What exactly is a “Christian” movie? For those who have read this blog before, that is not a new question. Check out Sitting on my Christian Couch to see one example. The problem is really about what “Christian” means. Is it a point or an agenda? Is it something that is owned by a follower of Jesus? Is it simply the person who follows Jesus? People label things “Christian” all the time. Christian music is probably the biggest example. Is that simply music produced by a Christian? More Christian music exists than we think if that is the case. Typically what people mean is that the idea or point of the movie, music, etc. is a Christian idea or concept. For the sake of discussion, we will accept that for now.

Now that we have that out of the way, does Book of Eli present a Christian message? No.

This is not a movie about Christ or written by Christians, as far as I know. It is simply a movie about the Christian’s book—the Bible. It might be about God, but I doubt it. I think God shows up just to help the story rather than for us to focus on Him. In the movie, the bit parts and the starring roles are reversed. God plays the bit part, and humans will get the Oscars. Although I doubt God would show up to get His Oscar even if He got one.

I think it is a good movie, just not a Christian one.

“Christians” bloggers are asking this same question, but many of them have different reasons for questioning. They want to know how all the violence, hacking and shooting, could possibly be “Christian.” I would just recommend they read their Old Testament again this year and pay attention to the violence. It is not absent. Is Eli any different than Ehud who kills a king in one of the most powerful descriptions of violence I have read? Judges 3:12-30

Certain things in our culture are vitally important; those things that will help humanity become better. That is the point of the movie. If the gospel is what they were trying to preserve at the exclusion of everything else, then it might be a Christian message. Would anything be different in the story if we replaced the Bible with the Koran? I don’t think so. The only difference is that Christians would reject it as non-Christian. The story would make the same point and in the end the Koran would have been placed on the shelf next to the Bible.

This movie is about what matters—about what is precious. That is a good discussion. I enjoyed the film. It convicted me of many things that I needed right then and there. Let’s talk about that.

Tomorrow we will look at what does matter. See you then.

I just saw the movie Knowing staring Nicolas Cage and am still thinking about it. I wanted to point to a few thoughtful reviews of the movie, but I will warn you, they should only be read by someone who has already seen the movie or doesn’t care that the storyline is spoiled.

The reviews are by pastor James Harleman and can be found at the Cinemagogue website.

Here is the introduction, part 1 on Determinism, part 2 on the Apocalpse and part 3 on being Chosen.

All are worth reading and help us to think through a challenging and intriguing movie.

Yesterday I sent out our most recent Newsletter for this ministry. (By the way, if you do not currently recieve this newsletter and would like to, please comment on this post or send me and email!) In that newsletter, I laid out a slight, but important, adjustment I am making to the approach of this ministry.

Today I wanted to post part of that newsletter so that you can see what the focus is and how I want to approach writing here as well and studies I offer in the future. Here it goes:

Exploring the intersection of the gospel and our ordinary lives

Discerning Mind critically, but lovingly, looks at our lives through the gospel of Jesus Christ. We want to truly live at the intersection of the gospel and our ordinary lives, rescuing the gospel from a “Sunday-only” mentality. We will study the gospel and our lives in such a way that we see the connections more clearly and live boldly because the gospel is true every moment. How does the gospel impact our marriages, our parenting, our work, our entertainment choices and pursuits, our passions and even our sleep? These are just a few of the areas we will evaluate and think through on this blog. The hope is to learn more what it means to do everything we do to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31) with the gospel affecting every moment of our lives and then to live with all our might for the Lord (Colossians 3:23-24) because we are already accepted in the gospel.

How does that work? That is what we are a going to spend our time on. There is much to think through and being honest about our lives is the first step. How much does the gospel currently impact my everyday, ordinary life? That is a very important question as we start.
Obviously I will not be abandoning my own interest in movies and books. That is part of my own passion and will clearly still be a major portion of how I work all of this out in my own life. The benefit of this clearer vision is that it is more broad and will also therefore include so much more that can be beneficial to people everywhere.

So, what do you think? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments below. I am tremendously excited as this helps me to clarify how to write for the blog and how it can help encourage all of us to live for Jesus every moment of every day.

Ok! So I wanted to explain what is happening here with the book discussion since I have been away from it for a time. There are two main things you need to know if you plan on reading things with us.

First, we are putting a temporary hold on Keller’s book The Reason for God. This is not because I am tired of it or it is not a good book. It is really helpful and I would highly recommend it to anyone that is thinking about reading it. I have put it on hold for two main reasons.

1. Oprah has chosen her next book pick and it looks like an interesting one. This is more because we want to be interacting with the culture and what they are reading. The fact is the Oprah’s book club has two million readers (and probably more who are not registered!). If we discuss books that are being read by so many people at the same time, the chances for evangelism and interaction over great issues increases tremendously. I have already seen this when we have talked about books that were popular. When we discussed The Kite Runner, the amount of Google searches and hits on the site jumped. Now, to be clear, this is not about getting more readers. It is about reaching more people with the gospel of Jesus Christ. If more people hit the site and even read a little bit of what we are discussing, it is possible for them to “hear” the gospel through that. This is a great reason to “attract” more readers to this site. The same happened when we discussed parts of A New Earth and Twilight.

