Tonight Jenni and I watched No Greater Love. We expected it to be another semi-cheesy Christian film, but it’s actually well done. It’s a surprisingly gripping story. Jenni almost never cries when watching movies, but this was different.
I learned about it in mid-January when I received this update from The Master’s Seminary. Jay Underwood, one of their graduates, co-stars in the film.
Here is an abridged version of my thoughts on these parable-films after I watched them in September 2008.
1. General Comments on the Modern Parables
Strengths
Thought-provoking. They encourage a consuming preoccupation with God’s word (i.e., meditation).
Parallel. They are based on common, everyday situations (i.e., typical people and events), which parallels Jesus’ parables.
Quality. They are professionally done. They are simple and executed well.
Variety. They are shot in different genres.
Endorsed by scholars. For example, Craig Blomberg, a parable-scholar, highly recommends them.
Qualifications
Unclear. Most of the application videos are surprisingly weak and unclear. Not recommended. (They don’t appear to be available for free online.)
Limitations. Turning parable-texts into these parable-films has some limitations and potential pitfalls. (1) It changes the genre in a way that does not adequately capture the text’s context. For example, not one of the parable-films adequately captures the immediate context of the parable, let alone the broader context of the section and book in which it occurs. (2) It could be abused as a crutch for exegesis and exposition or as something that is more exciting than the God-breathed text.
Missing the gospel. This is definitely not a stand-alone means of evangelism because the gospel is virtually absent in the films. Those who are biblically illiterate could radically misinterpret the films and completely miss the gospel. The videos are only supplementary illustrations to the text. (But they could be extraordinarily useful when used in the right context.)
2. Specific Comments on Each Parable
Hidden Treasure. Substituting oil for hidden treasure communicates more clearly in our culture. The acting is slapstick.
Samaritan. Sobering and convicting. It leaves some gaps in parallels with the biblical parable.
The Shrewd Manager. The biblical parable probably does not connect well with most people in our culture, but this video does.
The Widow and Judge. Slower pace and more artistic license than the previous ones.
The Sower. This isn’t exactly a story. This film is nowhere near as engaging as the others. Probably the least effective.
This two-minute clip from The Princess Bride is my favorite light-hearted illustration of the Arminian view of human depravity (an issue integrally related to prevenient grace):
This is the notable part of the exchange:
“Well it just so happens that your friend here is only mostly dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. . . . Now mostly dead is slightly alive. All dead—well, with all dead, there’s only usually one thing that you can do.”
“What’s that?”
“Go through his clothes and look for loose change.”
Last night Jenni and I watched the film Fireproof, which came out on DVD this week. I was intrigued for at least two reasons: nearly every review I’ve read has been positive, and a wholesome movie with a $500,000 budget has already grossed about $33.5 million!
We weren’t disappointed. Rather, we were surprised how well done and edifying the movie is. Highly recommended, especially for married couples.
One of the best lines illustrates how counter-cultural this film is: “Don’t just follow your heart. You gotta lead your heart.” That’s one reason I think that this film is great for singles to watch, too. So many other films (starting with Disney “classics”!) promote exactly the wrong message (i.e., a self-serving, follow-your-heart, do-whatever-you-think-will-gratify-you approach).
About
official site (includes more videos, pics, resources)
This weekend my wife and I watched parts of DVDs dramatizing the Gospel According to Matthew and Acts word-for-word from the NIV. Our hopes were high because we enjoy “The Gospel of John” film so much. If on a scale of 1 to 10 the “The Gospel of John” film is an 8 or 9, then the Matthew and Acts films are a 1 or 2—and that’s being generous. (That’s why we “watched parts” of them!)
Related: See this previous post on “The Gospel of John” film for an overview, evaluation, and links to other reviews.
Yesterday morning during a painfully freezing (!) early morning run, I was listening to an MP3 from John Piper’s 2007 regional conference on “The Pleasures of God.” In part 2 (MP3 | video), Piper describes the pleasure of God in His creation, and he enthusiastically endorses the above “Planet Earth” DVDs.
In the MP3, start at 38:08 to get the context (“God loves the world that He made”) and listen until 42:43. Here are a few highlights:
39:30: “There are many aspects of nature that no human ever sees.” And then some BBC cameraman comes by and captures it!
