The Necessity of a Glorious Church

This is a excerpt from a paper I wrote for a film class last semester. I will post this for now, let it brew a bit, then expound a bit a little later when I have more time.

Hopefully the necessity of a miraculous church will make more sense in Part 2, but I felt the need to explain this first part of my argument before moving on, and how better to do it than with something I know I've already written well.

So read, respond, and if you are confused or intrigued, offended or outraged, let me know, and wait for the second post....

Hopefully the rest of the entries will be a bit shorter. I think it is worth the read though.


"The Passion of the Christ: A Cultural Phenomenon" excerpt

"It makes sense to use emotional impact as a measuring stick for the likelihood of a conversion, considering the reliance upon emotion as one of the sole factors in defining the conversion to the Christian faith. In the postmodern world, it is becoming increasingly difficult to define what exactly a conversion constitutes. A personal relationship is a rather subjective criterion by which to measure, so the reliance upon emotional experience to validate personal conviction is seemingly logical.

In the Bible, the book of Ephesians says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast” (2:8-9, NIV). If one hangs around any Evangelical long enough, one will surely hear these verses quoted, whether word for word, or more commonly as a catch phrase thrown about with other Christians. Their meaning is essentially this, it is a matter of the heart and a personal knowing as to whether or not one is “saved”, a matter of faith. It is not something you can earn by doing good works, but only receive as a gift from God.

The verse right after the ones quoted above states “For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works” (Ephesians 2:10a emphasis added). As the book of James puts it, “faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). Something is lost in the distinction between doing works and earning salvation. The first point of view is based on doing good works in order to earn salvation. The second point of view is based on receiving salvation as a free gift, not based on works, yet because of the free gift, doing works to bless others (Romans 2:4b says, “God’s kindness leads you toward repentance”). The need to earn salvation was one of the many things that caused the split between the Catholic and Protestant churches. Catholics contended for the former point, Protestants the latter. It could be contended that in the Evangelical’s desire to move away from salvation based on works, they have lost too much in regards to works, enough that their faith, in some instances, has become nothing more a warm fuzzy feeling in the heart, with no outward expression.

As made evident by David Kinnaman in his book UnChristian, the distinction between born-again believers and the rest of the world is hardly noticeable. Kinnaman and the Barna Group, a market research company, have spent years doing market research through polling into matters concerning Christianity. Kinnaman defines born-again believers by the strictest terms in his research:

To be classified as a born-again Christian, a person has to say he or she has made a personal commitment to Jesus that is still important and that person believes he or she will go to heaven at death, because the person has confessed his or her sin and accepted Christ as Savior. (Kinnaman 46)

According to Kinnaman’s research, “the lifestyle activities of born-again Christians were statically equivalent to those of non-born agains.” Respondents were asked to comment on their activates over the last 30 days, and the results showed that born again believers were just are likely to gamble, bet, view pornography, steal, visit a medium or psychic, get in a fight or abuse somebody, be drunk, take illegal drugs, lie, take revenge, or talk behind someone’s back. They were also just as likely to have looked at online pornography, viewed sexually explicit magazines or movies, or to have had “an intimate sexual encounter outside of marriage” (Kinnaman 47). According to one study, 85 percent of respondents “personally know at least one committed Christian”, but only 15 percent of those respondents would label those Christians as “significantly different from the norm” (Kinnaman 48). Perhaps the most interesting bit of information from Kinnaman, in light of the above, is when asking Christians what “priorities [they] pursue in terms of their personal faith”, the largest number of responses was “being good, doing the right thing, not sinning” (Kinnaman 48-49).

So what do Christians turn to when, in trying to be “in the world, but not of the world” (Smith 48), they can’t distinguish themselves from the world and they can’t live up to the criterion that they set for themselves? To a certain extent, because their Christian identity is subjective, based upon their heart and not necessarily any outward expression, some Christians begin to lack means by which to distinguish their lives from the lives of the world. As stated earlier, one way to resolve this conflict is to rely upon emotion and personal conviction, but as these are inner states and not outer expressions. When they are indistinguishable from the world, it becomes very difficult for Evangelicals to evangelize.

Perhaps the most American way to resolve this problem is by buying things. By wearing a cross around your neck, wearing a t-shirt that says “Jesus Saves”, or plastering your bumper with catchy stickers, you can mark yourself out as Christian. Merchandise becomes a material representation of what happened in the heart. Buying Christian trinkets is easier than living a changed life style, and convincing others to do the same lends validity to one’s own shortcomings. An entire Christian culture is able to define it self based upon how much Christian merchandise it can own and display, as evidenced by the estimated $4.2 billion Christian retail market in 2004 (Patsuris).

Which explains why Evangelicals were so quick endorse the film, to buy the outreach tools, to invite all their neighbors, to hang banners up around their place of worship, as well as turning out in droves to see the film in theaters and to buy the DVD. The Passion was a form of worship for some, but for others, it was a reassurance of their reason to worship.

As one can see, when critics attacked The Passion, they weren’t just attacking the film, nor were they simply attacking the Evangelicals’ faith, they were attacking Evangelicals’ form of social legitimacy. In the Evangelicals’ battle against the secular world, the battle is based upon their chameleon like abilities to look like the world but not be the world. By criticizing the outlet of their outreach, critics are coming against everything that Evangelicals stand for. To some Evangelicals, The Passion was not just a film; it was a fulfillment of their deep-seated desire to reach the world through the world’s means."