For those of us familiar
with the Left Behind story, it doesn’t seem like much has changed. When
the rapture happens, pilot Rayford Steele (played by the one and only Nicolas
Cage) is flying his plane, while daughter Chloe Steele (played by Cassi
Thomson) is in the mall with her brother. In a flash of white, half the plane’s
passengers and several mall shoppers disappear, leaving behind only clothes and
personal items. Within minutes, there’s fighting, looting, people getting
trampled in doorways, cars bursting through walls, airplanes crashing into parking
lots, and everybody panicking and screaming and freaking out. And on the one
hand, from my red velvet chair in the theater, it seemed a little bit
unrealistic that things would so quickly turn to mass looting, violence, and
rioting – but then on the other hand, it’s also pretty difficult to imagine how
people really would react in a rapture-type situation.
Church members generally
aren’t drawn to Christian movies by the promise of good acting – we are drawn
because we want to see biblical truth translated up onto the silver screen. But
if our creative impulses, at their very root, come from being made in the image
of our God, the Creator, then we should understand better than anyone the value
of the balance between beauty and truth. God himself embodies that balance. And
even if this new Left Behind isn’t exactly bringing us the same kind of
cheesy, made-for-Christians-only type of movie production, so many of the
characters still seem to act so unnaturally, and much, if not most, of the
dialogue still feels contrived.
Some people might want to call the film “good for
a Christian movie,” but I say that it’s terrible that we ever even use that
phrase at all. It shouldn’t be the case that "Christian" movies are held to a
lower standard than “secular” movies. As beings made in our Creator’s image
who also have the ability to create good things, God’s very being calls
us to a much higher standard than that. We Christians should be setting the standard in every area of art, beauty, and truth if we want to truly reflect God's image to the world.
Regarding the plot’s central
idea: I don’t even know how common it is to believe in the idea of a pre-tribulation
rapture. Growing up in Arkansas in the Bible Belt, that was one of the main ways
people in church thought about the end times. But I guess over the past few
years, the books I’ve read and the people I’ve heard speak have encouraged me
to think less about leaving earth at the end to go to Heaven and more about
bringing Heaven to the earth in the here and now. This is not to say that I’m
great or even good at doing that. But
I’ve also heard it said that the answer is usually found somewhere between two
extremes. So as a church, have we become too obsessed with thinking about our
future? Or is it possible also that some of us have become way too focused on
the present?
Evan is a 2014-2015 team member with a degree from the University of Arkansas in English Literature.
