Friday, November 28, 2014
Sacrifice of Praise
The meal has been cooked, the food has been eaten, the dishes are done, and I am very tired. I wanted to write a bit about Thanksgiving and something I saw on Twitter today. Twitter has really become a spot for advertising to continue round the clock. I saw a quick video for someone promoting their Christmas movie. They started by stating that this is a time to be happy, not grumpy, and that we should all watch their movie. I don't really care about the movie, I'm not terribly offended for being sold to on Thanksgiving, I'm more disturbed with the notion that Thanksgiving and the act of giving thanks is often equated with happiness.
Can we be happy and thankful? Absolutely. Is it a requirement? No. Thankfulness and happiness are not mutually inclusive. I've been thinking a lot today about people who have struggled with so much in the last year, in the last months, weeks, days. Life does not take a holiday for holidays. People still have struggles, people need to go to the hospital, relationships remain broken, needs remain unmet. Loss can be so in the forefront of our lives, and yet, we give thanks.
I have been thinking about the European settlers and the "First Thanksgiving". Half of the people who started out the journey were dead by the time the celebration happened. Half! Look at the person next to you, they would be gone and you would be celebrating a feast of thankfulness without them. Those present to celebrate were as every bit unsure of the future as they had been the year prior, probably looking around wondering if they'd all make it to the next year. I don't know how "happy" the first Thanksgiving really was! Yes, I'll be spreading cheer during the Christmas season as well...you're welcome.
My point is not to be depressing. It truly isn't. My hope is to be in some way encouraging to those who may not find themselves happy this Thanksgiving. To those who feel like they don't know how they made it through the last year, to those who may not have much hope for things to be different in the year to come, I say, give thanks in whatever emotion you find yourself at this moment. Thankfulness is not an absence of loss or sorrow or trouble. Thankfulness is a discipline and can happen simultaneously with gut wrenching, heart felt pleadings to God for our situations to be different, for health to be restored, or for understanding and healing in relationships.
Hebrews 13:15-16
15 Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. 16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.
There is a cost to sacrifice. Something must die. In the old testament, it was an animal, in the New Testament, it was Jesus Himself, the ultimate sacrifice. In the sacrifice of praise, it is symbolically, ourselves. To praise, to thank, we need to humble ourselves to the point we can say thank you. We need to acknowledge we needed something, to acknowledge we received something we could not attain ourselves. Or we need to be humble enough to say thank you even for the unfulfilled dreams or for losses. I'm not always happy when I am humbled. I'm usually happy when I get what I want. I'll say thank you all day when I get what I want. But when nothing seems to be going well, and everything you don't want seems to be showing up at your door, will you say thank you? Will you sacrifice your desires, your anger, your sorrow even, and say thank you?
What I want my struggling friends to get from this ridiculous Stacy post, is that it is okay if you don't have a Happy Thanksgiving...as long you have a Thanksgiving. You don't have to clean up for this holiday, you don't have to put on the happy face pretending that you wouldn't change a thing in your life. You don't need to complain or bemoan your existence either, I'm not advocating that. I'm saying it is okay to honestly thank God while crying honest tears. He already knows what is beneath the surface, don't pretend you are happy when you are not. God is good all the time, the times are not always good. In your own sacrifice of praise, you will be blessed for the obedience.
Happy (or not) Thanksgiving to all!
© 2014 Stacy Rapp
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
God's Not Dead Review
Six months plus after the release of God's Not Dead and I have finally had the chance to see it. I have to say that I did not have high hopes for liking the film. I heard much the same as I heard before I saw Fireproof or Courageous. You know things such as, "For a christian film, it's really good." Whenever I hear that qualifying statement that the encapsulation of story, characterization, acting, and production quality is good for a Christian movie, I just cringe. I translate it as, well, it's still not going to be good, but it's not as bad as most of the ones you have seen already.
