Finding Jesus in the Movies

Stories are powerful things. When the storyteller tells a story, he has influence over his audience. The audience has permitted the storyteller the take them into the world of the story, and if the story is a good story that is well told the audience will allow themselves to totally immerse themselves in the story. The audience is able to shut out the real world and live for a time in this fictional world of imagination. Once the storyteller succeeds in drawing his audience in in this manner, he is able to influence their thinking. He does this by giving his story a theme, something he wants the audience to take away from the story. If the storyteller can find the right balance between clearly presenting the message but not being explicit about it, he has the ability to influence his audience's thinking. If the audience is not thinking critically about the message of the story (and they most likely aren't because they're too busy enjoying the story), the audience can on a subconscious level accept the themes of the story and begin to live them out. This is why it is important to be thinking critically about what a story wants to say to its audience, but that is a conversation for another post. What this post is concerned with is the themes themselves. More specifically, the theme of redemption and the way Christians tend to perceive this theme.

Redemption is a common theme in movies. Not only does it tend to be the theme of almost every Christian movie ever made, but many Hollywood productions also prominently feature this theme. Les Miserables, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Lord of the Rings are excellent examples of this. Les Miserables follows Jean Valjean, a convict who seeks to escape his past. He eventually accomplishes this through a little girl named Cosette. In this story, compassion and kindness exhibited in the hero brings about his redemption. In Guardians of the Galaxy, a band of outlaws who have escaped prison find redemption by saving an entire planet. In this story, an act of heroism atones for previous sins. Lord of the Rings features a powerful ring with the ability to corrupt the mind of the one who carries it. The second film in the trilogy, The Two Towers, most explicitly deals with the question of redemption when it asks if it is even possible for someone who has been corrupted by the One Ring to come back from the corruption. We then see the answer to this question as the rest of the story plays out. In the case of Lord of the Rings, redemption is found by destroying the evil that generated the need for redemption.

There is a stark contrast between the way Les Miserables and Guardians of the Galaxy presents redemption and the way that Lord of the Rings does the same. The former two films assert that it is through doing enough good that the sins of the past can be atoned for. Lord of the Rings, however, asserts that in order to be redeemed from sin, the sin itself must be put to death. As all Christians should know, Lord of the Rings hits closer to the mark than the other two films. It is through Christ's death and resurrection that sin and death have been defeated and therefore believers are redeemed.

It is wonderful to be able to draw the Gospel from the themes of a movie. However, I am concerned that Christians have a tendency to overdo this. I have read many Christian reviews for many different movies, and I have noticed that whenever a movie deals with redemption these reviewers will begin to draw parallels between the movie in question and the Gospel. Don't get me wrong, I have no objection to Christians reacting to movies like Guardians of the Galaxy by pointing out where they get redemption wrong and presenting the good news of how we can truly be redeemed. What I object to is Christians looking for Christ figures or "allegories" to the Gospel where neither of these things exist. A popular example of this is the comic book character Kal-El, aka Superman. Many Christians have spotted parallels between Superman and Jesus Christ and have used these parallels as a reason to uphold Superman as a Christ figure. I am especially baffled by Christians who say this of the version of Superman that appears in the 2013 film, Man of Steel. Man of Steel is a great film with some great messages, but a Christ figure Henry Cavill's Superman is not. Yes, he is not of this world. Yes, he seeks to help people and do the right thing. But he is a far cry from Christ. Granted, no Christ figure will be a perfect representation of Christ, but I have trouble calling a character who struggles to determine the right course of action a Christ figure.

So when should Christians look for Christ figures and allegories to the Gospel? The key is to look at the beliefs of the story's original writer and the intent of the story. An atheist is not going to write a story that points the audience to Christ. He is not going to try to remind audiences of Jesus Christ by making one of his characters a Christ figure. Likewise, an atheist is not going write a story with the intent of presenting the Gospel, allegorically or explicitly. To say that there is a Christ figure or an allegory to the Gospel in an atheist's story is to add something to the story that was not there by the author's intent. This is a postmodern way to view movies which says that how I, the viewer, interprets the film's message supersedes the author's original intent. This would be like someone reading this post and saying that the point of the post was that Christians who look for Christ figures in movies are bad Christians - a statement which I, the author, do not agree with.

In conclusion, I have a request to make. Please do not try to put the Gospel into stories that the author never intended for it to be present in. Trying to put the Gospel into stories in this fashion is a subjective way to view stories, which is not consistent with the objective worldview found in Christianity. Let us be consistent Christians not just in the way we go about our work and in our relationships, but also in the way we view movies.