The Menace of the Religious Movie by A.
W.
Tozer When God gave to Moses the blueprint
of the tabernacle, he was careful to include
every detail.
Then, lest Moses should get the notion that
he could improve on the original plan, God
warned him solemnly, And looked that thou make
them after their pattern, which was shown thee
in the mount.
God, not Moses, was the architect.
To decide the plan was the prerogative of
the deity.
No one dare alter it, so much as
a hair's breadth.
The New Testament Church also is built after
a pattern.
Not the doctrines only, but the methods are
divinely given.
The doctrines are expressly stated in so many
words.
Some of the methods followed by the early
New Testament Church had been given by direct
command.
Others were used by God's specific approval, having
obviously been commanded the apostles by the Spirit.
The point is that when the New Testament
canon was closed, the blueprint for the age
was complete.
God has added nothing since that time.
From God's revealed plan, we depart at our
peril.
Every departure has two consequences, the immediate and
the remote.
The immediate touches the individual and those close
to him.
The remote extends into the future to unknown
times, and may expand so far as to
influence for evil the whole Church of God
on earth.
The temptation to introduce new things into the
work of God has always been too strong
for some people to resist.
The Church has suffered untold injury at the
hands of well-intentioned, but misguided persons who
have felt that they know more about running
God's work than Christ and his apostles did.
A solid train of boxcars would not suffice
to haul away the religious truck, which has
been brought into the service of the Church
with the hope of improving on the original
pattern.
These things have been, one and all, positive
hindrances to the progress of the truth, and
have so altered the divinely planned structure that
the apostles, were they to return to earth
today, would scarcely recognize the misshapen thing which
has resulted.
Our Lord, while on earth, cleansed the temple,
and periodic cleansings have been necessary in the
Church of God throughout the centuries.
Every generation is sure to have its ambitious
amateur to come up with some shiny gadget,
which he proceeds to urge upon the priests
before the altar.
That the Scriptures do not justify its existence
does not seem to bother him at all.
It is brought in anyway, and presented in
the very name of orthodoxy.
Soon, it is identified in the minds of
the Christian public with all that is good
and holy.
Then, of course, to attack the gadget is
to attack the truth itself.
This is an old familiar technique, so often
and so long practiced by the devotees of
error, that I marvel how the children of
God can be taken in by it.
We of the evangelical faith are in the
rather awkward position of criticizing Roman Catholicism for
its weight of unscriptural impedimenta, and at the
same time tolerating in our own churches a
world of religious fribble as bad as holy
water, or the elevated host.
Heresy of method may be as deadly as
heresy of message.
Old-line Protestantism has long ago been smothered
to death by extra-scriptural rubbish.
Unless we of the gospel churches wake up
soon, we shall most surely die by the
same means.
Within the last few years, a new method
has been invented for imparting spiritual knowledge, or
to be more accurate, it is not new
at all, but is an adaptation of a
gadget of some year's standing.
One which by its origin and background belongs
not to the church, but to the world.
Some within the fold of the church have
thrown their mantle over it, have blessed it
with the text, and are now trying to
show that it is the very gift of
God for our day.
But however eloquent the sales talk, it is
an unauthorized addition nevertheless, and was never a
part of the pattern shown us on the
mount.
I refer, of course, to the religious movie.
For the motion picture as such, I have
no irrational allergy.
It is a mechanical invention merely, and is
in its essence amoral.
That is, it is neither good nor bad,
but neutral.
With any physical object, or any creature lacking
the power of choice, it could not be
otherwise.
Whether such an object is useful or harmful
depends altogether upon who uses it, and what
he uses it for.
No moral quality attaches where there is no
free choice.
Sin and righteousness lie in the will.
The motion picture is in the same class
as the automobile, the typewriter, or the radio.
A powerful instrument for good or evil, depending
upon how it is applied.
For teaching the facts of physical science, the
motion picture has been useful.