Great then! Let's watch it! So I did. I wrote the following notes on my phone: Merger(pronunciation), Mina and the old lady are not believable as family, the premise itself would never happen - at least not without protest, reporter is cliche', parked in front of a handicap space, church scene in time of trial/hardship - cliche', pastor looks shady, forced the scene of the kid going into the sister's room(poltergeistesque), breakup scene is insane, car scene, glad they showed the Muslim father in sorrow also, sister is not believable and the relationship with the professor is forced, Dean Cane is one dimensional, what man says "freshen up".
I never thought God was dead, but I do believe that the integrity of Christian based story telling is. To be fair, maybe not dead, but definitely in critical condition. This film just isn't good. I didn't want to have to come to that conclusion, but it is the only one I have. The premise itself is not believable. The purpose of a philosophy class is to discuss the questions such as the purpose of life, how we got here, the nature of the universe, etc. While there are some really jerky, condescending, intellectually snobbish professors, part of their job is to discuss with students the questions they have about this world. No chemistry professor would ban the periodic table from discussion. This question of intelligent design, metaphysical vs. physical, etc. are the elements that make up the periodic table of philosophy. The premise is forced. If the character of the professor were a real person, he wouldn't be teaching in any institution of higher learning worthy of charging a dollar for tuition.
Throughout the entire film the characterization is weak and one dimensional. The main character is good, the girlfriend is selfish, the pastor is struggling to find purpose, the reporter is jaded, the businessman is a jerk, the professor is condescending and angry. We get it! But what of the character arc for each actor. Evey scene, forced relationship, plot twist, and piece of dialogue was only there to get us to the end of the movie, which surprise, ends in the "put that in your pipe and smoke it" ending where every question ever raised against the Christian belief is somehow answered, and everyone's eyes are opened. Praise be! The blind will see. All this done while a montage, complete with a very long and unnecessary music video that justifies the presence of the Newsboys as headliners, plays out to wrap things up. Perhaps what can best summarize the characterization failings is that I only found the car rental guy to be believable as person I would meet in real life. He is in two or three scenes and was a refreshing presence. In the breakup scene in which the reporter tells the jerky businessman she has cancer, he gets mad because he just told her he made partner, and breaks up with her at the table. All the people I was watching the movie with laughed because even though there are people that are selfish, and would break up with someone when they are sick, it most often would not be done that quickly. No, beat, no inward struggle, no dialogue to pull it out, just well this is great, sorry you are sick, but I'm awesome and you are killing my mojo! For the sake of moving the story along, the writers chose to condense this to one scene and make it awkward to the point of being funny. Whenever you laugh at horrible news you know there is a massive disconnect.
This brings me to the execution of the characterization. Acting with an agenda in mind is most often, if not always, detrimental to the art of acting. Even people who play evil characters need to find some sort of reason to make them say their lines and do what they do. The actor needs to understand the character. When you can tell the characters who are meant to be evil are still being played by actors that want to help prove the point of the entire film instead of portray a character honestly, the whole thing will crumble like Milli Vanilli in a power outage. Even in Christian films the women's characters are given to beautiful women with less than stellar acting chops. Stop this! Watch British films, real actors, some gorgeous, some not, play characters that are believable. Hire good actors! And more that that, give the good actors, good lines and storylines.
The writers, producers, directors, actors, anyone who read the screenplay, saw the dailies, delivered food to the set, there are so many places this film could have been salvaged. Why are you wasting time with the Newsboys when you have characters to develop? Stop the save the world with one movie mentality. Make a really great movie about good characterization, acted out in a believable manner. Real everyday struggles and how we deal with them. Difficulties that don't always go away even when you believe in Jesus, these are the types of things that will get people to pay attention. And the reason is because we can believe that kind of story. We don't need to see the world's problems solved and wrapped up in a bow by the end of the film. When we want that, we'll go watch Full House.
People are by nature and design very complicated. If we want Christians and non Christians alike to relate to the movies we want them to see, we need to be real!
So, put that in your pipe and smoke it, or don't. But for the love of all, if you do, please portray it honestly and with integrity of storytelling.