40:54: This is where the “Blue Planet” and “Planet Earth” endorsement begins.
“My wife and I and little girl have worshipped for eight hours watching these unbelievable works of God! There are all these pagans producing this worship DVD!”
While they were watching the DVDs, Piper kept saying to his daughter, “That can’t be happening! That can’t be happening!”
“I hate evolution. It is so worship destroying! I mean that. Secular, atheistic evolution is worship destroying.”
“I get so much pleasure talking about what God has done in creation. It’s way better than talking about movies, but that’s another story.”
Aside: I wish this would have been available earlier! I wanted to watch these videos last year, but they were available only in VHS format. And since Jenni and I live in the twenty-first century, we don’t own a VHS player! So I checked out the VHS videos from the TEDS library during Christmas break and brought them with us on our visit to Greenville where family members have VHS. It was worth it—not least to compare and contrast how Drs. Carson and Woodbridge look and sound today! :-)
Several years ago I was asked to interview Dr. Carl F. H. Henry and Dr. Kenneth S. Kantzer for a videotaping. These two American theologians have been at the heart of much of the evangelical renaissance in the Western world, especially, but not exclusively, in America. Each was about eighty years of age at the time of the videotaping. One [i.e., Henry] has written many books; the other [i.e,. Kantzer] brought to birth and nurtured one of the most influential seminaries in the Western world. They both have been connected with Billy Graham, the Lausanne movement, the assorted congresses on evangelism, the influential magazine Christianity Today, and much more. The influence of these Christian leaders extends to the countless numbers of younger pastors and scholars whom they have helped to shape not only by their publications and public teaching but by the personal encouragement at which both have excelled. Both men gave lectures for the video cameras before several hundred theological students, and then I interviewed them. Toward the end of that discussion, I asked them a question more or less in these terms: “You two men have been extraordinarily influential for almost half a century. Without wanting to indulge in cheap flattery, I must say that what is attractive about your ministries is that you have retained integrity. Both of you are strong, yet neither of you is egotistical. You have not succumbed to eccentricity in doctrine, nor to individualistic empire-building. In God’s good grace, what has been instrumental in preserving you in these areas?”
Both spluttered in deep embarrassment. And then one of them [i.e., Henry] ventured, with a kind of gentle outrage, “How on earth can anyone be arrogant when standing beside the cross?”
That was a great moment, not least because it was so spontaneous. These men had retained their integrity precisely because they knew their attitude should be the same as that of Jesus Christ (Phil. 2:5). They knew that they had been called not only to believe in Christ but also to suffer for him. If their Master had viewed equality with God not as something to be exploited for personal advantage but as the basis for the humiliating path to the cross, how could they view influential posts of Christian leadership as something they should exploit for personal advantage?
Jenni and I had the opportunity to watch these DVD series, and they are excellent! Over the last three years, we have checked out a few dozen nature DVDs from the library (e.g., many produced by IMAX), but none of those compares to Planet Earth! Wow. It includes five DVDs: the first four contain eleven 50-minute episodes, and the fifth contains three episodes on “the future” and environmentalism. The last ten minutes or so of the eleven episodes on disks 1-4 share interesting stories about what the film crew endured to secure such unusual footage. (Warning: Occasionally a crew member’s speech is a bit offensive.) The footage on the main episodes is stunningly majestic and detailed, colorful and brilliant. The vistas are breathtaking. I learned something new in every episode, usually viewing (1) fascinating animals and plants on God’s earth that I never knew existed and (2) behavior by well-known organisms that shocked me because I had never heard of such things (e.g., a pride of lions attacking an elephant). (Cf. Wikipedia’s overview.)
In preparation for watching these, we listened to John Piper’s sermon “The Pleasure of God in Creation,” which Piper later published as this chapter in The Pleasures of God, my favorite book by Piper. Thrilling! Moving! Worshipful! Watching first-class films about God’s planet is a worshipful experience—even if the people who make the films have entirely different agendas! How many more reasons do we have to praise God than did the authors of Scripture, whose knowledge of God’s earth was significantly limited in comparison to ours today? Piper calls Ranger Rick“a theological journal,” and I think it is appropriate to call Planet Eartha theological documentary.
