CINDERELLA ALWAYS FINDS HER FELLA II

John and Barbara Bookman have been married for 9 years, but their marriage is in trouble, serious trouble. If you listen to Barbara, John doesn't care any more. He doesn't pay her the attention he did 8 years ago when everything was hearts and flowers, prose and poems. Back then, John was a romantic who would compose the most romantic of letters and lavish the most lavish of gifts. That was John Bookman back in the day: thoughtful, considerate to the core.

Something else was bothering Barbara: John had just flat out quit going to church and she was beginning to doubt his salvation. He hadn't read a Christian book on marriage in years, if ever. As best as Barbara could remember, John hadn't watched a televangelist his entire life. "Maybe John isn't a Christian," she concluded.

From Barbara's point of view, things were getting worse. That's when she got an idea. The idea came to her while watching Pastor Goodpasture's weekly TV program, "Heaven: Have It Now." During Pastor Goodpasture's sermon, "Keep Positive, Pollyanna," he mentioned a new movie called, "Fireproof."

He explained that it was the story about the deteriorating marriage of a fireman and his wife, and how Christ saved the marriage, making it "fireproof." The photogenic Pastor Goodpasture said that any marriage could be saved if the husband would only put into practice the techniques shown in the film.  (Pastor Goodpasture knew all this because he'd seen the movie at a special screening for all "community leaders" free of charge.)

Many times,while watching "Heaven: You Can Have It Now," Barbara had thought, "If only my husband could be like Pastor Goodpasture."

This was the answer to Barbara's prayer, but her problem was getting John into the theater because he didn't like crowds, thought the ticket prices were outrageous, believed the concession stand to be a rip-off, and didn't like fighting his way through the traffic on the Interstate to get to the  CinePlex 16.

But Barbara was determined. If she could just get John into the theater, she knew the movie would do the rest. The next day she told John that there was a new movie she knew he would like. "It's about firefighters and I've  heard it's really good," she told John.

She knew John had liked "The Towering Inferno," which they saw on Netflix and it was about a fire and firemen. After a bit of nagging, John agreed, since it was his pattern to cave into Barbara's Harpy-like emotional insistence, and, if it's like "The Towering Inferno" or even "Frequency," it might be pretty good, John decided. But he did wonder why Barbara became so emotional about going to a movie. 

The night came and John and Barbara went to the theater. It wasn't too long into the plot that John realized he'd been had. He sat and watched as several times in the story there was an explicit evangelism encounter forced into the story that made him squirm.

Everyone in the theater knew those "turn or burn" parts of the story were aimed at non-Christians. In this way, the script shoehorned the evangelistic encounter into the plot. John felt like he was sitting through an altar call as one character in the movie explained to another how he/she is a sinner and needed Jesus.

So the audience will get the point, an evangelistic encounter invaded the movie three times. John cringed every time, feeling like he was watching an intervention. It was like the time he was watching the Academy Awards when several of the Oscar winners like Michael Moore abused the audience to give unannounced liberal political speeches no one asked for and no one attended or watched the function to hear.

Besides that, John noticed something about the story line:

1. The wife has a disobedient husband who doesn't follow her leadership.
2. The wife gripes, but her husband still won't submit to her.
3. The wife never repents of her sins: she's never rebuked for lining up the doctor for either an affair or as a husband, she's never admonished for violating I Cor. 7:3-5. The husband confronts the doctor, but never his own wife.
4. Wife threatens divorce.
5. The threat of divorce is the catalyst to help God change her husband.
6. Wife delivers the divorce papers.
7. Husband grovels and completely surrenders to her. (He grovels and weeps at her feet, begs for her forgiveness; purchases her love by giving up $25,000 he had been saving for a boat and instead buys used medical furniture for his mother-in-law. Now his wife realizes he has become a “beautiful” man. And a wife is supposed to respect a Casper Milquetoast like that?)
8. Wife knows that God has transformed her husband.*

John Bookman left the theater, not feeling guilty as Barbara had hoped, but angry. He'd been ambushed. As the final credits were rolling, John stormed out, walking in silence by Barbara, wondering how many other ambushed husbands were in the theater that night. He felt sorry for them and angry about the whole ruined evening.

AN INHERENT PROBLEM WITH CHRISTIAN MOVIES

What is it with Christian movies? What happens is an inherent dishonesty, a lack of integrity, the old "bait and switch." A Christian movie inherently contains the bait and switch ploy. As Andrew Barber, an English teacher at Stony Brook School sees the problem, all Christian films say, "Come see how good we Christians are at our movie-making craft, and, guess what?--While we have you in the theater, we'd like to convert you."

"Welcome to my parlor " said the spider to the fly. Ambushed!

No one likes to be the victim of a bait and switch. A friend of mine, an elder in the church, invited everybody in our circle but me to a meeting to learn how to lower their taxes. At least, that's what he said the meeting was about. I didn't go because I wasn't invited, but I learned my absence was a good thing--the bait and switch ploy was in full swing that evening. It wasn't really a meeting on how to lower your taxes, it was a meeting to recruit people into Amway.

BUT IF JUST ONE

Some will say, "But if just one person is saved, isn't that a good thing?" If you say that, you've just proved my point--that the evangelism encounters are aimed at the audience and not a real part of the story. Do we really want to go there, to the-end-justifies-any-method of evangelistic encounter? If we open that Pandora's Box, who knows where we'll end up? I might preach a miserable sermon (or two or three, for that matter--that's real life) and someone is saved. Does that justify my making every sermon more miserable, cringe-worthy, and embarrassing than the last? "The idea that one conversion validates even the worst methods can be used to validate all sorts of evils." (Andrew Barber)

In "Fireproof" Cinderella got her fella, while flirting with a married doctor, getting entangled in an emotional affair free from confrontation and repentance, while violating I Cor. 7, and threatening her husband, but, as in every Christian movie, she lived happily ever after. The movie set it up to where the fault was all his, even for her flirtations and emotional affair (!).

But there's more.

To be continued................
  _______________________________________________________________________________
 *From Dalrock
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Dr. Mike Halsey is the chancellor of Grace Biblical Seminary, a Bible teacher at the Hangar Bible Fellowship, the author of Truthspeak and his new book, The Gospel of Grace and Truth: A Theology of Grace from the Gospel of John," both available on Amazon.com. A copy of his book, Microbes in the Bloodstream of the Church, is also available as an E-book on Amazon.com. If you would like to a receive a copy of his weekly Bible studies and other articles of biblical teaching and application, you can do so by writing to Dr. Halsey at michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net and requesting, "The Hangar Bible Fellowship Journal."

Comments may be addressed to michaeldhalsey@bellsouth.net.

If you would like to contribute to his ministry according to the principle of II Corinthians 9:7, you may do so by making your check out to Hangar Bible Fellowship and mailing it to 65 Teal Ct., Locust Grove, GA 30248. All donations are tax deductible.

Come visit the Hangar some Sunday at 10 AM at the above address. You'll be glad you did.

Other recommended grace-oriented websites are:

notbyworks.org
literaltruth.org
gracebiblicalseminary.org
duluthbible.org
clarityministries.org

Also:

Biblical Ministries, Inc.
C/O Dr. Richard Grubbs
P. O. Box 64582
Lubbock, TX 79464-4582