Are Christian Movies Any Good?

This week on the podcast, I have Matthew Henson and Jake Korn joining me to talk about Christian movies.

And before we do the podcast, I want to tell the top 10 grossing Christian movies according to Entertainment Weekly.

Number one is The Passion of the Christ from 2004, $370 million movie.

The second movie is Heaven is for Real, 2014, $91 million.

The third movie, I Can Only Imagine in 2018, $83 million.

Number four, War Room, 2015, $67 million.

Number five, Miracles from Heaven, 2016, $61 million.

Number six, God's Not Dead, 2014, $60 million.

Number seven, The Son of God, or actually just Son of God, came out in 2014 and had a revenue of $59 million.

Number eight, The Shack, 2017, $57 million.

Number nine, Soul Surfer, 2011, $43 million.

And last but not least, at number 10 is The Star, 2017, came in at $40 million.

We're going to be talking a lot about what makes a movie Christian and are Christian movies good.

Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist.

I am joined tonight by Jake Korn, the Tag King, and by Matthew Henson, the TechRomancer, also known as my not-yet-Calvinist friend.

Always, got to have it in there.

And you notice on his shirt, it actually says Calvinist.

I'll zoom out so everybody can see there.

And so even though he's not yet a Calvinist, he is proudly repping the show.

Is it called repping? Yeah, that's a good word.

Yeah, it'll work.

Representing.

I'm wearing a shirt with my face on it on a show about the shirt with my face on it.

It's Inception.

It's the best.

I love it.

Well, speaking of Inception, that's going to be sort of driving us to our subject tonight, because we are talking about the subject of Christian movies.

If you're watching this on YouTube, you see the background is a series of Christian movies, and we're going to be talking about the subject of what makes a movie Christian, and are Christian movies good? That's going to be what we drive home today on today's podcast.

And I want to just start out by saying that that first question is, what makes a movie Christian? You'll see on my thumbnail here, I've got several different movie posters on the background.

I want to start with you, Jake.

What would you say makes a movie a Christian movie? Hey, first off, Keith, I just want to thank you again for having us on the show.

Thanks for squeezing us in when you're busy with the likes of James White and Leighton Flowers.

You made time for the little guys, so hey, I appreciate that.

So I want to look at two examples as kind of our polls of how to interpret this.

One, you have J.R.R.

Tolkien, who placed very consistent Christ themes throughout without overt allegory.

There's a little Jesus in Frodo, there's a little Jesus in Gandalf, a little bit in Aragorn.

It's kind of all over the place, kind of steeped in.

And then you've got C.S.

Lewis, who says, if people don't understand that Jesus is Aslan, I will literally light myself on fire.

You know, so these are two widely different.

But for the purpose of this conversation as to why they go bad, I think it's like making a movie with the overt purpose of delivering a Christian message, as opposed to the movie having its own artistic value.

That's what I would say.

All right.

Now, help me out here, because you mentioned J.R.R.

Tolkien, right? Yes.

Those were books that were turned into films, though, right? He wrote those as books.

Correct.

Yeah.

But, you know, the concept of Christian fiction.

Gotcha.

Right? Because that's essentially what we're talking about.

Yeah.

No, no, no.

I wasn't correcting you.

I was just making sure I understood.

I'll be honest with you.

I have only seen—because that's the Lord of the Rings, right? Yeah.

Again, this is where I'm bad.

I've not seen them all.

I've only seen the first and second one.

I haven't seen the third one.

I know you're about to— Cut the show right now.

We're doing it.

We're doing Return of the King, extended cut, four hours.

Let's go.

Okay.

Well, unfortunately, I'm just not that guy.

I have seen The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S.

Lewis.

I did pick up the reference there.

But when I say what makes a Christian movie, what makes a movie Christian, rather, that's the first question.

What do you think, Matthew, when I say what makes a movie Christian? It's a tough question because you have to ask what makes Christian art as well because a movie is a piece of art.

What is a Christian song? What is a Christian painting? What is a Christian building, even? If you walk into Notre Dame, the cathedral in France, it's very clear there's saints and angels and all kinds of religious imagery all over it.

You would call it a Christian building.

But then you get into a line-drawing question.

Like, Keith, would you consider your church a Christian building? Well, yeah.

I mean, it is.

The Lord's Day worship happens there.

The life of a church happens there, all that kind of thing.

But you don't have gargoyles.

You don't have angels.

You should have gargoyles.

First of all, that is very presumptuous.

You don't know what we have.

They could be hidden.

I did moderate a debate there.

I did not see gargoyles.

But to the listener, that's why if you're in the North Jacks area, you should go to church with Keith and ask for where the gargoyles are at.

They're all in Children's Church.

So it's a question of what is Christian art, right? Like, that's the real question.

What makes something Christian? I mean, you take even some bands that have songs that people don't realize were Christian.

I mean, Switchfoot is the quintessential example of a band that was and then wasn't, but was and then wasn't.

And some of their music, if you kind of tilt your head sideways, has a Christian theme to it.

And some of it doesn't.

And then you've got, like, Lifehouse.

They went famous with Hanging by a Moment, which can be read either as a romantic relationship or referring to Christ in a relationship with God.

So that's the real question, is what do we classify as Christian art? And it can't just be all art done by Christians.

Because then there's some art not even done by Christians.

Like, the Harry Potter series is steeped in Christocentric metaphor.

It is, yeah.

Be thou carefulest.

Listen, I will go to the battle now.

You bring up Harry Potter and some people's hair catches on fire.

