Courageous Review

I'll admit, after seeing Fireproof, I wasn't excited for the movie Courageous.  What I was excited for was the quadruple supper date that preceded the movie.  

And once I got over the giggles from the fact that we were watching it in a one-room theater like the Rialto with squeaky, duct-taped seats (yes, I totally missed the glitz and glamour and busyness of big city theaters - snobby me, I know!), I enjoyed the movie.  I enjoyed the action, drama, and the plot.  I was most impressed with the way that actors didn't make their "Christianese" seem so nerdy like in Fireproof.

   But even though I enjoyed the movie and would recommend it, there were still a few things that didn't sit right with me.  For example, the Christianity that they sought to convey wasn't always clear.  It was always about god.  god, god, god.  One could ask which god?  God -  The Triune God?  The Gospel of Jesus Christ was mentioned a few times, but it wasn't the emphasis.

As we watched these four men struggle through life - as fathers, as husbands, as bread-winners, etc. - it was evident that life isn't easy.  Unfortunately, instead of encouraging it's viewers to "...take up his cross daily and follow me," (Luke 9:23), the movie portrayed a man-centered, "I can do this" attitude with no emphasis on Christ & His Gospel as the Author and Perfecter of our faith.  As Anthony Parisi writes:

Courageous rejects nuance and the cross-bearing pilgrimage of the Christian life for artificially neat resolutions to the prayers of its one-dimensional characters. Sherwood continues to make films with God functioning primarily as a tool for our lives—whether he’s helping us win football games, repair our struggling marriages, or helping us find a job within seconds of a cry to the heavens. Brief, passing references to the gospel are only seen useful to convert a skeptic, who in a few tearful seconds somehow embraces the faith. Despite all the sermonizing dialogue—the story’s form and emphatic message has all of its focus on us and our accomplishments, not Christ and his work for us.

 Mr. Parisi goes on to encourage Christians not to baptize art by saying:

While surely produced with good intentions, Courageous is likely to further entrench the misguided culture wars and bring harm to the Christian witness in the world. Alongside the political arena, art is another place where confusion about the institutional church and the way it interacts with culture is common. Churches should always encourage individual members to take up vocations in the arts, but this is to be done out of love for one’s neighbor and needs to embrace the totality of life. Films like this reinforce the unfortunate impulse that anything we create must be explicitly “Christianized” or evangelistic. Churches are to spread the kingdom not by some sort of cultural revival but by the unglamorous life of local ministry God has founded on Word and sacrament. Making movies falls far outside the bounds of what the church has been called to do.

And what about those men who may have warmed a church pew a few times in their lives but truly want to be a Courageous man?  This movie doesn't help men see "where to go from here" or how to persevere when the road gets tough.  Gritting your teeth and looking at a piece of paper titled "Resolutions" won't get you anywhere - it's only Jesus Christ that will change hearts and lives.  Men who want to be Courageous must get plugged into a Gospel-preaching church.

If you see Courageous, enjoy it for what it is - entertainment.  Be motivated and humbled to be a better father (or mother) because of the Gospel of Jesus Christ - because Christ has been Most Courageous on the cross.   Daily we will continue to fall short as parents, and that's why we must take up our cross and follow Him.  And, by living in Christ's grace, may we extend that to our children.