Great then! Let's watch it! So I did. I wrote the following notes on my phone: Merger(pronunciation), Mina and the old lady are not believable as family, the premise itself would never happen - at least not without protest, reporter is cliche', parked in front of a handicap space, church scene in time of trial/hardship - cliche', pastor looks shady, forced the scene of the kid going into the sister's room(poltergeistesque), breakup scene is insane, car scene, glad they showed the Muslim father in sorrow also, sister is not believable and the relationship with the professor is forced, Dean Cane is one dimensional, what man says "freshen up".
I never thought God was dead, but I do believe that the integrity of Christian based story telling is. To be fair, maybe not dead, but definitely in critical condition. This film just isn't good. I didn't want to have to come to that conclusion, but it is the only one I have. The premise itself is not believable. The purpose of a philosophy class is to discuss the questions such as the purpose of life, how we got here, the nature of the universe, etc. While there are some really jerky, condescending, intellectually snobbish professors, part of their job is to discuss with students the questions they have about this world. No chemistry professor would ban the periodic table from discussion. This question of intelligent design, metaphysical vs. physical, etc. are the elements that make up the periodic table of philosophy. The premise is forced. If the character of the professor were a real person, he wouldn't be teaching in any institution of higher learning worthy of charging a dollar for tuition.
Throughout the entire film the characterization is weak and one dimensional. The main character is good, the girlfriend is selfish, the pastor is struggling to find purpose, the reporter is jaded, the businessman is a jerk, the professor is condescending and angry. We get it! But what of the character arc for each actor. Evey scene, forced relationship, plot twist, and piece of dialogue was only there to get us to the end of the movie, which surprise, ends in the "put that in your pipe and smoke it" ending where every question ever raised against the Christian belief is somehow answered, and everyone's eyes are opened. Praise be! The blind will see. All this done while a montage, complete with a very long and unnecessary music video that justifies the presence of the Newsboys as headliners, plays out to wrap things up. Perhaps what can best summarize the characterization failings is that I only found the car rental guy to be believable as person I would meet in real life. He is in two or three scenes and was a refreshing presence. In the breakup scene in which the reporter tells the jerky businessman she has cancer, he gets mad because he just told her he made partner, and breaks up with her at the table. All the people I was watching the movie with laughed because even though there are people that are selfish, and would break up with someone when they are sick, it most often would not be done that quickly. No, beat, no inward struggle, no dialogue to pull it out, just well this is great, sorry you are sick, but I'm awesome and you are killing my mojo! For the sake of moving the story along, the writers chose to condense this to one scene and make it awkward to the point of being funny. Whenever you laugh at horrible news you know there is a massive disconnect.
This brings me to the execution of the characterization. Acting with an agenda in mind is most often, if not always, detrimental to the art of acting. Even people who play evil characters need to find some sort of reason to make them say their lines and do what they do. The actor needs to understand the character. When you can tell the characters who are meant to be evil are still being played by actors that want to help prove the point of the entire film instead of portray a character honestly, the whole thing will crumble like Milli Vanilli in a power outage. Even in Christian films the women's characters are given to beautiful women with less than stellar acting chops. Stop this! Watch British films, real actors, some gorgeous, some not, play characters that are believable. Hire good actors! And more that that, give the good actors, good lines and storylines.
The writers, producers, directors, actors, anyone who read the screenplay, saw the dailies, delivered food to the set, there are so many places this film could have been salvaged. Why are you wasting time with the Newsboys when you have characters to develop? Stop the save the world with one movie mentality. Make a really great movie about good characterization, acted out in a believable manner. Real everyday struggles and how we deal with them. Difficulties that don't always go away even when you believe in Jesus, these are the types of things that will get people to pay attention. And the reason is because we can believe that kind of story. We don't need to see the world's problems solved and wrapped up in a bow by the end of the film. When we want that, we'll go watch Full House.
People are by nature and design very complicated. If we want Christians and non Christians alike to relate to the movies we want them to see, we need to be real!
So, put that in your pipe and smoke it, or don't. But for the love of all, if you do, please portray it honestly and with integrity of storytelling.
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