Harry Potter, spoiler alert, sacrifices himself for his friends and ends up in the heaven place that's called King's Cross on purpose.

And then he comes back from the dead.

That is over.

And his absorbing of the attack of evil was the thing that defeated the evil.

I'm just laughing that Jake referred to the heaven place.

I'm not going to call it heaven, but the closest.

So in summary, what makes a Christian movie? I mean, so here's some markers.

If a movie is specifically attempting to recreate the events of a biblical story, you know, something like the Prince of Egypt, you know, Disney's animated, which was awesome.

And I still say, yeah, no.

Yeah, well, I still say that Deliver Us is the best thing outside of the bells of Notre Dame in terms of music in that.

But Disney stuff.

But that's a Christian movie.

Now, we can pick knits.

We can argue they didn't do this right.

They weren't faithful to scripture here.

The Chosen has gotten a lot of criticism for doing that as well.

But The Chosen, like it or not, is Christian, is a Christian TV show in the sense that it is it is portraying events from the biblical story in that sense.

So it is it is that whether you say it does so accurately or not is a perfectly suitable debate.

And I think that's I think you're right.

I think we have to we have to categorize some things, because if we say, you know, what makes a movie Christian? Well, some people would say, well, it has to be made by Christians.

Right.

It has to be to be a Christian movie.

It has to be put together and published and produced by Christians.

And then I'll show something that some people have seen on my Twitter.

This is the you know, I said on this on this week's podcast, my guest and I are going to discuss Christian movies in general.

Are they good or do they stink? Let me know your thoughts.

Well, the vast majority of people said they stink.

Well, if you go back and look through the many comments that came in on that tweet, the reason why the vast majority of people said they stink is because they were talking about production value.

And they were comparing, for instance, Fireproof, which has a which has a much different production value than, say, The Avengers, which has, you know, multi-million dollar, multi, you know, even more, hundreds of millions of dollars go into producing this film.

And so in that sense, it's almost apples and oranges.

But if that's how we define Christian films, it's made by Christians, then then, you know, that's that's what most of those people, I think, on the on the Twitter post we're talking about.

But when we broaden that to say what what Jake said, which is, you know, your Lion, the Witch or your C.S.

Lewis and your J.R.R.

Tolkien and even your, you know, your Harry Potter, if we broaden it into all that, which some would debate whether or not those are Christian or not, we now step out of the realm of of what most people mean when they say that's a Christian movie.

Like the movie Noah, would people would people really say that's a Christian movie? I mean, I think it also depends on does the movie have a message? And I think all movies at a sense do, but some are a lot more heavy handed in it.

You know, something like Ocean's Eleven is just a cool movie with, you know, lots of action and suspense and thrill.

And it's meant to entertain Ocean's Eleven, as far as I'm aware, does not have an overarching, like moral imperative that it is trying to teach you.

I mean, as far as I I don't I don't think so.

Vice, you know, Fireproof, Courageous, some of the ones in the background there absolutely have a moral teaching.

They're trying to weave into a story.

Well, and so I want to read this quote from Martin Luther that I think is really great.

If you might have heard this before, he said the Christian shoemaker does his does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes because God is interested in good craftsmanship.

And, you know, I think some of these overt Christian movies, your God is not dead and you're fireproof, you know, they can kind of come off as as the film version of a of a tract.

And not all tracts are good.

Yeah.

And so there's a certain hokiness that comes with overt messaging, as opposed to are you making a good film as a Christian with with Christ weaved throughout it.

And so, I mean, I think those two things can meet Passion of the Christ is a good example that has an overt Christian message, Christian theme and is also well done.

But I think some some Christian folk would rather just see the gospel tract printed, you know, with, you know, Comic Sans font rather than the thing made well, that's not quite as overt in its messaging.

I think it's a line drawing question, too.

I'll just close this particular part of the discussion with this.

If you have a speech versus a sermon, there is a difference between those two.

But how much Bible do you have to quote before it's a sermon? What is if you have a 30 minute TED talk and a 30 minute sermon? There is a difference between those two.

But what specific elements does the sermon require that makes it so? I mean, you and I have all I'm sure the three of us could find sermons that we would all disagree on that line drawing question.

Was that really a sermon? Was it an inspirational talk? Well, he did mention something from Philippians, I guess.

Yeah, that wasn't really.

And these line drawing questions are important and we need to talk about them.

But clarify your terms when you're talking about what Christian movie is, which I think is just a summary of what we tried to do so far.

Sure.

And real quick, I'm going to pull this up again for us all to see.

I didn't intentionally go out and like specifically grab these.

I just I just went and pulled movie posters down from Christian movies.

But if we look at these just as a subset, we see a little bit of everything here.

We of course, The Passion of the Christ is one that I remember when it came out.

Were you guys did y'all see it in the theater? I did.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How old were you when it came? Well, I guess you probably don't know right off.

I was sorry.

I was in late high school.

Yeah, I was in I was in my early 20s.

I think when it came out, I remember Jennifer and I went and saw it together.

I think we were married by that point.

But I mean, the whole Christian world saw that this is a this is a movie to tell the message of Christ.

And then, you know, you go back a generation and then you have the Ten Commandments, obviously a biblical story.

And that's that that's kind of what you were talking about, Matthew, when you said some movies are intended to just tell the biblical story and whether they tell the story right or not.

You know, you go over to the right side of the picture and you see gods and kings, Exodus with Christian Baal.

Not exactly faithful to the text.

Or Noah.

Oh, goodness.