The public schools have used it successfully to
teach health habits to children.
The army employed it to speed up instruction
during the war.
That it has been of real service within
its limited field is freely acknowledged here.
Over against this is the fact that the
motion picture in evil hands has been a
source of moral corruption to millions.
No one who values his reputation as a
responsible adult will deny that the sex movie
and the crime movie have done untold injury
to the lives of countless young people in
our generation.
The harm lies not in the instrument itself,
but in the evil will of those who
use it for their own selfish ends.
I am convinced that the modern religious movie
is an example of the harmful misuse of
a neutral instrument.
There are sound reasons for my belief.
I am prepared to state them.
That I may be as clear as possible,
let me explain what I do and do
not mean by the religious movie.
I do not mean the missionary picture, nor
the travel picture which aims to focus attention
upon one or another section of the world's
great harvest field.
These do not come under consideration here.
By the religious movie, I mean that type
of motion picture which attempts to treat spiritual
themes by dramatic representation.
These are, as their advocates dare not deny,
frank imitations of the authentic Hollywood variety.
But the truth requires me to say that
they are infinitely below their models, being mostly
awkward, amateurish, and from an artistic standpoint, hopelessly
and piteously bad.
These pictures are produced by acting a religious
story before the camera.
Take for example the famous and beautiful story
of the prodigal son.
This would be made into a movie by
treating the narrative as a scenario.
Stage scenery would be set up.
Actors would take the roles of father, prodigal
son, elder brother, etc.
There would be plot, sequence, and dramatic denouement,
as in the ordinary tearjerker shown at the
Bijou movie house on Main Street, in any
one of a thousand American towns.
The story would be acted out, photographed, run
onto reels, and shipped around the country to
be shown for a few, wherever desired.
The service where such a movie would be
shown might seem much like any other service
until time for the message from the word
of God.
Then the lights would be put out, and
the picture turned on.
The message would consist of this movie.
What followed the picture would, of course, vary
with the circumstances.
But often an invitation song is sung, and
a tender appeal is made for erring sinners
to return to God.
Now, what is wrong with all this?
Or go out of his way to oppose
its use in the house of God?
Here is my answer.
One, it violates the scriptural law of hearing.
The power of speech is a noble gift
of God.
In his ability to open his mouth, and
by means of words make his fellows know
what is going on inside his mind, a
man shares one of the prerogatives of the
Creator.
In its ability to understand the spoken word,
the human mind rises unique above all the
lower creation.
The gift which enables a man to translate
abstract ideas into sounds is a badge of
his honor as made in the image of
God.
Written or printed words are sound symbols, and
are translated by the mind into hearing.
Hieroglyphics and ideograms were, in effect, not pictures
but letters, and the letters were agreed-upon
marks which stood for agreed-upon ideas.
Thus, words, whether spoken or written, are a
medium for the communication of ideas.
This is basic in human nature, and stems
from our divine origin.
It is significant that when God gave to
mankind his great redemptive revelation, he couched it
in words.
And God spake all these words very well
sums up the Bible's own account of how
it got here.
Thus saith the Lord is the constant refrain
of the prophets.
The words that I speak unto you, they
are spirit, and they are life, said our
Lord to his hearers.
Again he said, Paul made
words and faith to be inseparable.
Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the
word of God.
And he also said, Surely it requires no
genius to see that the Bible rules out
pictures and dramatics as media for bringing faith
and life to the human soul.
The plain fact is that no vital spiritual
truth can be expressed by a picture.
Actually, all any picture can do is to
recall to mind some truth already learned through
the familiar medium of the spoken or written
word.
Religious instruction and words are bound together by
a living cord, and cannot be separated without
fatal loss.
The spirit himself, teaching soundlessly within the heart,
makes use of ideas previously received into the
mind by means of words.
If I am reminded that modern religious movies
are sound pictures making use of the human
voice to augment the dramatic action, the answer
is easy.
