Judging Films

My correspondents on the cinematic world will, I hope, bear with my somewhat skeptical approach to arguments about the redemptive presence of Christians therein. I have spent a good portion of my life listening to various “redemptive presence” apologies, and my experience frequently leads me back to the analogy of Abraham and Lot, one of whom kept his distance from Sodom, the other orienting himself toward it, coming to live there, and unwilling to leave, so that finally he had to be removed by extraordinary means and at great cost to his severely compromised family, upon whose souls and subsequent history Sodom left an enduring mark.

I believe, of course, in the Redemptive Presence, and do not have the prophetic gift or mission to say, Leave this place, for the Lord will destroy it in so many days. My skepticism comes from what I have observed about many who have formed an attachment to various Sodoms, arguing for their own redemptive presences therein, and accusing those who will not approach the city without pole or club with deep offense against faith and charity. I have two tests I think useful for such people to apply to themselves to ascertain whether they have an adequate reason to live and work where they do. In a broader sense they apply to all Christians living in the world, but become more immediately needful for those living in those concentrations of human activity symbolized in scripture by cities whose maker and builder is someone other than God.

The first is whether they are willing accurately to assess the depth and character of the evil, not to minimize it. Deficiency in this respect is often signaled by a dogged emphasis on how much good is left, and also very often by a tendency to identify what one likes or has learned to tolerate among the goods. “How much good is left” does indeed appear to be a category in the mind of God, who would not attack the degenerating civilization of Canaan until the iniquity of the Amorites was full, and was willing to treat with Abraham over how many righteous must be present for Sodom to be spared. Lot’s own presence there, however redemptive it might have been, was not sufficient, and would not have been sufficient even if he had been able to gather a synagogue of similarly righteous men. I weary of those who seem to declare themselves better than God, whose patience with evil (in the name of redemptive presence) seems limitless while poor God’s is not, perhaps because he has failed to understand that infinite love requires infinite forbearance.

There is a point at which the redemptive presence is withdrawn from wicked places and people. Precisely where that is in any given case I haven’t been given to say, but it is instructive to note that Abraham, getting more and more nervous about his bargaining as it progressed, finally left off and left things to God, understanding with perfect clarity that while bargaining is one thing, trifling and presumption is another. And one cannot help but think that his ability to approach the Lord on behalf of the righteous of Sodom was a capacity only of someone wise enough to give it a wide berth in the first place—who did not pitch his tent toward it, and firmly, and publicly, refused to be enriched by its activity.

The second question for those living on Sodomitical ground is whether they are not simply hanging about in a vaguely redemptive sort of way, but actively opposing evil—being reviled and persecuted for their witness. Those who are bearing witness in the proper way will inevitably get in the way of those who do not like the message. I recall in this regard what Mel Gibson had to take for The Passion of the Christ. It was fascinating, and rather terrifying, to see how the hatred so much of the entertainment world has for Christ himself was heaped upon Gibson by being funneled into the charge of anti-Semitism (the last resort of a good many scoundrels), the only possible receptacle for it as regards the work. The merest glance below the surface of the issue showed the charge to be irrational, but the spite, the malice, the lies, the unquenchable anger, kept flowing into it, so that it became common knowledge among the knowing, despite every evidence to the contrary, that Gibson, and Christians like him, were raging Jew-haters, anxious to inflame old animosities and stoke up the pogroms once again. This is the sort of thing one expects, on one level or another, in the cases of those whose presence might actually be redemptive.

Now, I do find myself asking whether I have come full circle, whether my experiences in the world have brought me back to an attitude characteristic of the fundamentalist separatism of my youth—a mind set not dissimilar to that found in some of the desert fathers, some of the severer forms of monasticism, and the apocalyptic sects. I don’t think so, for I believe Christians must make their way through the world and deal with what they find there. This is what is meant by faith seeking understanding—not simply one faculty building upon another, but, in the end, the essential form of our existence as believers, which includes the necessity of daily encounter with evil. What the fundamentalist mind tends to mistake for a law of the journey is, however, frequently a counsel of prudence, which, if not heeded, will bring the traveler to a sad and premature end. Whoever forgets that Christ is not only the Redeemer of the world, but also its Judge, active even now in both capacities, will be unable to orient himself properly toward it.

With respect to the reviewing of films, upon which I began this correspondence, it is my judgment that we should keep a further distance from them than is symbolized by film reviews as a regular feature of the magazine, the distance standing for that which Abraham, wiser than Lot in such matters, kept from Sodom.