Now, real quick.

Did you guys actually see Noah? With the rock monsters? Yeah.

Yes.

My fun story about that is my aunt and I were talking about that.

We saw it.

I think it was over a holiday.

We were together with some extended family and we were chattering about it because she and I are both the Bible nerds in the group.

And we both read through the story of Noah the day before.

And we were like, oh, I wonder if they're going to include this.

And I wonder how many inaccuracies we can spot.

I wonder how faithful they're going to be.

And within like five minutes, we have rock transformer and tree things coming out of the dirt.

And she and I just looked at each other like, well, we're done here.

Now, the rock monsters, they were they they were intended to be the Nephilim.

You think they were fallen repentant angels or something? They saved people by blowing up the orc people by tearing their hearts apart and detonating before flying skyward.

That's what they were.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's that.

And so I think that can be confusing for people.

Yeah.

Because that doesn't help.

Yeah.

I mean, the passion of the Christ, I have some issues, obviously, with it.

A lot of people love it.

I don't want to get into a debate as to how good it was.

I think it has a lot of extra biblical Catholic elements that are unnecessary in it.

And I'm really concerned about the new one that's about to come out.

Have you guys heard about what they're doing now? The resurrection? Yeah.

I'm just feeling Gospel of Peter with the 200 foot cross coming out of the tomb or something.

Well, it's according to according to Mel Gibson in an interview that I saw, it's going to focus mainly upon the three days in the tomb.

And so he's talking about other realms.

And yeah, so I have a real anxious feeling about what we're going to see in the passion of the Christ part to the resurrection.

I guess I don't know how they're going to name it.

Passion of the Christ is the highest.

I was just glancing at this is the highest grossing rated R film in history.

Wow.

No rated R film has ever.

Now, Deadpool got very close, but it did not beat the passion of the Christ.

And probably the only rated R film that's ever been endorsed by Baptists.

Yeah.

I mean, here's some numbers for you.

The passion of the Christ doubled the box office receipts of Gladiator.

It was 50% higher than Saving Private Ryan and beat out the 100% bloodier.

Yeah.

Which is a lot to say for D-Day.

Right.

I mean, it was 100 million more than the Matrix reloaded.

I mean, I can keep going, but that's, yeah.

So just thinking about that, you know, obviously there are some parts of the passion of the Christ that are very accurate.

There are some parts that are, you know, we could argue inaccurate or apocryphal or just purely Roman Catholic.

But I remember years ago, there was a, it was right after I got saved, they had this Jesus the Epic miniseries.

And it was a nighttime event.

It went like for three days in a row back when people had to watch television channels.

They didn't have streaming services where they could just binge watch.

And so in Jesus the Epic miniseries, one of the things I remember specifically was it showed the death of Joseph, which the Bible never talks about the death of Joseph.

And Jesus actually tries to raise Joseph from the dead, and it doesn't work.

I remember that specific moment where he's crying out to God, saying, you know, I want him back.

I can't do this without him.

And God doesn't respond.

And so Jesus walks out of the tomb of Joseph, dejected.

And I remember thinking, this is, for somebody to think that way about Christ.

And so I would say that's not really, even though it's a Christian-themed movie, it's not really Christian in the sense of, and that's where the line's funny for me.

Because I love what Jake said.

The gospel-tracked movies are very uncomfortable for me, too, because they're so overt.

They're so in-your-face.

Going back to the picture here, there's a few on here.

God's Not Dead, Courageous, Fireproof.

Those are what we would call gospel-tracked movies.

And which one do you think is the worst? Have you seen a lot of them? I've seen the three of them, and I will stick up for them.

And that may be the unpopular view.

I'm not saying the worst of those three.

I'm saying the worst in general of those movies.

Oh, I'll say this.

I would rather have the heavy-handed, Bible-bashing gospel-tracked movie than a big blockbuster that presents the gospel falsely.

I'll take a Courageous or a Fireproof 10 times out of 10 over a Noah, even though the production values of Noah are much higher.

And if you don't know the original story, what they came up with was at least interesting in a fantasy sort of way.

If you don't actually know how that story went, Left Behind is thrilling in the sense that it's telling this sort of apocalyptic story, and there's politics and intrigue and all kinds of stuff.

Now, we turn our nose up at it because it's weird eschatology and all that kind of thing.

But it's at least an interesting story.

But I'll stick up for Fireproof and God's Not Dead and Courageous.

I enjoyed watching them.

Aaron and I have watched them before, and we didn't just vomit our guts out in cringe.

They're fine.

All right.

Jake, you might have a different thought.

What are your thoughts on those types of movies? I respect what they're trying to do.

I respect what they're trying to do more than I respect The Chosen and more than I respect Passion of the Christ.

They are trying to stay away from the source material of the Bible because it's disrespectful and false teaching to say that Jesus tried to raise a Joseph from the dead and failed.

That's false teaching.

If someone tried to say that from your pulpit, you would run them out of your church, right? So making the attempt to weave in what a Christian values lesson would be in a real-life story of people I think is fine, and I think there's more room for those kinds of stories to be told.

I have a lot more respect for something like A Hacksaw Ridge, which is based off of a real story, right? But it is about a man's faithfulness to – he was a Seventh-day Adventist, so to Christ with some extra legal ease implied.

But that was a phenomenal movie, and that's another Mel Gibson jam where the Christian theme is overt, production value is high, and there's no hokiness value.

You know what I mean? The Fireproofs and the Courageouses, they made those on a budget, and I can forgive the bad budget.

