Pensees: To Watch or Not to Watch

[I said the following on NOS SOBRII, on what may now be a dead thread, so I hope it’s OK to post here also, since I really am hoping someone can shed some light.]

I’d like to suggest that the homosexual actor issue is the SECOND most important issue with this movie. The most important is the alleged absence of the Gospel. I have not seen the movie, but I have heard this criticism from several sources. Can anyone say for sure whether the Gospel is given in this movie in any fashion, however muted?

Last night I saw the recent documentary about this event—”Beyond the Gates of Splendor”, in which Steve Saint seemed to have the lead, and in any event was the main narrator. I was appalled. Jesus is not mentioned once. (God is mentioned only a few times.) The missionaries were presented as if they were social workers. Anthropologists were interviewed to show how this tribe that had a five-generation history of homicidal vendetta was changed when they got information from the outside world about how they could regulate themselves differently.

I don’t know Steve Saint at all. Is he in fact a believing Christian? You wouldn’t know it from this documentary. I can’t tell if he is being edited and manipulated by people with no sense of Christian mission, or if he is himself a diluted or fallen Christian.

The Eliot/Saint incident in Ecuador was a remarkable event of Christian missionary history. What an awful sequel: the next generation reinterprets the family history to delete Christ. Can this really be true?

You raise a very important question that is actually larger than the movie controversy itself. Why do hot button cultural issues sometimes take front stage over theological issues? I’m tempted to make your question a front pager to see if the larger discussion generates.

as far as SharperIron’s outspoken involvement in the controversy, which has indeed mainly centered on the point of legitimacy of casting a gay activist, it is only fair to mention that Jason Janz has publicly stated several times that he has 2 problems with the movie and that the one of far greater import is the rendering of the Gospel. he did so again today (when reporting on the phone call with Mart Green and Jim Hanon). he has reiterated a desire to post a comprehensive article about what he feels to be the greatER problem (that which you’ve mentioned, DGus), when he has time/mind to prepare and post an entry of that magnitude.

as to whether the public will be nearly so up-in-arms about, or nearly so interested in “the latest and greatest” gossip about, this greater problem—that’s a question worth betting on. even fundamentalists, who are known for unwielding allegiance to absolute truth, may be too busy following the juicier human news to really get on the bandwagon when it comes to “same old, same old” (even if it is a graver offense) theological controversy.

i hate to say this, but it’s my deep suspicion that even if people DO write myriad fabulous essays on the treatment of the Gospel and the honor of the missionaries in light of God’s grace, those essays will get a minimal percentage of the attention that this casting discernment issue has accrued (even from staunch fundamentalists).