Just as far as the movie depends upon
spoken words, it makes pictures unnecessary.
The picture is the very thing that differentiates
between the movie and the sermon.
The movie addresses its message primarily to the
eye, and to the ear only incidentally.
Were the message addressed to the ear as
in the scriptures, the picture would have no
meaning, and could be omitted without loss of
the intended effect.
Words can say all that God intends them
to say, and this they can do without
the aid of pictures.
According to one popular theory, the mind receives
through the eye five times as much information
as the ear.
As far as the external shell of physical
facts is concerned, this may hold good.
But when we come to spiritual truth, we
are in another world entirely.
In that world, the outer eye is not
too important.
God addresses his message to the hearing ear.
We look, says Paul, not at the things
which are seen, but at the things which
are not seen.
For the things which are seen are temporal,
but the things which are not seen are
eternal.
2 Corinthians 4.18. This agrees with the
whole burden of the Bible, which teaches us
that we should withdraw our eyes from beholding
visible things, and fasten the eyes of our
hearts upon God while we reverently listen to
his uttered words.
The word is nigh thee, even in my
mouth and in mine heart.
That is the word of faith which we
preach.
Romans 10.8. Here, and not somewhere else,
is the New Testament pattern, and no human
being, and no angel from heaven, has any
right to alter that pattern.
2.
The religious movie embodies the mischievous notion that
religion is or can be made a form
of entertainment.
This notion has come upon us lately like
a tidal wave, and is either openly taught
or tacitly assumed by increasing numbers of people.
Since it is inextricably bound up with the
subject under discussion, I had better say more
about it.
The idea that religion should be entertaining has
made some radical changes in the evangelical picture
within this generation.
It has given us not only the gospel
movie, but a new type of religious journalism
as well.
It has created a new kind of magazine
for church people, which can be read from
cover to cover without effort, without thought, and
without profit.
It has also brought a veritable flood of
religious fiction, with plastic heroines and bloodless heroes
like no one who has ever lived upon
this well-known terrestrial ball.
That religion and amusement are forever opposed to
each other by their very essential natures is
apparently not known to this new school of
religious entertainers.
Their effort to slip up on the reader
and administer a quick shot of saving truth
and focus on something else is not only
futile, it is in fact not too far
short of being plain dishonest.
The hope that they can convert a man
while he is occupied with the doings of
some imaginary hero reminds one of the story
of the Catholic missionary who used to sneak
up on sick people and children and splash
a little holy water on them to guarantee
their passage to the city of gold.
I believe that most responsible religious teachers will
agree that any effort to teach spiritual truth
through entertainment is at best futile and at
worst positively injurious to the soul.
But entertainment pays off, and the economic consideration
is always a powerful one in deciding what
shall and what shall not be offered to
the public, even in the churches.
Deep spiritual experiences come only from much study,
earnest prayer, and long meditation.
It is true that men by thinking cannot
find God.
It is also true that men cannot know
God very well without a lot of reverent
thinking.
Religious movies, by appealing directly to the shallowest
stratum of our minds, cannot but create bad
mental habits which unfit the soul for the
reception of genuine spiritual impressions.
Religious movies are mistakenly thought by some people
to be blessed of the Lord because many
come away from them with moist eyes.
If this is a proof of God's blessing,
then we might as well go the whole
way and assert that every show that brings
tears is of God.
Those who attend the theater know how often
the audiences are moved to tears by the
joys and sorrows of the highly paid entertainers
who kiss and emote and murder and die
for the purpose of exciting the spectators to
a high pitch of emotional excitement.
Men and women who are dedicated to sin
and appointed to death may nevertheless weep in
sympathy for the painted actors and be not
one bit the better for it.
The emotions have had a beautiful time, but
the will is left untouched.
The religious movie is sure to draw together
a goodly number of persons who cannot distinguish
the twinges of vicarious sympathy from the true
operations of the Holy Ghost.