What I can't forgive is the hokiness of the message.

It's basically just a hallmark movie that's overtly Christian, and that's what makes it bad.

And that's why I like what C.S.

Lewis did so much, right? He said, I want to tell a story about Christ.

I don't want to superimpose the Bible, so I made a brand-new fantastical land, and I said, well, what if Jesus was in this kind of land? What story would I tell? Obviously fiction, so no one would walk away thinking, well, this is something Jesus really did, but he talked about the kinds of things that Jesus would want him to talk about, and I really like that.

So staying away from the hokiness part is so hard, because the reason these movies fail are because they don't want to be edgy.

They want to be soft, and they want to be sweet, and they want to be something that your grandma would like in her Sunday school class, but that doesn't make good movies.

It doesn't make good art.

It's not compelling drama, or it's difficult to make it compelling drama.

And there's something overtly unbiblical about writing a world that doesn't have violence, doesn't have the stakes of failure, doesn't have lust, for example, because our Bible is full of those things.

I'm not saying we should make Christian porn, but I am saying that our Bible has the full range of the human condition, so it's not just Mayberry, right? It's not just the sweet 1950s world either.

Does that make sense? Absolutely, and I'm really glad that you're not endorsing Christian porn.

You say that, Jake.

I've heard of people, and actually American Gospel 2 came after C.S.

Lewis because they said that it promoted an imbalanced view of the crucifixion.

It said it was ransom theory, that Aslan had to go to the stone table to buy back the people from Satan, and that was bad, and we shouldn't – I mean, the implication was this is a bad theology smuggle.

Then I'm like, okay, come on.

And that's the other part of it, right, is you're dealing with everybody's theology when you deal with Christian fiction because if it was just our theology, which is correct, or at least me and Keith, there's so few of us.

Oh, shoot.

Hold on.

Just want to see his face.

You know what? I've got it on the shirt.

It's fine.

I'm admitted to the room.

Ninety-nine percent of Matthew's theology.

All right, all right, all right.

There's so few of us, we couldn't crowdfund a decent enough budget to make that movie, so we welcome in the greater Christian world.

Well, you got all of soft evangelical land.

You got all of Roman Catholicism, and then they start throwing in their wonky nonsense too.

That's how the left behinds get made.

So it's really tough to make a theological point, right, like what is the theory of the cross that counts here? And C.S.

Lewis wasn't trying to teach ransom theory.

He was trying to teach children that Jesus is able to save you because he came back from the dead, right? Like he wasn't getting down into those weeds, but we have – that's the problem with Christian fiction is, well, whose theology – which denomination's theology is going to tell this story? And so there's a very post-mill concept here where we as Christians need to be domineering that space and pushing ourselves into that space and telling compelling stories.

It's the same thing I say about people who complain about Hillsong music.

Well, then we should be making better music rather than tearing down theirs.

Well, that leads to the next question that I had brought up, the first question, what makes a movie Christian? I think we've kind of covered that in various ways.

But the second question I have is, should Christians care about making movies? And I think you just sort of answered that, Jake, but is what you're saying, just to make sure I'm clear so the audience is clear.

So you're saying we should be engaging in the arts, that we should be engaging in these things.

Yeah.

So Jeff Durbin says – oh my gosh, my Roomba just turned on.

I'm sorry.

It turned off.

Ten o'clock schedule.

I love that.

Y'all, this is live pod right here, okay? I think maybe God doesn't want me to make that point.

This is live pod right here.

So Jeff Durbin says, right, God is a creator, and part of our responsibility in taking dominion over the earth is to create as well, is to do art well.

And I completely agree with that.

Not only that, Western civilization, our entire framework of art was built by Christians.

If you go back to the medieval period, there was this whole robust culture of guild plays where the only entertainment, the only plays – this is pre-Shakespeare – is that during church festivals and holidays, the local guilds would get together and put on these tiny plays.

And they would make their own little stage that they could wheel out on a wagon, and you would have the Fisherman's Guild and the Seamster's Guild and the Barrel Maker's Guild.

And each one of them would put on a little play of a Christian story, of a Bible story.

So Peter's Denial three times and whatever.

And everything that we know about Western art started there, the way we do stages with the proscenium arch and a little thrust that the actors stand on.

All that was developed by these guild makers.

And so the Western concept of plays and then film all came from Christians telling stories.

We started it.

We invented this modality because the Greeks did it differently.

The Greeks had the amphitheater and everyone was down – the play was down at the bottom.

But Western theater was based off of this Christian concept of these guild plays.

We started it.

And then even throughout – if you look at here, the Ten Commandments, that era, that Cecil B.

DeMille era, it was okay to tell Christian stories in that way.

And then somewhere around the 1960s, 1950s, late 50s when postmodernism set in, Christians retreated from those spaces and were kicked out of those spaces and we were anathema.

And as much as I don't endorse the Chosen, I don't think people should watch the Chosen, I do respect the fact that they are getting back into that space, showing that Christians do want to have a voice and have a lot to say.

And so I think we should do it in a way that's not hiding the ball, not just talking about vague values and then hoping people see Christ in it but overtly saying, hey, this is where our morality comes from.

It comes from a perfect triune God, the God of the Bible in fact, but we're also going to tell good stories and that can be done.

So we should do that, but we should do it – this part you might disagree with me on – we should do it for the purpose of good art, not trying to do a switcheroo and sneak a sinner's prayer in there for people.

You know what I mean? Yeah, and I want to go real quick back to the quote you made about putting crosses on shoes.

