Jesus
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not "perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.” (John 3:16-17)
Martin Buber
“In the relation to God, unconditional exclusiveness and unconditional inclusiveness are one. For those who enter into the absolute relationship, nothing particular retains any importance—neither things nor beings, neither earth nor heaven—but everything is included in the relationship. For entering into the pure relationship does not involve ignoring everything but seeing everything in the You, not renouncing the world but placing it upon its proper ground. Looking away from the world is no help toward God; staring at the world is no help either; but whoever beholds the world in him stands in his presences…” (from
I and Thou)
C.S. Lewis
“When I attempted a few minutes ago, to describe our spiritual longings, I was omitting one of their most curious characteristics. We usually notice it just as the moment of vision dies away, as the music ends, or as the landscape loses the celestial light… For a few minutes we have had the illusion of belonging to that world. Now we wake to find that it is no such thing. We have been mere spectators. Beauty has smiled, but not to welcome us; her face turned in our direction, but not to see us. We have not been accepted, welcomed, or taken into the dance. We may go when we please, we may stay if we can, no one cares. Now, a scientist may reply that since most of the things we call beautiful are inanimate it is not very surprising that they take no notice of us. That, of course, is true. It is not the physical objects that I am speaking of, but that indescribable Something of which they become for a moment the messengers. And part of the bitterness which mixes with the sweetness of that message is due to the fact that it so seldom seems to be a message intended for us, but rather something we have overheard. By bitterness I mean pain, not resentment. We should hardly dare to ask that any notice be taken of ourselves. But we pine. The sense that in the universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, the bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret.” (from
The Weight of Glory)
Terrence Malick
Badlands (1972)
Days of Heaven (1978)
The Thin Red Line (1998)
The New World (2005)
Martin Heidegger
“Truth is the truth of Being. Beauty does not occur alongside and apart from this truth. When truth sets itself into the work, it appears. Appearance—as this being of truth in the work and as work—is beauty. Thus the beautiful belongs to the advent of truth, truth’s taking of its place. It does not exist merely relative to pleasure and purely as its object.” (from “The Origin of the Work of Art.”)
Saint Paul
“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (I Corinthians 13:12)
Marshall McLuhan
“All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered.” (from
The Medium is the Massage)
Sufjan Stevens
And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid
(from “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.”)
F. Scott Fitzgerald
“And as I sat there brooding on the old unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s long dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it, He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.” (from
The Great Gatsby)
Yasujiro Ozu
Tokyo Story (1953)
George Steiner
“All representations, even the most abstract, infer a rendezvous with intelligibility or, at the least, with a strangeness attenuated, qualified by observance and willed form. Apprehension (the meeting with the other) signifies both fear and perception. The continuum between both, the modulation from one to the other, lie at the source of poetry and the arts.” (from
Real Presences)
Paul Tillich
“What is the nature of a being that is able to produce art? Man is finite. He is, as one could say, mixed of being and nonbeing. Once he was not. Now he is and some time he will not be. He is not by himself, but thrown into existence and he will be thrown out of existence and cease to be for himself. He is delivered to the flux of time which runs from the past to the future through the ever-moving point which is called the present. He is aware of the infinite. He is aware that he belongs to it. But he is also aware that he is excluded from it… Out of the anxiety, and the double awareness that we are finite and that we belong to infinity from which we are excluded, the urge arises to express the essential unity of that which we are in symbols which are religious and artistic.” (from
On Art and Architecture)
Dorothy Sayers
“Poets have, indeed, often communicated in their own mode of expression truths identical with the theologians’ truths; but just because of the difference in the modes of expression, we often fail to see the identity of the statements.” (from
The Mind of the Maker)
Over the Rhine
What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be.
Lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy.
And I use these words pretty loosely.
There's so much more to life than words.