Three, the religious movie is a menace to
true religion because it embodies acting, a violation
of sincerity.
Without doubt, the most precious thing any man
possesses is his individuated being, that by which
he is himself and not someone else, that
which cannot be finally voided by the man
himself nor shared with another.
Each one of us, however humble our place
in the social scheme, is unique in creation.
Each is a new whole man possessing his
own separate I-ness that makes him forever
something apart, an individual human being.
It is this quality of uniqueness which permits
a man to enjoy every reward of virtue
and makes him responsible for every sin.
It is his self-ness which will persist
forever and which distinguishes him from every creature
which has been or ever will be created.
Because man is such a being as this,
all moral teachers, and especially Christ and his
apostles, make sincerity to be basic in the
good life.
The word, as the New Testament uses it,
refers to the practice of holding fine pottery
up to the sun to test it for
purity.
In the white light of the sun, all
foreign substances were instantly exposed.
So the test of sincerity is basic in
human character.
The sincere man is one in whom is
found nothing foreign.
He is all of one piece.
He has preserved his individuality unviolated.
Sincerity for each man means staying in character
with himself.
Christ's controversy with the Pharisees centered around their
incurable habit of moral play-acting.
The Pharisee constantly pretended to be what he
was not.
He attempted to vacate his own I-ness
and appear in that of another and better
man.
He assumed a false character and played it
for effect.
Christ said he was a hypocrite.
It is more than an etymological accident that
the word hypocrite comes from the stage.
It means actor.
With that instinct for fitness which usually marks
word origins, it has been used to signify
one who has violated his sincerity and is
playing a false part.
An actor is one who assumes a character
other than his own and plays it for
effect.
The more fully he can become possessed by
another personality, the better he is as an
actor.
Bacon has said something to the effect that
there are some professions of such nature that
the more skillfully a man can work at
them, the worse man he is.
That perfectly describes the profession of acting.
Stepping out of our own character for any
reason is always dangerous and may be fatal
to the soul.
However innocent his intentions, a man who assumes
a false character has betrayed his own soul
and has deeply injured something sacred within him.
No one who has been in the presence
of the Most Holy One who has felt
how high is the solemn privilege of bearing
his image will ever again consent to play
a part or to trifle with that most
sacred thing, his own deep, sincere heart.
He will thereafter be constrained to be no
one but himself, to preserve reverently the sincerity
of his own soul.
In order to produce a religious movie, someone
must, for the time, disguise his individuality and
simulate that of another.
His actions must be judged fraudulent and those
who watch them with approval share in the
fraud.
To pretend to pray, to simulate godly sorrow,
to play at worship before the camera for
effect, how utterly shocking to the reverent heart.
How can Christians who approve this gross pretense
ever understand the value of sincerity as taught
by our Lord?
What will be the end of a generation
of Christians fed on such a diet of
deception disguised as the faith of our fathers?
The plea that all this must be good
because it is done for the glory of
God is a gossamer thin bit of rationalizing
which should not fool anyone above the mental
age of six.
Such an argument parallels the evil rule of
expediency which holds the end is everything and
sanctifies the means, however evil, if only the
end be commendable.
The wise student of history will recognize this
immoral doctrine.
The spirit-led church will have no part
of it.
It is not uncommon to find around the
theater human flotsam and jetsam washed up by
the years.
Men and women who have played false parts
so long that the power to be sincere
has forever gone from them.
They are doomed to everlasting duplicity.
Every act of their lives is faked.
Every smile is false.
Every tone of their voice artificial.
The curse does not come causeless.
It is not by chance that the actor's
profession has been notoriously dissolute.
Hollywood and Broadway are two sources of corruption
which may yet turn America into a Sodom
and lay her glory in the dust.
The profession of acting did not originate with
the Hebrews.
It is not a part of the divine
pattern.
The Bible mentions it but never approves it.
Drama, as it has come down to us,
had its rise in Greece.