That was actually something I had – years ago I had a screen printing business, you guys know that, you have my shirts that I screen printed.

And that was actually hanging on the wall of my screen printing room.

I had two quotes that I hung in my screen printing room.

One was the Martin Luther quote, don't just put crosses on shoes but make good shoes.

Because my goal – I never made Christian shirts.

I made shirts for people as a Christian shirt maker.

And I made all kinds of stuff.

I made shirts for people going to family reunions.

I made shirts for people's businesses.

But I tried to make them well because I was representing Christ in doing business.

And at the same time I had another verse that said, you know, it was a scripture that said, whatever you do, do all to the glory of Christ.

That was the other thing.

I'm doing this to glorify Christ as a business.

So yeah, I mean, I think what you said is right, Jake.

It's not – you know, sneaking in a sinner's prayer is not always the goal of the art.

The art is to glorify Christ.

So that was a good thought.

Matthew, do you have a thought on that? Should Christians care about making movies? Is that something that we should even be – some people would say it's a waste of time.

Well, I mean, if you look back at the history of Christian art, a lot of this begins with stained glass windows.

And what was the point of a stained glass window? Well, it was to tell a biblical story to people who were illiterate.

Or to put it in a more general way, the purpose of a stained glass window was to communicate something about the Bible in a way that would not have otherwise gotten through.

Now, a lot of these were explicit Bible stories, you know, John the Baptist baptizing Jesus or other stuff like that.

But the Christians of the day seized on whatever medium they could to tell the story of the Bible.

I'm going to say that in our society, we can rant all we want to about how no one has an attention span and everyone wants everything spoon-fed to them and yada, yada, yada.

And that's true.

But this is why, Keith, what you do on TikTok matters.

Because you're doing videos that can be as short as 30 seconds long because that's the attention span you're working with.

And most of them, you're not gospel-tracting people or sinners-praying people or reading the Decalogue to them or something like that.

You're making funny content, some of which has a tangential reference to Christianity.

In that sense, you're teaching people like the denominational videos.

People are learning theology when they watch those.

As goofy as they are, silly as they are, and whatever people think of them, they're learning theology when they watch those.

And they're doing it in a way that if you – let me put it this way.

If you put out the call and said, I would like 100,000 people to come to Sovereign Grace Family Church and do this catechism class or whatever, you're not getting 100,000 people.

But if you put something out there on TikTok that does not have the depth, does not have – it's not the same.

I'm not trying to make equivalences there.

You are getting the message out to them.

So, yes, Christians should make movies because there are people who either – that's the only way that they perhaps can be communicated with.

And all truth is God's truth, so if we can give it to them, that's great.

And also we shouldn't retreat from the arts because all art is God's art, and that can either honor him or not.

So, yes, absolutely we should make movies.

Absolutely.

And I appreciate the kind word about the TikTok, because, again, they're not necessarily gospel tracks, but they do have an intention.

They are mission-minded.

They point people back to our page, which does videos like this, where we actually talk about Christian things and Christian ideas, and trying to – we do open-air preaching at our church, and I tell our church leaders, you know, what we do on the street, open-air preaching, is sort of similar to what I'm doing on the Internet, because that's the public square now.

The public square is not – I mean, how many people go and sit in the public square anymore? Very few.

But the people online are the public square, so that's sort of our mission field.

You could push this into other places, too.

Like Isaac Newton was one of the most incredible physicists and scientists that ever lived, devout Christian, said constantly that it was his goal simply to take what God had created and put it into human, understandable terms.

Was he doing Christian physics? Were they Christian physics papers that he wrote? Well, yes and no, in a sense, right? Like he was doing his trade while acknowledging a creator above and recognizing where the two interplayed, and I think that's great.

Yeah, I was just going to bring up Chris Pratt, right? Like he makes movies about space raccoons and being a janitor who turns into a karate man, but then he gets prime opportunities to use his platform to not just mention God vaguely, but to talk about Jesus.

And his theology is not 100% correct, but like he uses that platform making movies that don't have a lot to do with Jesus.

Although, I mean, Tony Stark died to save his friends, right? And so that can spark a conversation.

As I said before, that's the way Tolkien did it.

He didn't say this character is overtly Jesus, but he did want to have a conversation to say, hey, what is Christ like about what Frodo did? What is Christ like about how Gandalf came back? And that sparks a later conversation with the platform.

I'll just say really quick at the end of the Avengers, Tony Stark carries a cross through the city while everyone's watching him and then is lifted up and disappears for a time.

Yeah.

And in doing so, he destroys the threat to humanity, dies in quotes, and then comes back to life.

Am I saying that there was some writer with the Avengers who was like, oh, look what I'm going to do? No, but it's just the story weaves itself so much in because we're made in the image of God and we can't help ourselves.

Yeah, that's right.

And some really do weave it in on purpose.

Like, for instance, Superman imagery.

I'm a huge, I'm a DC nerd.

I know that, you know, DC Marvel, all that stuff.

I'm a DC nerd.

And the imagery with Superman has always played into even Kal-El, which is his Kryptonian name.

The El name is a reference to the Hebrew word for God.

And that is the house of El.

There's a couple that will blow your mind, right? Terminator.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

The main character's name is John Connor, JC.

Robocop, the guy comes back from the dead.

And there's a ton of instances where you see him walking over puddles, walking on water.

Like a lot of those things are overt and on purpose.

The Matrix, obviously, right? And, you know, whether or not those are Christians doing a Christian thing, I think that's a little bit of Paul telling the men of Athens, right? That everyone is groping toward God, whether or not they know it.