(from “Latter Days”)
Soren Kierkegaard
“He will grant thee a hiding place within Him, and once hidden in Him he will hide thy sins. For He is the friend of sinners... He does not merely stand still, open His arms and say, 'Come hither'; no, he stands there and waits, as the father of the lost son waited, rather He does not stand and wait, he goes forth to seek, as the shepherd sought the lost sheep, as the woman sought the lost coin. He goes--yet no, he has gone, but infinitely farther than any shepherd or any woman, He went, in sooth, the infinitely long way from being God to becoming man, and that way He went in search of sinners.” (from
Training in Christianity)
Richard Linklater
Before Sunrise (1995)
Waking Life (2001)
Before Sunset (2004)
George MacDonald
“In what belongs to the deeper meanings of nature and her mediation between us and God, the appearances of nature are the truths of nature, far deeper than any scientific discoveries in and concerning them. The show of things is that for which God cares most, for their show is the face of far deeper things than they; we see in them, in a distant way, as in a glass darkly, the face of the unseen. It is through their show, not through their analysis, that we enter into their deepest truths. What they say to the childlike soul is the truest thing to be gathered of them.” (from
The Voice of Job)
Emily Dickinson
The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted opon Earth –
The Sweeping up the Heart
And putting Love away
We shall not want to use again
Until Eternity
John Steinbeck
“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.” (from
East of Eden)
Bob Dylan
He woke up, the room was bare
He didn't see her anywhere.
He told himself he didn't care,
pushed the window open wide,
Felt an emptiness inside
to which he just could not relate
Brought on by a simple twist of fate.
(from “Simple Twist of Fate”)
Walker Percy
“What is the malaise? You ask. The malaise is the pain of loss. The world is lost to you, the world and the people in it, and there remains only you and the world and you no more able to be in the world than Banquo’s ghost.” (from
The Moviegoer)
Sofia Coppola
Virgin Suicides (2000)
Lost in Translation (2003)
Marie Antoinette (2006)
Kathleen Norris
“Church is to be participated in and not consumed. The point is not what one gets out of it, but the worship of God; the service takes place both because of and despite the needs, strengths, and frailties of the people present. How else could it be?” (from
Dakota)
Marilynne Robinson
“Whenever I think of Edward, I think of playing catch in a hot street and that wonderful weariness of the arms. I think of leaping after a high throw and that wonderful collaboration of the whole body with itself and that wonderful certainty and amazement when you know the glove is just where it should be. Oh, I will miss the world!” (from
Gilead)
N.T. Wright
“Preaching the gospel means announcing Jesus as Lord of the world; and, unless we are prepared to contradict ourselves with every breath we take, we cannot make that announcement without seeking to bring that lordship to bear over every aspect of the world.” (from
What Saint Paul Really Said).
David Bazan
It's weird to think of all the things
That have not been keeping up with the times
It's ten o' clock the sun is down
Just begun to set the western hills on fire
I hear that you don't change
How do you expect to keep up with the trends
You won't survive the information age
Unless you plan to change the truth to accommodate the brilliance of man
The brilliance of man
(from “Letter From a Concerned Follower”)
G.K. Chesterton
“Gazing at some detail like a bird or a cloud, we can all ignore its awful blue background; we can neglect the sky; and precisely because it bears down upon us with an annihilating force it is felt as nothing. A thing of this kind can only be an impression and a rather subtle impression; but to me it is a very strong impression made by pagan literature and religion. I repeat that in our special sacramental sense there is, of course, the absence of the presence of God. But there is in a very real sense the presence of the absence of God. We feel it in the unfathomable sadness of pagan poetry; for I doubt if there was ever in all the marvelous manhood of antiquity a man who was happy as St. Francis was happy.” (from
The Everlasting Man)
Gus Van Sant
Elephant (2003)
Paranoid Park (2008)
Solomon
"I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves. He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and to do good in one's lifetime; moreover, that every man who eats and drinks sees good in all his labor--it is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will remain forever; there is nothing to add to it and there is nothing to take from it, for God has so worked that men should fear Him. That which is has been already and that which will be has already been, for God seeks what has passed by." (Ecclesiastes 3:10-15).
Jack Kerouac
“What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?—it’s the too-huge world vaulting us, and it’s good bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.” (from
On the Road)
St. Augustine
"Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee..."
Martin Luther
“Unless I am convinced by proofs from Scriptures or by plain and clear reasons and arguments, I can and will not retract, for it is neither safe nor wise to do anything against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Amen."
Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
The Son (2002)
The Child (2005)
;
The Search 
Excellent thoughts Brett. I actually saw this trailer earlier today on Paul Scheer’s blog making fun of it – http://paulscheer.com/post/46864361/damn-kirk-cameron-has-done-it-again-fireproof
We need more Christians here in LA and around the world that are willing to devote time to the craft…otherwise it’ll get us nowhere.
dude! you are ON POINT!!!
as much as i respect everyone involved in this horrible looking pile of cheesy poop, and i know their intentions are great, and i even know that the Lord God will use this to really touch people…. i just can’t help thinking exactly what you are about it.
on point man.
thanks.
Yeah I’m not sure if Evangelicalism eschews aesthetics or if Evangelicals just have rotten taste. But look: Left Behind, Thomas Kinkade, CCM, the direction contemporary Evangelical ‘worship’ has taken… It’s yucky.
Feelin’ you, Brett. The term “Christian art” — whether film, fiction, or music — is ambiguous, creates unnecessary expectations in the viewer / reader / consumer, and potentially reduces the role of the Christian artist to that of propagandist. By implication, “Christian art” requires a message. And, sadly, so many believers are willing to wink at mediocrity as long as that “message” is clear. Hey, the heavens declare the glory of God without a word. So why should “Christian art” be any different?
FWIW, I do have hope that the situation can improve. Just look at “Christian music”.
Sure, there’s still a lot of schlock coming out of that arena. However, there are also folks like Sufjan Stevens, David Eugene Edwards (Woven Hand), Daniel Smith (Danielson Famile), Over The Rhine, and Innocence Mission, not to mention a burgeoning underground scene.
It might take several more years, but if the Flickerings program at Cornerstone is any indication, I know that there are Christian filmmakers out there who want to make solid, artistic “Christian” films.
As long as we’re making them, let’s strive to make them “good” – sure; but I still maintain that Christians shouldn’t be making “Christian” films. Christians should be creating art that is true. Stories that have truth. Not expensive felt board fairytales. Over The Rhine et al make excellent music because their music has truth as the foundation. M. L’Engle said that “Artists of all disciplines must be willing to go into the dark, let go control, be surprised.”
As long as we continue to divide creative expression by “secular” and “christian” we will be forever painted as the “lesser” of the two. Creativity is creativity, the Creator is THE Creator, He didn’t make a secular world and then a Christian world. There aren’t trees that He made that cuss all of the time and worship Satan and then shrubs in southern Texas that sing praises to God while never dancing!! So, why do we constantly try and compartmentalize creativity?
I agree with you 100%.
i believe that this post came 2 days too late. I had the chance to screen this film this week. I work for a Christian radio station in Oklahoma and I fear I may have to “talk up” and “endorse” this film to our listeners.
Any ideas as I try to convince my managers not to hop on the bandwagon of this film…?
Well, I’m with you in saying anything not-human with a modifier “Christian” before it should probably not exist (aka, christian music, movies, so on and so forth). The problem came when Christian replaced good – and so we settle for Christian art because it is not X (insert “secular” alternative).
I just saw last night that there is a “Christian” version of Guitar Hero. God help us.
There are occasionally films that leap out, always indie, always without fanfare, and we ought to celebrate those for being good art and not for being made by Christians. Our purpose is not to celebrate Christians who succeed, but art that is good. If we look to that, we don’t care if good art comes from the worst sinner who is not aware of it or the worst sinner who is aware of it (a Christian).
With that said, a film that I constantly point to is Primer. Without a doubt it has a small time appeal, it’s a science fiction indie film that uses actual physics as its premise (and some of its plot points), but it was made by a believer and it succeeds not because it mentions Jesus (it doesn’t) but because it is a solid piece of film.
Find things like that, celebrate them, and tack onto the end “and it was made by a Christian!” and hopefully the tide will turn in the next century.
Wow. I am very bothered by the portrayal of people of color in this trailer. Is it a characteristic of “Christian movies” to either ignore or villian-ize POC’s except for the wise black mother or father that guides the white main character?
Just wondering, are the films made by Sherwood Baptist Church really representative of the “Christian film industry”, per se? Except for a few of the most technically-oriented crewmembers, the films are made by volunteers and non-professionals, and are much more analogous to, say, plays and skits put on by church drama groups than to productions put on by actual Christian theatre companies. Admittedly, the fact that Kirk Cameron is involved in this film does blur the lines a bit; he has been working in Hollywood practically his whole life, so he is certainly a “professional” and a member of the “industry” even if he was a volunteer on this film just like the other actors. But the film as a whole is definitely made with a different emphasis and a different aesthetic than, say, the Billy Graham films or the Left Behind films.
