[LWC]

^What a Debbie Downer! lol.

Christians cling to movies like Fireproof, Facing the Giants, Courageous, What If, and others because they are an escape from reality.

Christians realize and understand that it is a tough world, but movies like that show that God can work in people's lives. For every person that does not find healing in their body (in this world) or healing in their marriage, there is a person that DOES.

Nobody wants to watch a movie about a good Christian man that gets it wrong and it doesn't go right. We have this world and the devil to discourage us enough, we don't need movies, our escape from reality, to tell us that also.

I have never been a fan of reality TV or reality video games because I want my entertainment to have some mystery or fantasy or "Old-Yeller-Don't-Die" elements. Sure, many Christian movies have the ability to make you laugh, then cry, and then laugh, but I am willing to cry then.

As a Pastor, it is SOOOO easy to get bogged down with the concerns, hurts, pains and brokenness of your congregation (or in my case congregations). And we take those on ourselves and lay them at the foot of the cross. Don't get me wrong. I want my parishioners to be able to tell me anything and pour out their hearts, but sometimes it does get overwhelming. I wont tell the people, but in one week my two little churches had 4 deaths & 4 families hurting over that, 3 couples that either the husband or the wife packed up and left, 2 people that lost full-time jobs, numerous people get sick, I was studying for finals, my wife was studying and taking finals, her dad was in the middle of a deep depression, and more.
Friends that week I probably cried like a baby for days. The stress was unbelievable. Remember, I am 24 years old. I have only been a Senior Pastor for a year and a half. A clergy-friend that I rely on for advice and help told me that he is at a congregation of almost 300 members and never had a week like that.

When times like that hit, I do not want to go watch some R-rated movie with nudity and people cussing like the opening scene of Goodfellas. I also don't want to watch a "This is the REAL Christian life" movie. I know as well as the next person that living your life for the Lord will come with heart-ache, stress and sleepless nights. Read some of Acts and some of the early church fathers and see what kind of life the disciples had. Most of them ended up with imprisonment, torture and painful deaths. I hear of missionaries it seems every year that lose their lives for their faith. I know that we live in a world that is trying to take Christian freedoms away.

When all of this is upon me it is nice to watch a movie where the husband and wife come back together, where the underdog team turns their lives over to God and they win the game, where the husbands decide that it is time to become dad's and not just baby-makers, where the man called to preach stops running away and does what he was called to do.

Does that always happen? NO! Can it happen because of God's grace, mercy, love and strength that he allows us to feel and even possess sometimes, YES!

Basically, Christians understand that those movies are not always true but the person writing above is the Christian equivalent of a man telling his young child that Santa Claus isn't real. What does he gain from it? Nothing. What does the child lose in hearing it? Hope itself. Is it a good trade-off. NO!

I encourage my church-members (parishioners) every time one of those movies comes out on DVD or in theaters to go see them. As a matter of fact, on February 12th, we are showing Courageous at one of the churches and having a meal.


Dusty, please do not think I am bashing on you, I'm not. Just bashing on the author of the article.