Faith and Film

Week of Monday, April 29, 2002

About seven years ago when I joined InterVarsity, I was required to attend several days of orientation for new staff. As a generalization, I have always been impressed with how well InterVarsity staff people truly know, understand and even love the university, its culture, and its people. During those meetings I was shocked to learn, for example, that the average collegiate views over ninety films a year. I was shocked because, to my embarrassment, I knew that I only saw a handful of films each year, which is to say that I felt very much out of sync with culture. And that is not a good feeling for a person who wants and needs to be in touch with culture. But I also had a second feeling, which was that I was not sure how healthy it would be for my Christian psyche to watch ninety films a year.

Film is such a central and powerful part of our modern culture; it provides an interesting case study in how different believers have tried to address the challenge of engaging Christ and culture. As I thought about my own ambivalence at hearing this statistic, my mind went to three influential Christians in my life and the three different ways that they engaged their life of faith with the world of film.

I still remember exactly where I was, driving in the car, when one of my seminary professors (a Harvard PhD, I might add) turned to me and said that not only had he never seen a movie, he had never even entered a theater. I was flabbergasted. I suspect my professor had been deeply shaped by a very conservative cultural Christianity that, for the most part, eschewed culture as evil. Movies, like alcohol, were not only verboten but also symbolic of a larger antagonism between “the world, the flesh and the devil.”

In fact, this view, like teetotalism, has something to commend. So many films today are, artistically speaking, a waste of time. They have weak plots that aren't very interesting, and tend to be driven by special effects, violence and sex (a good example of what Jacques Ellul observed as technical means not only overshadowing but actually replacing ends). Further, I wonder about watching ninety films a year and how that squares with Paul's advice in Philippians 4:8, “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” Maybe this is why some of the early Christians refused to attend the games at the Roman coliseums. In words that might apply as well today as they did 1800 years ago, the church father Tertullian (c. 175) suggested that “the theater's greatest charm is produced by it's filth” (De Spectaculis).

But film is so central to modern culture that I find this position unsatisfying. The arts, as a professor friend of mine once observed, might be the only brush with the transcendent that most people in our culture ever have, so to dismiss them out of hand is not helpful. True, we're not to love the world (1 John 2:15–17), but in some sense we do, like God, have an obligation to love the world (John 3:16). To apply Paul's advice to the Philippians in a strict, simplistic way abandons the world to itself, and that can't be good. Jesus was the friend of “the worst sort of sinners” (Luke 7:34, New Living Translation), and we should be too. Besides, says Paul, he does not mean that we should never associate with immoral people (1 Cor. 5:10), for we could only do that by leaving the world. Finally, we should never insinuate that all film is bad. Hardly. Much of it is good, artistically brilliant, morally provocative, a point of contact with non Christians, an opportunity to understand culture, and, let's admit it, downright fun and pleasurable. Some film fully deserves our attention. The Christian filmmaker Scott Derrickson puts it a little more astutely when he says that Christians need not be so suspicious of film, for “film making is an expression of creativity that glorifies God.”¹

A second friend represents an opposite extreme. This InterVarsity colleague is immersed in the world of film. He probably views at least a film a week, teaches courses on film in seminary, and was a founder and director of the City of the Angels Film Festival in Los Angeles, hailed as “one of the nation's most ambitious efforts at Christian engagement with pop culture.”² I don't think I could watch what this friend watches; even Derrickson admits that it is a “risky business” as a Christian to fill your mind with so many images. The violence of so many films repulses me and the sex I find way too interesting. By my basic feeling about Scott is that I am so very grateful for Christians like him, that he does what I cannot or would not do in an area that is grossly under represented and wrongly shunned by some believers.³

I find myself attracted by the ambivalence of a third friend, also a seminary professor. He too was a Harvard PhD and deeply engaged with issues of Christ and culture across a broad range of issues. If I remember correctly, this professor reviewed contemporary films for a Christian magazine, and I am sure he was good at it. But later he stopped because in order to do a good job and keep up with the industry, he needed to watch too much that was, for him, somehow spiritually counter-productive.

Derrickson offers three suggestions for the Christian filmmaker that I find helpful for the Christian film watcher.⁴ First, don't oversimplify but instead be willing to engage difficult ideas and issues. For example, if you view film as prescriptive, as responsible to portray the way life should be, then you will likely experience frustration and anger. But if you view film as descriptive, as the way that many, many people live their lives, then even the most disturbing films might provoke empathy and compassion.

Trying to be both an artist and a Christian involves one in an inevitable tension. While religion draws lines and sets boundaries, the role of the artist is to stretch boundaries, to find new ways of looking at things, to question, to break free of constraints. An artist who wants to remain a part of the Christian community will be forced to live in the tension between the two roles. An artist who is also a practicing Christian can't be entirely free. The restrictions of Christian boundaries and requirements push and pull against the artistic responsibility to stretch and redefine them. The late Christian singer Mark Heard summed up the dilemma when he sang, “I'm too sacred for the sinners, and the saints wish I would leave.”⁵

Second, says Derrickson, we must remain actively committed to maintaining our spiritual health by regular accountability in a Christian community. This is the one place we can receive both encouragement and also critical query (even if we don't like it), for it is all too easy to compartmentalize faith and film. Christian film groups, where films are viewed and discussed, sounds like an eminently helpful idea. We tried this among Christian grad students at Stanford, and although our size was small our conversations were always helpful.

Finally, Derrickson reminds us that we must learn to say “no.” For him this has meant rejecting lucrative film contracts. For me it might mean saying “no thanks” to an important film others are watching. This is a personal and subjective decision that each believer must make, so we should not generalize. But it is also a sobering reminder about the weightiness of an important cultural arena Christians must engage.