It was originally a part of the worship
of the god Dionysus and was carried on
with drunken revelry.
The miracle plays of medieval times have been
brought forward to justify the modern religious movie.
That is an unfortunate weapon to choose for
the defense of the movie for it will
surely harm the man who uses it more
than any argument I could think of just
offhand.
The miracle plays had their big run in
the Middle Ages.
They were dramatic performances with religious themes staged
for the entertainment of the populace.
At their best, they were misguided efforts to
teach spiritual truths by dramatic representation.
At their worst, they were shockingly irreverent and
thoroughly reprehensible.
In some of them, the eternal god was
portrayed as an old man dressed in white
with a gilt wig.
To furnish low comedy, the devil himself was
introduced on the stage and allowed to cavort
for the amusement of the spectators.
Bible themes were used as in the modern
movie, but this did not save the whole
thing from becoming so corrupt that the Roman
Church had finally to prohibit its priests from
having any further part in it.
Those who would appeal for president to the
miracle plays have certainly overlooked some important facts.
For instance, the vogue of the miracle play
coincided exactly with the most dismally corrupt period
the Church has ever known.
When the Church emerged at last from its
long moral night, these plays lost popularity and
finally passed away.
And be it remembered, the instrument God used
to bring the Church out of the darkness
was not drama.
It was the biblical one of spirit-baptized
preaching.
It was the truth and the people turned
to God.
Indeed, history will show that no spiritual advance,
no revival, no upsurge of spiritual life has
ever been associated with acting in any form.
The Holy Spirit never honors pretense.
Can it be that the historic pattern is
being repeated?
That the appearance of the religious movie is
symptomatic of the low state of spiritual health
we are in today?
Only the absence of the Holy Spirit from
the pulpit and the lack of true discernment
on the part of professing Christians can account
for the spread of religious drama among so
-called evangelical churches.
A spirit-filled church could not tolerate it.
Four.
They who present the gospel movie owe it
to the public to give biblical authority for
their act, and this they have not done.
The Holy Spirit goes along in Bible ways
and can give a scriptural reason for its
conduct.
Its members meet at state of times to
pray together.
This has biblical authority back then.
They gather to hear the word of God
expounded.
This goes back in almost unbroken continuity to
Moses.
They sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,
so they are commanded by the apostle.
They visit the sick of the poor.
For this they have both precept and example
in holy writ.
They lay up their gifts and bring them
at state of times to the church or
chapel to be used in the Lord's work.
This also follows the scriptural pattern.
They teach and train and instruct.
They appoint teachers and pastors and missionaries and
send them out to do the work for
which the Spirit has gifted them.
All this has plain scriptural authority behind it.
They share the bread and witness to the
lost.
They cling together through thick and thin.
They bear each other's burdens and share each
other's sorrows.
This is as it should be.
And for all this, there is full authority.
Now for the religious movie, where is the
authority?
For such a serious departure from the ancient
pattern, where is the authority?
For introducing into the church the pagan art
of acting, let the movie advocates quote just
one verse from any book of the Bible
in any translation to justify its use.
This they cannot do.
The best they can do is to appeal
to the world's psychology or repeat brightly that
modern times call for modern methods.
But the scriptures quote from them one verse
to authorize movie acting as an instrument of
the Holy Ghost.
This they cannot do.
Every Christian must find scriptural authority for the
religious movie or reject it.
And every producer of such movies if he
would square himself before the faces of honest
and reverent men must either show scriptural credentials
or go out of business.
But says someone there is nothing unscriptural about
the religious movie.
It is merely a new medium for the
utterance of the old message as printing is
a newer and better method of writing familiar
human speech.
To this I reply.
The movie is not the modernization or improvement
of any scriptural method.
Rather it is a medium in itself wholly
foreign to the Bible and altogether unauthorized therein.
It is play acting just that and nothing
more.
It is the introduction into the work of
God of that which is not neutral but
entirely bad.
