Dangerous Grounds

I had only heard second hand raves and rants about Polly Toynbee's review of the new film 'The Lion, Witch & The Wardrobe', in the Guardian earlier this week. I stumbled upon it yesterday and read it rather objectively, bearing in mind that people I respected had disapproved of it.

As expected, I found Polly Toynbee unecessarily attacking the film in a relatively predictable and clumsy way - what is it with people who feel obliged to criticize anything that has a Christian message or reference to it. It seems they do it just for the fun of it; easy target really.

"Children won't get the Christian subtext, but unbelievers should keep a sickbag handy during Disney's new epic"

"By the end, it feels profoundly manipulative, as Disney usually does. But then, that is also deeply faithful to the book's own arm-twisting emotional call to believers."

"Of all the elements of Christianity, the most repugnant is the notion of the Christ who took our sins upon himself and sacrificed his body in agony to save our souls. Did we ask him to? Poor child Edmund, to blame for everything, must bear the full weight of a guilt only Christians know how to inflict, with a twisted knife to the heart. Every one of those thorns, the nuns used to tell my mother, is hammered into Jesus's holy head every day that you don't eat your greens or say your prayers when you are told. So the resurrected Aslan gives Edmund a long, life-changing talking-to high up on the rocks out of our earshot. When the poor boy comes back down with the sacred lion's breath upon him he is transformed unrecognisably into a Stepford brother, well and truly purged."

That kind of comment bothers me. It really does.

But, I must admit, though I realise that I might be getting myself into trouble by doing so, that Polly Toynbee' article nevertheless addresses one interesting point. And this one is no other than her statement on how this film is being promoted, and how it has become a big marketing affair.

"Disney is deliberately promoting this film to the religious - it has appointed Outreach, an evangelical publisher, to promote the Christian message behind the movie in British churches. The Christian radio station Premier is urging churches to hold services on the theme of The Gospel According to Narnia. Even the Methodists have written a special Narnia-themed service. And a Kent parish is giving away £10,000 worth of film tickets to single-parent families. (Are the children of single mothers in special need of the word?) ... There are too few practising Christians in the empty pews of this most secular nation to pack cinemas. So there has been a queasy ambivalence about how to sell the Narnia film here"

I cannot help but see evident truth in the statement she is making. Churches see this film as the big rival to Harry Potter and want to use it as an evangelistic 'tool'. Just like when Mel Gibson's "The Passion" was out, churches used the opportunity to hand out "passion-packages" as if salvation was a neat little package you could hand out after a film's screening; promoting salvation like a crystal-clear 5-step formula.

In no way do I want to limit God to my so-called smart philosophies about what we should and shouldn't do. I am convinced that some people are indeed reached out to by these very means I am denouncing as 'too consumer oriented' - or something along those lines.

It is so rare that the Christian message does get out there for the general public to be exposed to at an accesible level, that it surely is important for us to take these opportunities and do as much as we can with them. In this particular case, I don't really have any alternatives to 'package-evangelism' to offer, which I realise is a bit ironic, after my big declarations. I might as well stay put and keep my comments to myself if I have nothing better to offer. But...

Are we not, as christians, called to be counter-culture?
Why do we wrap ourselves in this euphoria of consumer goods and corporate marketing?
Are we cheapening the Gospel by selling it to people in this way?
Can we even allow ourselves to sell the Gospel in the name of God and the advancing of His Kingdom?

Consumerism is the current good news which is offered by secularism to the world, and I just ask myself - how did Jesus 'market' Himself'?

He was born in a stable. Led a 'low-profile' life for the 30 first years of His existence. He chose not-so-respectable-men as His disciples. Most times, after He had performed a miracle He urged people not to tell anyone about it. He rode a donkey for His 'majestic' entrance into the city...the list goes on.

Surely, He could have been born in a more respectable place. Surely His birth could have brought all the family and friends together, as tradition would have it - but He was only visited by country men and three foreign kings. Surely He could have dressed Himself in the most expensive clothes, befriended the authorities and gained their favour. Surely if He was the King, He could have looked pristine clean and boast of His riches... But that's not what He was about.

I wouldn't want to sit around apathetically and watch the world come to know God. We were told to "go and make disciples", so there is something to be done. I guess what I'm really getting at is this: what should we make of neat little packages used to market the Gospel in a 'non-threatening friendly and attractive way'? Is that what our comission entails today? Is that what Christianity is about?

He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. Isaiah 53:2-5

My ears are currently seduced by: Ross King - Emmanuel