There's no such thing as a theme that is good and true and beautiful that doesn't represent God, whether or not people know it, because this is his world.

So I just think we should do it well and then use our platforms to talk about that analysis, to go back.

Like Victor Hugo, another great example, to talk about all of the redemptive themes in Les Mis without overtly being tracty about it, you know what I mean? Yeah.

And so real quick, just both of you answer as best you can.

So when we talk about going back to the track-style Christian movies, because I don't think we ever did answer this, and I do want to go back to it real quick.

Best and worst, what's your favorite? What's your least favorite of the ones that you've seen? What are the ones that you'd say, I actually think this is good, I'd show it to somebody, or I think this is bad? I don't like any of them, but I think the Case for Christ movie was pretty good.

See, that's a good, I tell you what though, that is a good example of almost, do you think the Case for Christ though is really a track movie? Do you think so? Yeah, because it's more based on a true story, so maybe that's why I liked it.

Because I was going to say that one of the ones I liked was The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which is the story of Tammy Faye Baker.

I did a whole podcast on that.

I really, I mean, obviously I don't like what Tammy Faye and Jim Baker stood for, but I thought the movie did well of telling their story and the different characters that they had to deal with.

Pat Robertson and all this were played by, Vincent D'Onofrio was in it playing the guy from Liberty Baptist, who was his name? Falwell.

Yeah, Jerry Falwell, which is, I mean, just Vincent D'Onofrio, terrific actor playing this part.

But again, you said maybe not.

So I don't like God's Not Dead, and here's why.

Because we made our own straw man version of the mean atheist professor just so we could own him.

You know what I mean? Like it just felt so fanfic-y from somebody who's been beat up on.

I just found it to be, it just found it to ring hollow.

It just seemed like that was Christian fantasy of we own the atheist guy.

And it's like, I mean, that'd be cool.

And maybe it's happened, but the way it came across to me was just so disingenuous.

It wasn't telling an authentic story.

It was trying to accomplish a purpose.

I would rather see an authentic story rather than something that's just so pious and didactic, you know what I mean? Like I don't want it to teach me something.

I want you to tell me a compelling story.

And if I learn something from that, good.

But I think piety is the thing that kills Christian art because we want to be more pious than righteous.

We want to feel pious, and so we want to soften the edges, and we want to take out the bad words, and we want to reduce the violence.

I would love to see a movie about all of the stuff about David, all the civil war and the guerrilla warfare that's as close to Game of Thrones without being straight up porn.

But lean into the violence, not all the gore and all the blood.

Lean into the lust.

I don't want to see overt sex scenes, but that's what that story is about, right? And I've been to war, so I would love to see a gritty war drama, but what would happen? The Christians would go, oh, I don't know.

That makes me uncomfortable.

I don't know.

That's too far.

And it would just dilute and dilute and dilute until it's nothing, until it's just veg tales.

I want to hear from you, Matthew, but I do want to make a quick note on what Jake said, talking about God's not dead.

I was actually invited to the premiere of another film that came out about the same time as God is not dead, maybe a year or so after, and it was called A Matter of Faith.

And comparing the two films, have you guys seen A Matter of Faith? I don't know that one.

It's almost the exact same concept.

Girl goes to college, her college professor is an atheist, convinces her of atheism, and then she has to fight to get back to her faith.

That's what's called A Matter of Faith.

At the end, her dad debates the professor on the college campus on the subject of God.

But here's the part that I liked, as opposed to God's not dead.

In God's not dead, Kevin Sorbo plays the atheist professor, and he is the most, spoiler alert, he is a jerk throughout the whole film.

Nobody likes him.

Even the students who agree with him, he's a jerk to everybody.

But in the movie A Matter of Faith, the one good thing that was done, even though it is more track-like and it was a little cheesy, the one good thing they did, they had Harry Anderson play the professor.

And if you're not sure who that is, he was the judge in Night Court.

Yeah, the judge, yeah.

And he was the nicest atheist professor you could ever want to meet.

He presented his position in a winsome way, and you could see how someone like that would not be necessarily a quote-unquote bad guy from the perspective of Kevin Sorbo's jerk character, who was bad and mean.

But he was a likable—even when the girl went back to being a Christian, he wasn't a jerk about it.

He kind of disagreed, but there was this—he played the part.

I think that's the more realistic thing that kids are going to see when they go to college, is they're going to see professors who are nice guys, who are good people in the sense of a human goodness, and yet they're telling them that God doesn't exist, rather than Kevin Sorbo, who's saying, I'm going to force you to be an atheist by the end of this class, and that kind of thing.

Exactly.

And so I just think if you're into the God's not dead thing, my recommendation would be go watch A Matter of Faith and see if you think that's better.

I think it's the better, because it tells the same story in a much better way.

All right, Matthew, your turn.

What's your favorite and not favorite? Well, since we're talking about God's not dead, the first one came out while I was in college, and that movie has a special place in my heart because I had Kevin Sorbo as a professor.

I had an English professor who was militantly atheist, who I am convinced gave me much lower grades than I rightly earned, but English, especially paper writing, is such a subjective grading experience that it's just very hard to prove that.

It's not a math problem.

There was this paper I was writing about, and the subject of the paper wasn't in the story.

One of the characters in the English class, one of the stories we were reading, one of the characters had a mental illness.

I think it was schizophrenia or something like that.

And when the doctors are investigating, they ask, did you have a family history of this or that or the other? And his relatives told the story.

