site and saying that someone should marry you because he or she should be godly enough to have a decent marriage with anyone!  Most won't take that risk.

But if compatibility is an important issue when it comes to looking for a spouse, why can't it similarly be a consideration when it comes to deciding whether or not to stay married?

I can see value in both what Fireproof presents and also the notion that some marriages probably should end, for the well-being of both parties involved.  I think that, in many cases, marriages should not go without a fight, for marriage should not be in the same category as going steady.  And yet, my hunch is that there are many people who have struggled to keep their marriages, yet the marriages still end in divorce.

Fireproof: Realism and Christian Characters

This is my second post on the 2008 Christian movie, Fireproof, which starred Kirk Cameron.  This movie is about a firefighter named Caleb, whose marriage is on the rocks.  Caleb's father, John, a Christian, advises Caleb to practice the 40-Day "Love Dare", in which Caleb refrains from saying a negative word to his spouse and does kind things for her.  It was amusing to watch Caleb sincerely try to do these things, only to be rebuffed continually by his wife.

This raises a question: Are Christian movies unrealistic in their depiction of people?  A while back, I watched the E! True Hollywood Story about Growing Pains, and it went into Kirk Cameron's conversion to evangelical Christianity.  The way that some on the documentary were portraying it, Cameron continually brought up his problems with the scripts----he didn't think that Mike (his character) should lie to his parents or have sex, for example.  One person was saying----and I'm basing this on my memory of watching this documentary years ago, and that may be flawed----that Christian movies lacked characters who struggled morally.  In many movies, this guy was explaining, a hero struggled to do the right thing and perhaps grew, but, in Christian movies, the hero was expected to do the right thing automatically.

I think that's an unfair statement, on some level, because I've seen a number of Christian movies in which a character struggles to do the right thing and grows.  That's just part of storytelling.  Without struggle and growth, you don't have much of a story, and I believe that even those who write Christian movies realize that.  In the case of Fireproof, Caleb struggles to save his marriage against high odds----he and his wife are distant from each other, his wife is cold and arguably hateful towards him, and his wife is being pursued by the dashing doctor at the hospital at which she works.

But I will say this: In many Christian movies, it does appear as if the Christian characters usually have their acts together.  There are exceptions----I think of the movie The Wager, in which Randy Travis plays a Hollywood actor who struggles to follow Christ, in the midst of trials.  But my impression----and I'm open to correction on this----is that the Christian characters in Christian movies ordinarily do not struggle a great deal, but they are automatically loving and have inner peace.  Even in The Wager, the Randy Travis-character's sister comes across as that kind of person----one who has her act together.  In the case of Fireproof, some of these Christian characters struggled in the past.  Caleb's Christian co-worker, Michael, failed at his previous marriage, but that was before he became a Christian.  And Caleb's father was once the object of the 40-Day "Love Dare", as he wanted to divorce his wife (Caleb's mother), and she saved their marriage by showing him unconditional love.  But these characters' struggles were a thing of the past, for now they were Christians and had learned the secret of how to love people successfully (i.e., embrace Jesus' unconditional love for them, notwithstanding their sins and faults).  Regarding one of the Christian characters in the movie----a nurse who works at the same hospital as Caleb's wife----we don't know her background, but she is a fountain of love, wisdom, and concern.  She has her act together, in a world where the rest of us struggle.

In my opinion, there is a sense in which these types of Christian characters make Christian movies better.  Regarding Fireproof, Michael and Caleb's father are like a refuge for Caleb in the midst of his storms, oases in a desert----they are rocks of wisdom, understanding, patience, and love.  On the other hand, I don't think that one should conclude that all Christians in the world are like that in real life.  Sure, there are plenty who are, but there are also plenty who are cliquish, cold, self-absorbed, and uncaring.  Speaking for myself, I tended to identify with Caleb in his struggles----even when he was selfish----more than I did with the Christian characters.  I wouldn't be surprised if that's what the movie is going for: Many of us are like Caleb, but, through Christ, we can become like the Christian characters.

Fireproof: Getting the Car Out of the Tracks

A while back, I saw Fireproof, a 2008 Christian movie that starred Kirk Cameron.  To be honest, I'm not particularly in the mood right now to write a full-fledged review, and so what I may do is write a little bit about the movie each day until I'm tired writing about it.

In this movie, Kirk Cameron plays a firefighter, Caleb Holt, whose marriage is on the rocks.  That's the overall plot of the movie.  But the movie has a dramatic scene that isn't really a part of that overall plot.  In this scene, Caleb and other firefighters are trying to move a car out of some railroad tracks, and a woman and her little girl are trapped inside of the car.  Meanwhile, a train is coming.  The firefighters succeed in getting the car out of the tracks, but barely, and the train races behind the head of Caleb's Christian friend Michael, knocking off his helmet.  Michael screams as this takes place.  This is a powerful and an intense scene, and the soundtrack that is playing during it is awesome.

See it for yourself here.  Start at the 6:00 mark.