The printing press is neutral.
So is the radio.
They may be used for good or bad
purposes at the will of the user.
But play acting is bad in its essence
in that it involves the simulation of emotions
not actually felt.
It embodies a gross moral contradiction in that
it calls a lie to the service of
truth.
Arguments for the religious movie are sometimes clever
and always shallow but there is never any
real attempt to cite scriptural authority.
There is prophetic dancing which is a highly
touted medium for teaching religious truth by appeal
to the eye.
Its advocates grow eloquent in its praise but
where is it indicated in the blueprint?
Five.
God has ordained four methods only by which
truth shall prevail and the religious movie is
not one of them.
Without attempting to arrange these methods in order
of importance they are one, prayer the transmission
of the message by means of words and
four, good works.
These are the four main methods which God
has blessed.
All other biblical methods are subdivisions of these
and stay within their framework.
Notice these in order.
One, spirit burdened prayer.
This has been through the centuries a powerful
agent for the spreading of saving truth among
men.
A praying church carried the message of the
cross to the world.
Read the book of Acts and see what
prayer has done and can do when it
is made in true faith.
Two, spirit inspired song has been another mighty
instrument in the spread of the word among
mankind.
When the church sings in the spirit she
draws men unto Christ.
Where her song has been ecstatic expression of
resurrection joy it has acted wonderfully to prepare
hearts for the saving message.
This has no reference to the popular gospel
chorus.
These for the time we leave out of
consideration but I think no one will deny
that the sound of a Christian hymn sung
by sincere and humble persons can have a
tremendous and permanent effect for good.
The Welsh revival is a fair modern example
of this.
Three, in the Old Testament as well as
in the New when God would impart his
mind to men he embodied it in a
message and sent men out to proclaim it.
It was the experience of speaking and writing
on the part of the messenger.
It was received by hearing and reading on
the part of those to whom it was
sent.
We are all familiar with the verse speak
ye comfortably to Jerusalem and cry unto her
Isaiah 42.
John the Baptist was called the voice of
one crying in the wilderness Matthew 3.3.
Again we have and I heard a voice
from heaven saying unto me write Revelation 14
.13. John opens his great work called the
Revelation by pronouncing a blessing upon him that
readeth and them that hear and keep the
words of the prophecy and the things which
are written therein.
The two words proclaim and publish sum up
God's will as it touches his word.
In the Bible men for the most part
wrote what had been spoken.
In our time men are commissioned to speak
what has been written.
In both cases the agent is a word
never a picture, a dance but an agent.
Four, by his healing deeds our Lord opened
the way for his saving words.
He went about doing good and his church
is commanded to do the same.
Faber understood this when he wrote and preach
thee too as love knows how by kindly
deeds and virtuous life.
Church history is replete with instances of missionaries
who were not hostile but who melted under
the warm rays of practical kindness as shown
to them in time of need.
If anyone should object to calling good works
a method I would not argue the point.
Perhaps it would be more accurate to say
that they are an overflow into everyday life
of the reality of what is being proclaimed.
These are God's appointed methods set forth in
the Bible and confirmed in centuries and in
violation of spiritual laws as old as the
world.
The whole preach the gospel with movies idea
is founded upon the same basic assumptions as
modernism namely that the word of God is
not final and that we of this day
have a perfect right to add to it
or alter it wherever we think we can
improve it.
A brazen example of this attitude came to
my attention recently.
Preliminary printed matter sent out announcing that a
new organization is in process of being formed.
It is to be called the International Radio
and Screen Artists Guild and one of its
two major objectives is to promote the movie
as a medium for the spread of the
gospel.
Its sponsors apparently are not modernists but confessed
fundamentalists.
Some of its declared purposes are to produce
movies to raise and maintain higher standards in
the movie field.
This would be done it says here by
having much prayer with leaders of the movie
industry.
To challenge people especially young people to those
fields as they are challenged to go to
foreign fields.
