Attacking others to show our love

There is already a lot of talk about a new movie coming out called The Golden Compass. The movie will be released tomorrow (Friday). The talk is from the church, and there are those calling for a boycott of the film.

Evidently it has some very atheistic messages in the film. Surprise, surprise! Hollywood is coming out with a film with an atheistic message. And the church is outraged. My question is why is the church outraged? Why are we surprised when lost people act lost?

What brought this to my attention was another blog that I read by Jack Hagar, which he calls Jack Hagar’s Jots and Thoughts. Jack pointed out that often a boycott has the opposite desire. As he puts it, “non-believers are prone to think anything the “church” is against is probably worth seeing!”

There is something in all of this that really bothers me. When people see the film and talk about it at water coolers and casual meetings, well meaning Christians will be criticizing the movie based on things they heard about the movie. If you don’t want to see it (and it sounds like that might be a good decision), then don’t criticize it. When people ask, tell them you didn’t see it because you understand it is opposed to faith, and you are a person of faith, and leave it at that.

I remember the talk surrounding the book (and subsequent movie), The Da Vinci Code. I once sat in a room of five other pastors, each talking about how they planned to refute it in their congregations, yet not one had seen it. How can we attack in our pulpits that which we don’t know?

I honestly believe that we give God a bad name when we to out of our way to criticize something we haven’t seen. We give Christianity a bad name when we attack what we don’t know.

God calls us to share our faith in love. We can’t share our faith in love when we attack other peoples faith systems. So forget the attack, just share your faith in love.