I don’t think Sufjan Stevens or Danielson or Over the Rhine count as ‘Christian music’ any more than Napoleon Dynamite counts as ‘Mormon cinema.’ If every piece of art requires its artist’s belief system as genre classification, the world is even worse off than I thought.
What about Pedro the Lion?
Lots of good comments here. I agree w/ gilliebean that “Christians shouldn’t be making “Christian” films. Christians should be creating art that is true.”
I agree with the several others who point out that we should really quit labeling things “Christian” in art, b/c that really has nothing to do with the relative goodness, truth or beauty it contains. Tim you are right on that a piece of art should not take its creator’s belief system as a genre classification. It is my longterm hope that one day we won’t need to have “Christian” genres of literature, music, movies, etc… But given that we DO have them today, I don’t think it’s asking too much to hope that they strive to be of higher quality.
I expressed a lot of my problems with the “Christian” genre classification in this post from last year.
Brett wrote:
“I agree w/ gilliebean that ‘Christians shouldn’t be making “Christian” films. Christians should be creating art that is true.'”
FWIW, I think that’s a false dichotomy. You might just as well say that Christians should never write hymns or sacred songs, only songs that are true. Or that Christians should never build sacred spaces, only buildings that are true. Or something like that.
Like ’em or hate ’em, Fireproof and the other movies made by the guys at Sherwood are intended primarily as ministry tools — similar to church plays, as I suggested above — and not as “art” or even “entertainment”. And I think they need to be evaluated within that context.
Peter,
I don’t think it’s a false dichotomy. The idea is, I think, that Christians should be striving for truth above all, but only in the sense that the truth (if we are Christians and creating within and in response to that reality) which will be expressed is indeed Christian or sacred truth. I doubt that much of the pantheon of sacred art was originally crafted to be “Christian” as opposed to “secular.” Rather, these pieces were crafted by Christians who were expressing truth as they saw it, as artists who were Christians. The problem with Sherwood’s films (and Left Behind, Billy Graham films, etc) is that their poor execution (in acting, among other things) rings more false than true and feels more like marketing than honest reflection on anything. Sure, they might be explicitly expressing “truth” in words and propositions, but as we all know, that is just one part of the “truth” that cinema can express. This is why I think the best route for Christians who are making anything (art, entertainment, or everyday communication) should be a focus on truth first and foremost–honesty with one’s self, the world, and relationship to the divine. Then the “Christian” aspect of it will arise organically, rather than directly or propositionally. Anything that is force-fed in a didactic manner rarely works, whether a piece of art, a “ministry tool” or whatever else.
It’s humiliating and screamingly hilarious all at once. Oh Mike Seaver you went off the deep end!
Brett wrote:
“I doubt that much of the pantheon of sacred art was originally crafted to be ‘Christian’ as opposed to ‘secular.'”
Well, a lot of it was crafted to be “Christian” as opposed to “pagan” or “Muslim” or whatever. :) But certainly, there is something about sacred art that is, by definition, “set apart” from other art, just as sacred spaces are “set apart” from other spaces. That might not be so obvious to Protestants who worship in movie theatres or gymnasiums, but for the vast bulk of church history, there has been a tendency to regard certain places and objects and, yes, works of art as “set apart” from other places and objects and works of art. (The primary example of this would probably be the Eucharist, which is no ordinary bread and wine, and which is prepared on an altar which, itself, was often raised above the burial spot of some saint or other; the food, the furniture, the bones in those cases were all “set apart” from the usual sorts of food, furniture and bones.)
I shudder to put a movie like Facing the Giants or Fireproof in the same category as the Body and Blood of our Lord. But the notion that art can serve a primarily ministerial purpose has plenty of tradition to back it up.
And let’s not forget that the notion of art as a mode of self-expression, rather than as a tradition that artists humbly (and often anonymously) submit to, is fairly recent, and goes back only a few centuries in the West. (I’m not even sure it exists in the East, though obviously iconographers such as Andrei Rublev were able to develop personal reputations *within* their traditions.) In those days, “striving for truth” may have meant something different for an artist than it means today.