This last point should not be allowed to
pass without some of us doing a little
challenging on our own account.
Does this new organization actually propose in seriousness
to add another gift to the gifts of
the spirit listed in the New Testament?
To the number of the spirit's gifts such
as pastor, teacher, evangelist is there now to
be added another?
The gift of the movie actor?
To the appeal for consecrated Christian young people
to serve as missionaries on the foreign field.
Is there to be added an appeal for
young people to do exactly what this new
organization does propose in cold type over the
signature of its temporary chairman.
Instead of the Holy Spirit saying separate me
Barnabas and Saul for the work whereinto I
have called them.
Acts 13.2 These people will make use
of what they call a Christian talent listing
to consist of the names of Christian actors
thus the order set up in the New
Testament is openly violated and by professed lovers
of the gospel who say unto Jesus Lord
Lord but openly set aside his lordship whenever
they desire.
No amount of smooth talk can explain away
this serious act of insubordination.
Saul lost the kingdom when he forced himself
to endure some dark night soon.
Six.
The religious movie is out of harmony with
the whole spirit of the scriptures and contrary
to the mood of true godliness.
To harmonize the spirit of the religious movie
with the spirit of the sacred scriptures is
impossible.
Any comparison is grotesque and if it were
not so serious would be downright funny.
To imagine Elijah appearing before Ahab with a
roll of film.
Imagine Peter standing up at Pentecost and saying
let's have the lights out please.
When Jeremiah hesitated to prophesy on the plea
that he was not a fluent speaker God
touched his mouth and said I have put
my words in my mouth.
Perhaps Jeremiah could have gotten on well enough
without the divine touch if he had had
a good 16 millimeter projector and a reel
of home talent film.
Let a man dare to compare his religious
movie show with the spirit of the book
of Acts.
Let him try to find a place for
it in the 12th chapter of 1st Corinthians.
Let him set it beside Savonarola's passionate preaching
or Luther's thundering or Wesley's heavenly sermons or
Edward's awful appeals.
If he cannot see the difference in kind
then he is too blind to be trusted
with leadership in the church of the living
God.
The only thing that he can do appropriate
to the circumstances is to drop to his
knees and cry with poor Bartimaeus Lord that
I might receive my sight.
But some say we do not propose to
displace the regular method of preaching the gospel.
We only want to supplement it.
To this I answer if the movie is
needed to supplement anointed preaching it can only
be because God's appointed method is inadequate and
the movie can do something which God's appointed
method cannot do.
What is that thing?
We freely grant that the movie can produce
effects which preaching cannot produce and which it
should never try to produce.
But dare we strive for such effects in
the light of God's revealed will and in
the face of the judgment and a long
eternity?
Seven.
I am against the religious movie because of
the harmful effect upon everyone associated with it.
First the evil effect upon the actors who
play the part of the various characters in
the show.
This is not the less because it is
unsuspected.
Who can while in a state of fellowship
with God dare to play at being a
prophet?
Who has the gall to pretend to be
an apostle even in a show?
Where is his reverence?
Where is his fear?
Where is his humility?
Anyone who can bring himself to act a
part for any purpose must first have grieved
the spirit and silenced his voice within the
heart.
Then the whole business will appear good to
him.
He feedeth on ashes.
A deceived heart has turned him aside.
Isaiah 44 20 But he cannot escape the
secret working of the ancient laws of the
soul.
Something high and fine and grand will die
within him and worst of all he will
never suspect it.
That is the curse that follows self-injury
always.
The Pharisees were examples of this.
They were walking dead men and they never
dreamed how dead they were.
Secondly, it identifies religion with the theatrical world.
I have seen recently in a fundamentalist magazine
an advertisement of a religious film which would
be altogether at home on the theatrical page
in any city newspaper.
Illustrated with the usual sex bait picture of
a young woman and a young man in
tender embrace and spangled with such words as
feature length, drama, pathos, romance.