He's like, yeah, his great-grandfather was a devout atheist and this and that and the other, but he claims that he had a vision one night, and he claims that God spoke to him.

And from that moment onwards, he was a devout Christian, got baptized, had his family in, whatever.

And I was like, oh, okay.

So that was part of the story.

And my English teacher said, okay, so this was obviously a hallucination.

That guy was clearly mentally ill because that kind of thing doesn't happen.

And I was just like, I disagree.

I think there's too many of those cases.

They're too well-documented.

They're too numerous to just say that.

Now, listen, I didn't come in with an ax to grind.

I wasn't trying to pick a fight or anything like that.

But someone just made a didactic statement, inserting their own judgment about a story that was told in a book we were reading and said, this couldn't have happened.

It had to be this.

And I was like, no, don't buy that.

I do not buy that.

And that English class was the most miserable class I had in college, and she had it out for me the rest of the time.

And we didn't have a big climactic moment like in God's Not Dead where it's like, I'm going to make you believe this.

But there was an undercurrent of hostility going on the whole time because of that.

And I had some other Christians in the class, and we got together afterwards and talked about it.

And it was baby, tiny, itty-bitty persecution.

I got a C instead of a B.

Big whoopee.

Yay, America.

But the point is, that resonated with me a whole lot because I was like, yeah, yeah, that is literally what I am going through right now.

And so I overlooked a lot of the campier elements of God's Not Dead.

Having rewatched it, gosh, nearly 10 years later now, yeah, there's a whole lot I would cut.

If I could rewrite that story, if I could rewrite that script, I would remove a bunch of this, remove a bunch of that, show some countervailing evidence here, do a little bit there, balance it out some.

But at the time, it kind of was like when you're a conservative and we all first discovered those Ben Shapiro destroys activists on whatever thing, it was popcorn.

It was fun candy to eat, watching the libs get owned kind of thing.

And it was like, wow, yeah, there are other people like me getting knocked around a little bit in a college class.

And he showed that guy.

And again, in that state of mind, in that frame, in that time in my life, it was great.

Would I rate it as highly now? No, I wouldn't give it an F, but I wouldn't give it the A triple plus that I gave it at the time because I'm not in that phase of life anymore.

Maybe I'll have a different opinion on fireproof, or maybe I had one differently before I was married than now, or when I have kids, maybe courageous is going to hit different.

I don't know.

But that's what I'll say about God's Not Dead.

I'll tell you one other quick thing.

Since you mentioned courageous there, something that I don't I don't really enjoy.

I don't enjoy movies that have a drastically sad element.

And I know there are some people who there are some people who really love.

Jake has picked up a cat.

We have a new guest.

What's the guest's name? This is Aris.

Hello, Aris.

Hi, Aris.

Well, I don't like movies that are very sad.

And the reason why is because I deal with a lot of real life sadness in my life.

I do a lot of funerals.

I deal with a lot of people who are going through sickness, death, pain, grief and suffering.

So my wife will be like, do you want to watch this movie with me? Well, what's it about? Well, it's about this girl who got cancer.

No, I'm not interested.

Which that brings up a movie, The Jeremy Camp Story.

I thought that was a good movie.

But again, is that a Christian movie? Well, it's certainly about a Christian musical artist and his life and the suffering that he went through and his maintaining of faith.

So again, the spectrum is so wide.

That's why I think going back to this, I think it's unfair when we say, when we discuss Christian movies, well, they stink.

Well, do they stink? Is that true? Or is it just certain types of movies stink? Yeah, and what's a Christian movie? I mean, I think that's what makes the definition.

Because I would say the best Christian movie of all time is Hacksaw Ridge.

But most people would say it's a war movie.

That's fair.

Well, that leads me to my final question.

I do want to begin to draw to a close here.

What are some great non-Christian movies? Because you guys did make a good point.

You said that, in a sense, there's a lot of things in movies that point to Christ, even inadvertently, because the image of God is there.

But we could go through the gambit of Christian movies and say, here's the ones we like, here's the ones we don't like.

But what's one movie that you recommend that's not a Christian movie, but it's a movie that you feel like is valuable simply for the sake of the art of movies? Is that tough? No, I mean, I can't do a top one.

I can give you three quickly.

Okay.

So my top three movies are Tombstone, Top Gun, and Willow.

Okay, I love Tombstone.

I really wish I would have thought of that one, because that is a great movie.

And if Brian Borgman ever sees this, who is my favorite preacher, Brian Borgman is my favorite preacher.

I've interviewed him in his office.

He has a Tombstone poster in his office.

So he would be happy to hear you say that.

All right, so Tombstone.

What was the other one? Top Gun and Willow.

Top Gun is an interesting choice.

I like it.

What's ironic is Val Kilmer is in all three of those.

I don't know if that's on purpose.

It just happened to be my three favorite movies.

Well, you didn't say real genius.

Oh, that's a great movie.

I know.

You have a Val Kilmer fixation.

I guess I do.

That's fine.

That's fine.

All right, brother.

Matthew, what about you? Oh, goodness.

Well, I mean, I think there's a difference between movies that I like and movies that I think everyone needs to see.

And those are just different.

There are some movies I recognize that I enjoy a heck of a lot that just aren't all that culturally relevant, and yet I can enjoy watching them.

Like, you don't enjoy the same YouTube channels that I do, and I wouldn't be like, oh, my gosh, you have to see this.

But, I mean, there's a couple that, I mean, I'm going to go with a bit of a dark horse here, and that's a German film, The Lives of Others.