“The problem with Sherwood’s films (and Left Behind, Billy Graham films, etc) is that their poor execution (in acting, among other things) rings more false than true and feels more like marketing than honest reflection on anything.”
I might agree with regard to the Left Behind and Billy Graham films, which were clearly produced as part of a parallel “industry”. (Kirk Cameron even says in his autobiography that there were virtually no Christians on the set of Left Behind.) But Sherwood’s films just seem to be in a different category, for me.
Incidentally, I say all this as one who has seen Fireproof, but not the trailer for it. So I have no idea how it is being marketed.
Sherwood films, which is out of a church I think, used what they had and God has taken it and allowed it to play a part in bringing people to the Lord. Just like the story of the young boy with the two fish and five loaves.
Is it up to par with most films I agree but I commend them for at least trying.
Brett, we need people like you who have “lived, worked, and/or studied in the film industry” to get out there and start making some quality movies. As Christians, we tend to point out the problems with things, instead of becoming a part of the solution.
Below are examples of some folks that are trying to make a difference. I have also met and know of some Christians in mainstream film schools trying to make a difference. They are not there to learn how to make “Christian Movies” but movies that inspire and bring change to lives of individual.
Compass Film Academy.
compassfilmacademy.com
Center for creative media
http://www.centerforcreativemedia.com
Pingback: Collide Magazine » Blog Archive » Upfront Week In Review - 8/29/08
My general rule is, if the entire message of the movie can be summarized by putting “metaphorically” after the title, it’s not worth watching.
I agree with Michelle. The way NOT to improve the quality of any film genre is to criticize someone else’s attempt. To be honest, I’m shocked at how harsh these comments are toward this trailer. I don’t like the trailer, and won’t see the movie. But at no point am I given the biblical authority to bring criticism toward it, as an example of what not to do.
The way to improve any film genre is to create the improved films. Jesus didn’t come talking about a life filled with redemption, hope, and sacrifice. He provided that life, and invited people to watch.
May we be the people who stink of Christ’s aroma during our weekdays; and may that aroma spill onto the canvas of our media.
I think there is a significant difference between ‘that aroma spill[ing] onto the canvas of our media’ and the kind of poorly-put-together propaganda that commonly passes for Christian ‘art.’
OK, I have to admit that my first thought while watching the trailer was, “Is there a rule that Kirk Cameron has to be in all Christian movies?” My frame of reference could be misleading me however as the only “Christian” movies I can recall seeing after the age of about 7 (when I saw the “Thief In The Night” movies) are the Left Behind films. Wait, I take that back. I did see one in college that had the helicopter pilot from Lost season 4 in it. I think it was called Revelation.
your critic you put forward reminds me of a books title i once read about christianity and the arts … “ADDICTED TO MEDIOCRITY”…….. i hear ya loud and clear!
I’ve thought about this some more. I don’t know if the “church play” writ large assessment in regards to Christian movies is a seamless analogy, but I can see its merits.
Could Christian drama, whether a church play or feature film, fall into the category of “making a joyful noise”?
Have any of you even seen the movie?
While many of the “Christian” movies, plays and books seem to be subpar when compared to the secular works, at least they are out there. Many of these projects are working with minimal budgets at best and they are trying to present an interesting storyline that encourages and uplifts. Considering what they are up against, it’s not easy. Isn’t it better to work with what you have until you can do better rather than doing nothing at all? The secular world is not going to make it easier for us. But those who are His will hear His voice no matter where it comes from. I, for one, am determined to be part of the solution… as soon as I get my “Christ Inspired” novels published. :)
Pingback: Fireproof « The Search
Having seen the movie in the theater, I would say the story is good and the acting okay (not the best, but I’ve seen worse from the “secular” side). Sherwood Baptist Church is moving forward and doing better than others that I’ve seen. We should encourage them to continue and follow where God leads them. We should also step up and do what God has called us to do. I like C.S. Lewis’ comment on NOT needing more “Christian” works, but needing more Christians to write great stories (or make great movies, music, etc.) Use every resource available, God places them there to be used for His Glory.
Pingback: Best of the Blog’s First Five Years | The Search