It reeked of Hollywood and the cheap movie
house.
By such business we are selling out our
Christian separation and nothing but grief can come
of it late or soon.
Thirdly, the taste for drama which these pictures
develop in the minds of the young will
not long remain satisfied with the inferior stuff
the religious movie can offer.
Our young people will demand the real thing
and what can we reply when they ask
why they should not patronize the regular movie
house.
Fourthly, the rising generation will naturally come to
look upon religion as another and inferior form
of amusement.
In fact, the present generation Yahwist has done
this to an alarming extent already and the
gospel feeds the notion by fusing religion and
fun in the name of orthodoxy.
It takes no great insight to see that
the religious movie must become increasingly more thrilling
as the tastes of the spectators become more
and more stimulated.
Fifthly, the religious movie is the lazy preacher's
friend.
If the present vogue continues to spread it
will not be long before any man with
enough ability to make an audible prayer and
mentality enough to focus a projector will be
able to pass for a prophet of the
Most High God.
The man of God can play around all
week and come up to the Lord's Day
without a care.
Everything has been done for him at the
studio.
He has only to set up the screen
and lower the lights and the rest follows
painlessly.
Wherever the movie is used, the prophet is
displaced by the projector.
The least that such displaced prophet can do
is to admit that they are technicians and
not preachers.
Let them admit that they are not God
sent men ordained of God for a sacred
work.
Let them put away their pretense.
Allowing that there may be some who have
been truly called and gifted of God but
who have allowed themselves to be taken in
by this new play thing, the danger to
such is still great.
As long as they can fall back upon
the movie, the pressure that makes preachers will
be wanting.
The habit and rhythm which belong to great
preaching will be missing from their ministry.
However great their natural gifts, however real their
endowment of power, still they will never rise.
They cannot while this broken reed lies close
at hand to aid them in the crisis.
The movie will doom them to be ordinary.
In conclusion, one thing may bother some earnest
souls.
Why so many good people approve the religious
movie?
The list of those who are enthusiastic about
it includes many who cannot be written off
as borderline Christians.
If it is an evil, why have not
these denounced it?
The answer is lack of spiritual discernment.
Many who are turning to the movie are
the same who have, by direct teaching or
by neglect, discredited the work of the Holy
Spirit.
They have apologized for the spirit and so
hedged him in by their unbelief that it
has amounted to an out-and-out repudiation.
Now we are paying the price for our
folly.
The light has gone out and good men
are forced to stumble around in the darkness
of the human intellect.
The religious movie is at present undergoing a
period of gestation and seems about to swarm
over the churches like a cloud of locusts
out of the earth.
The figure is accurate.
They are coming from below, not from above.
The whole modern psychology has been prepared for
this invasion of insects.
The fundamentalists have become weary of manna and
are longing for red flesh.
What they are getting is a sorry substitute
for the lusty and uninhibited pleasures of the
world, but I suppose it is better than
nothing and it stays face by pretending to
be spiritual.
Let us not, for the sake of peace,
keep still while men without spiritual insight dictate
the diet upon which God's children shall feed.
I heard the president of a Christian college
say some time ago that the church is
suffering from an epidemic of amateurism.
That remark is sadly true and the religious
movie represents amateurism gone wild.
Unity among professing Christians is to be desired,
but not at the expense of righteousness.
It is good to go with the flock,
but I for one refuse mutely to follow
a misled flock over a precipice.
If God has given wisdom to see the
error of religious shows, we owe it to
the church to oppose them openly.
We dare not take refuge in guilty silence.
Error is not silent.
It is highly vocal and amazingly aggressive.
We dare not be less so, but let
us take heart.
There are still many thousands of Christian people
who grieve to see the world take over.
If we draw the line and call attention
to it, we may be surprised how many
people will come over on our side and
help us drive from the church this latest
invader, the spirit of Hollywood.
Amen.
And amen.