2. When I “wordled” the Discerning Mind website and blog, I discovered something disturbing. The word “Keller” got more use than “Jesus,” “God” or “gospel.” This means that while we discuss books by people and want to reference things from the culture, I need to modify the way it is done. I need to connect it more to the great gospel that is the truth. Put simply, Jesus needs more “air time” on this site than any other human, Christian or otherwise. I hope to change that immediately. I recognize simply having the name “Jesus” on the site more does not mean the gospel will necessarily be more clear, but the change I plan on making to help this is beyond just using the name more. To help this, I am writing a post about why we interact with cultural things and what we hope to get from it. This should help clarify the purpose and keep me more on track. I hope you will see the change is minor, but very important. Stay tuned!

Second thing you should know is we are going to discuss the latest book pick from Oprah’s book club. This book is called The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski and you can find it either at your local bookstore or on Amazon. What I would recommend is that you pick up a copy and start reading it with us as soon as you can. I am going to take a few days and get familiar with the book so we can see how quickly we are going to go through it and how we might be able to discuss it. We might do chapters like we have before or we may just read the whole thing and start an ongoing discussion on some of the themes from the book. I can see the benefit of both approaches and would welcome your recommendations in the comments section.

Anyway, there are the issues that are happening and what my plan is. I am sorry for changing things, but I believe this will be good for us. As always, feel free to leave comments and I will review them. Have a great day and pick up the book  if you can.

Michael

Many of you are probably wondering why I have not been posting as much lately. There have been many different reasons that have contributed, but the latest is because I have been doing a lot of work in trying to focus on the gospel for the church I pastor here in North Carolina, Crossroads Bible Fellowship.
I wanted to point you to the blog of that church on this site because I am starting a series of posts on meditation that I think will spur some conversation even in relation to culture interaction.
One of the questions that is often asked concerning what I do with Discerning Mind is how do I know what to address in movies, books, etc. This is a great question and one that I cannot go too far with right now, but at least one of the answers is to meditate on Scripture more every day. What I have noticed is that the people who are best equipped to engage the culture are those who know their bible and their God very well. The more you know Him and His word, the more you will be thinking about what He says even when you watch a movie.
Anyway, the point is that I would suggest we all get better at meditation on Scripture if we wish to engage the world around us for Jesus Christ. Thinking on Christ more is always going to help me, so check out the posts on this blog and get involved in the conversation.

Hey, there is another connection to Discerning Mind! The material I am using to think more about meditation comes from Tim Keller. Does that name sound familiar? ☺

I will post the first one from that series here so that you know what I have stated already, but check out the blog for more information in the coming days.
Thanks and see you there.
Michael

A Battle and a Plan

As I stated yesterday, I have been having a hard time in Scripture lately. It is not that I lack a desire to be in Scripture, but rather that my time has been rather random. I have jumped around and landed at different places for a short time, but I have not stuck anywhere. This must stop! I have decided that one of the better ways to challenge what I have been doing is to think through meditation, specifically meditation on the word. There is good precedence that we should be meditating on God Himself and even His works in creation, but I think I need to focus on the word for a time. I hope you will join me in this pursuit.

To help me in my study, I have enlisted Dr. Tim Keller. He has written some pdf files that are available here called Gospel Christianity 1, 2 and 3. They are worth the price you must pay (if you are part of Crossroads, contact me before you buy a copy) and I am going to slowly walk through chapter 2 of course 2 called “How do I meet Jesus myself?” This chapter walks through meditation, so it will directly apply to my battle mentioned above.

As we get started, I would love to hear about how you “meditate” or “reflect” on Scripture in your own lives.

Well, if you choose to join me on this journey, I look forward to your helpful comments. Please pray with me that God will work in us so that we treasure Him as we should.
Until tomorrow…

We are just hours away from the big game and I was thinking about posting something on it when I ran across this great post that makes all of us think. You may not be a sports person, but this post has some great thoughts from a Christian perspective.

The blog that this can be found at has just begun. C.J. Mahaney is a good guy to read. So far I have enjoyed his blog.

Enjoy!

I’m lazy by nature, so anything that is going to take some work is probably going to be put off until later. This often gets me into trouble, but being lazy does not work in my reading of Scripture.

I was reading in the Psalms late last night and was struck by one verse. Psalm 119:15 says, “I will meditate on your precepts
and fix my eyes on your ways.”

Meditation is one of those concepts we struggle with Read the rest of this entry »

I need to change what I have been doing on this blog. My initial goal was to walk through the culture pointing out how to use what we see to share the gospel of Jesus Christ and at the same time to see aspects about the culture that make me treasure Christ more myself. I still think this is a good and important goal. But I realized that I have only been talking about the culture. In my mind I thought that I would just show you by example how I would interact with the culture. This too is a good thing, but it is not the whole answer. By just showing you how I interact, I am not showing what is most crucial to enable me to interact. That needs to change. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been visiting my parents in PA this last week and yesterday I had the opportunity to offer a Reel Discernment to a women’s Bible study. We had a great time and I plan on making the audio available as soon as I can. We covered the movie Premonition staring Sandra Bullock. In the next couple of days, we will also cover Stranger Than Fiction and The Last Mimzy.
In the process of offering studies to people who are brand new to what we are doing with this ministry, I thought it would be helpful to give an introduction and a biblical reasoning for even having a study like this. Below are the notes I put together for that introduction. Enjoy and give me your thoughts.

Michael

How To Watch a Movie To The Glory of God
Read the rest of this entry »