The film is based on the 2004 novel Hadassah: One Night with the King, so my analysis of the film is probably a partial analysis of this novel, which I have not read.
2. Brief analysis: The film is deeply disappointing in both content and form.
Content: Jenni and I have grown up hearing and reading the book of Esther, and the biblical plot is fresh on our minds because we worked through the book of Esther in one sitting both the night before and the morning after watching the film. I am just stunned by reviews that claim that the film’s plot is faithful to the biblical plot. The film’s plot mutilates the narrative that God inspired. It would take a long essay to substantiate this, and I have no desire to take the time to do that. Suffice it to say, most of the key points in the film change significant details in the biblical narrative with both addition and subtraction.
Form: The film made us laugh—but for the wrong reasons. We laughed because many of the characters and lines are so corny. The film is light and comical with slapstick humor similar to The Princess Bride (but not nearly as funny!). Though not as outrageous as Veggie Tales, the form of the film does not fit the weightiness and gravity of the biblical narrative. Esther, for example, behaves like a flighty, immature teenage girl.
On a scale of 1 to 10, I’d rank the film at 1 or 2. It’s really that bad. I would go a bit farther than Phil Gons, who cautiously recommends watching the film. If you haven’t seen it, my advice is simple: don’t waste your time on it. Read the book of Esther instead. (And if you’re looking for a Bible film to watch, my top recommendation is The Gospel of John.) Films that take dramatic license with biblical narratives almost inevitably compromise the message of the text. Narrative is a literary genre that a film cannot perfectly reproduce. The problem with One Night with the King is not that it fails to reproduce the biblical narrative (that would be an unfair standard), but that it twists and distorts both its content and form.
3. Learning from the story of Esther
In 2002, I prepared a sermon on Esther entitled “Trusting God’s Silent Providence.” I’d no doubt tweak it if I preached it today, but my outline (which reflects Layton Talbert’s Not by Chance—see below) highlights many details in the biblical narrative that the film alters.
God’s silent providence directs man’s wrath.
It directed King Ahasuerus’ wrath (because of proud embarrassment) against Queen Vashti (1:12; 2:1).
It directed Bigthan’s and Teresh’s wrath (because of political hatred) against King Ahasuerus (2:21).
It directed Haman’s wrath (because of offended arrogance and racism) against Mordecai (3:5; 5:9).
It directed King Ahasuerus’ wrath (because of a mistaken impression) against Haman (7:7, 10).
God’s silent providence includes “chance.”
It included King Ahasuerus’ call for Queen Vashti and her refusal (1:10-12).
It included Esther’s replacement of Vashti as queen (1-2).
It included Mordecai’s uncovering of the assassination plot against King Ahasuerus (2:21-23).
It included Haman’s unexplained promotion (3:1).
It included the lot (“pur” in Hebrew) that Haman cast to determine when to destroy the Jews (3:7).
It included Esther’s hesitation to petition King Ahasuerus at the first banquet (5:6-8).
It included King Ahasuerus’ inability to sleep and the reading of Mordecai’s unrewarded deed (6:1-3).
It included the timing of Haman’s appearance at King Ahasuerus’ court when the king desired to reward Mordecai and Haman desired to murder him (6:4).
It included the reversal of what seemed to be certain destruction for the Jews (8-9).
4. Some recommended reading on Esther and/or the narrative genre
Karen Jobes, Esther (NIV Application Commentary; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 248 pp. Tremper Longman III, in Old Testament Commentary Survey (4th ed.; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2007), says this about it: “Without a doubt this is the best commentary to buy on Esther. It is informative about its original meaning and insightful on how to apply it to the contemporary world. Jobes is theologically astute and a good writer” (p. 77). Longman places Jobes’s Esther at the layperson-minister level and gives it five stars (his highest ranking).
This weekend my wife and I watched The Gospel of John film on DVD again, and I’m glad we did. I think we’ll make this an Easter weekend tradition. We watched this film for the first time in January 2006 after Phil Gons tipped me off to it, and we enjoy it so much that we’ve watched it about ten times.