If you haven't seen that one, now, big warning, it is made to German.

It's a rated R film made to German film standards of sexuality.

Okay? Just saying.

That's not the focus of the movie.

I don't know what that means.

I don't know if that makes it better or worse, but I'm assuming it makes it worse.

It makes it worse.

There are some very adult scenes in the movie.

It's not the reason, of course, why I'm recommending it.

It is set in East Germany before the fall of the wall, and it is about a Soviet, like a high-ranking Soviet official that wants this girl, but she's in a relationship with this playwright.

And so the playwright is constantly weaving in his distaste for the Soviet system into his plays quietly, and it's told from the perspective of a guy that is assigned.

He's the Stasi agent assigned to surveil this guy.

And throughout it, you see these subtle little changes of heart, and it's such a brilliant way that they do it, where he starts to be disillusioned with the whole Soviet system, and then it ends with the fall of the wall and him moving on in life.

Anyway, the point is, I feel like everyone should see it for the brutal wickedness that the Stasi was because I feel like it's such an under-told part of the story, and because it's just a really well-made film that has one too many sex scenes in it that they could really do without.

Other than that, though, as far as a movie that I just enjoy sitting around and watching, the original Iron Man was fantastic.

It was such a well-done film.

You could tell that they were still getting their feet wet in this whole genre of the blockbuster superhero movies, but it still holds up well.

I love historical ones.

Apollo 13's great.

That's what I thought you were going to say.

Yeah, well, that one goes near the top, but I feel like that's an excellent movie, but if people haven't seen it, I don't feel the need to go evangelize to them, if you will, like I do with The Lives of Others.

I could go on.

There's more, but I'll leave it at those.

Sure.

And a movie that I – there are two movies to me, I think, and I'm going to pull a Jake because it's got the same actor in both, and both of these movies people might think are – I can't believe you chose those movies as movies that aren't Christian but you would recommend people watch them.

The two movies are Rocky and First Blood.

Okay.

And my reason is even though there's – in Rocky, there is a little bit of – there's some things about his and Adrian's relationship and there are things that are going on that may be a little unseemly, but the focus of Rocky is a man who is willing and able to go the distance, not win, but overcome.

Obviously, spoiler alert for a 50-year-old movie.

He doesn't win, and that's the greatest part of the movie for me.

I love all the Rockys.

Recently, I watched Rocky IV with my son because obviously Rocky IV is the most fun for kids because they watch the robot and all that stuff.

But the original Rocky, the story to me about just overcoming adversity, not being willing to stay standing when the world knocks you down, I think there's a good message in that.

Not necessarily a Christian message, but it is – and I think it's good.

But First Blood is – I think is good because in speaking to the subject of war, it's not – people always think of the Rambos, these ultra-violent movies.

Well, the first movie, only one person dies and he dies by accident.

He falls out of a helicopter and that's Galt who dies by falling out of a helicopter and it's a complete accident.

The whole movie is about a guy who can't adjust to the real world because he's been tortured by war.

I think that it's good for people to recognize that war does change people, especially when they've been in that level of pain and suffering during war.

So those are – again, I'm a huge Sylvester Stallone fan just as a person.

He's 70,000 years old and he still goes to the gym every day.

I just think that's – I think he's awesome.

That's pretty legit.

Yeah.

So that's my two that I would recommend.

Outside of Christian movies or movies I think people should see, I think, again, art that glorifies God is art that's done well and we can point to those things and say that.

So those are my thoughts.

But gentlemen, I want to thank you all again for being on the show.

I really enjoy talking to you as always.

I hope to do this again soon.

Do you all have anything that you have coming up that you want to tell the audience about? I know, Jake, you've been doing some other shows.

You got another show coming out soon? Yeah, yeah.

Check out Jay over at Reformed Rican.

We did a couple of shows.

We just did two on dispensationalism and covenant theology that I thought were pretty good, and just going to put out a new one on qualifications of a pastor.

Also check out this awesome t-shirt, Five Point Calvinist.

You can find it on Teespring if you look up your Calvinist because this shirt is bomb, and I love it.

And one more thing, Keith, I refuse to do another show with you until you've watched The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

I might have to jump on that as well.

We may have to just do a watch party.

Okay.

It's time.

Well, I will do my best.

Oh, Matthew, I'm sorry.

Did you have something you wanted to add? No, no, I'm good.

Okay.

One last thing, since we are talking about movies, and I am not endorsed or sponsored by this group at all, but my family does subscribe to something called VidAngel.

And what VidAngel does is it allows you to cut out curse words.

It allows you to cut out sex scenes or anything in a movie that you don't want to see.

And it gives you the choice.

You can just set all the filters for no, or you can go in and say, well, I'm not too concerned about this, but I'm mainly concerned about this.

And it's allowed my children to enjoy some of the movies from my youth that they would not have been able to enjoy otherwise.

And so that is available for, I think it's like $10 a month.

If you are interested, go to VidAngel and check them out.

Again, not a sponsor unless they want to be.

Call me VidAngel.

I am more than willing to talk to you about a sponsorship.

So thanks again, guys.

I appreciate you being on the show.

Absolutely.

And thank you again, listener, for being a part of Conversations with a Calvinist.

I want to remind you that if you have a question that you'd like for us to address on a future episode, you can send it to me at calvinistpodcasts at gmail.com.

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You can support the show by going to buymeacoffee.com slash yourcalvinist.

Thank you again for listening to Conversations with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist.

May God bless you.