About The Gospel of John film:
It is a three-hour presentation of the gospel of John in the Bible. (The 2-DVD set also comes with an abridged two-hour version, but I much prefer the three-hour version.)
It was produced by Visual Bible International, Inc.
It was released in some movie theaters in fall 2003.
It included Bruce Waltke on its board. He is one of the scholars featured in the interviews in a supplemental DVD about the movie (included in the 2-DVD set).
The Gospel of John is the best Bible film that I’ve ever seen. I enthusiastically recommend it for several reasons:
The film has an inspired script. The script is verbatim from the Good New Translation and it follows it unwaveringly. (This is not among my most preferred translations, but I agree with what the KJV translators wrote in the preface to the KJV: “the very meanest [i.e., poorest] translation of the Bible in English . . . containeth the word of God, nay, is the word of God.”) Except for occasionally excluding some narrative discourse indicators like “he said” or “she said,” the film script does not add or remove a single word, nor does it skip around or rearrange the material. It takes about 135 minutes to read the Gospel of John straight through (at least in my audioNET Bible), so the other forty-five minutes in this 180-minute film are elongations due to dramatic factors like pauses and setting the scene. Every other Bible film that I’ve seen irritates me in this regard by rearranging events, adding dialogue that is not in the text, and emphasizing themes that are not proportional to those emphasized in the text. (Cf. my review of One Night with the King.) The passion scenes, for example, include relatively little violence, which is in sharp contrast to Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (Wikipedia).
The film is classy. The actors, film angles, picture clarity, and soundtrack are first-class. It is evident that professionals, not amateurs, produced this.
The film is tasteful and modest, not offensive or flashy.
The film is creative and thought-provoking. The interpretive ways it portrays the scenes and dialogue is mind-stimulating. (This is not to say that I agree with every last detail of the film.) One creative feature is the use of black-and-white flashbacks during narratives that reference previous events in the book.
The film is instructional and edifying. A film cannot replace the written word, and it can even be detrimental. This film is valuable, however, because it makes you think more about the text in its historical context. (Aside: When we watch this DVD, we always turn on the closed captioning feature.) The film has provoked me to re-read and re-listen to the text of the gospel of John and check out commentaries (like this one, my favorite) on various passages. For example:
Every time my wife and I have watched the film, we have been struck with how arrogant Jesus’ statements must have sounded to other people. It is easy to read the gospel of John today and forget about the context in which Jesus uttered His statements. Seeing someone speak those same words reminds us that a human being claimed to be Yahweh. Staggering.
Jesus’ healing of the man born blind is vivid (John 9).
Perhaps the most moving part of the film is when Thomas sees the risen Lord and declares “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28). It brings tears to my eyes every time I see it.
The film is reverent. I dislike paintings of “God” because of their historical association with veneration and because they don’t help me worship God (not to mention how they relate to the second commandment). While watching this film, it has never crossed my mind that the actors were actually the real gospel characters; I know that because I’ve never felt like worshiping the person acting out Jesus! But the film has compelled me to worship Jesus for His perfect obedience in life and death.
The film is affordable and accessible. (This reason isolated from the others is weightless!) It is available as a DVD from Amazon.com for only $12.
Other reviews:
Ben Witherington, “The Gospel of John” (with other reviews after Witherington’s). Witherington later noted this sad news on his blog: “The makers of the wonderful verbatim version of the Gospel of John which had a terrific cast, after intending to also film the Gospel of Mark are bankrupt. They had worked through three scripts and planned to film, but the Gospel of John did not do well enough either in the theaters or on DVD.”
Tonight Jenni and I watched No Greater Love. We expected it to be another semi-cheesy Christian film, but it’s actually well done. It’s a surprisingly gripping story. Jenni almost never cries when watching movies, but this was different.
If you haven’t watched the six fifteen-to-twenty-minute “Modern Parables,” that would be time well spent. You can watch them all for free online.
Last night Jenni and I watched the film Fireproof, which came out on DVD this week. I was intrigued for at least two reasons: nearly every review I’ve read has been positive, and a wholesome movie with a $500,000 budget has already grossed about $33.5 million!
