Cameron was so passionate about the point he wanted to make, so convinced that his message was the most important part of his film, that he was willing to sacrifice the quality of his film-making to make sure that nobody missed that message. I felt the same way during Fireproof.

Art should be about subtlety, art should be about nuance. But when an artist, any artist, mistrusts their audience’s ability to understand the message, the temptation to hammer the audience with the message over and over surfaces. And subtlety goes out the window. Nuance disappears. And the quality of the art suffers.

Cameron would have done better to have trusted his audience, and to have trusted his message (a message I disagree with, but that’s not the point). The point is that if he had trusted his audience and message, he may have been able to deliver more than just a technical wonder, three hours of eye candy that ultimately falls flat.

My message to Christian filmmakers is similar. Trust your audience, and trust your message (a message I agree with, but that’s not the point). Don’t be afraid of subtely. Don’t be afraid of nuance. Produce quality art. God is glorified in that.

That said, you guys got purgatory wrong. As a Catholic, I figured I could cast sme light on it. The Catholic Church has always taught purgatory, and still teaches it. But, purgatory is a very different place from what you described.

Catholics believe that when you die, you are judged and are sent to heaven or hell. However, sometimes, before you go to heaven, you go to purgatory. If your in purgatory, you are GOING TO HEAVEN. But bible says that “nothing unclean shall enter [heaven]” (Rev. 21:27).

Nothing impure can enter heaven. However, many of us will die with some attachment to sin or some imperfection. Many of us will die baptized and believing in God, but we will still not be perfect. The Catholic belief this that nothing imperfect can enter heaven. Purgatory is simply the final purging of human imperfection. Purgatory, in the catholic belief, cleanses the soul fo all imperfection, so the soul can enter heaven

This article explains it much better,
]http://www.catholic.com/library/Purgatory.asp

So far, I mean in the history of humanity, have we not had many paradigm shifts? Like the one from believing in demonic spirits that can use bodies as hosts to the earth being flat to the earth being the center of the universe to the possibility of alien life forms (Vatican has now approved this notion) and so on… So, it is reasonable to say that we humans shelter belief systems that aren’t always true or for the greater good of mankind. Now, let’s assume that we don’t have any power over our future. What is that called again? Destiny, I believe. Then, through a set of cool looking religious sun glasses, this means that God has a master plan for everything he created. That he knows what we are thinking what we will be thinking till the next apocalypse and then some. Maybe, God has intended for us to achieve longevity through the use of nano technology? Or maybe, it is an illusion that we are again sheltering? Who knows?
My point is exactly that, who knows? It doesn’t matter what God has intended because we don’t know what it is he did intend for us. We can only keep trying to survive with our beautiful gift which is our honesty. Intelligence is useless if it is not honest.
“You will burn in hell because you say the earth isn’t flat!” Poor old Galileo he was a great honest man.
So let’s be honest with ourselves, we know that nobody has ever witnessed heaven or hell and lived to tell the tail except Jesus. And if we rely on our past and current methods of tracking history which is not very honest, we can say that maybe there is a possibility that Jesus never existed physically (I can explain this in more details). We can understand that a nonexistent witness witnessing something isn’t very credible. This in return means that nobody has witnessed heaven or hell. This underlies that heaven could just be a lullaby to comfort our confused souls before we lay to rest. Yet again we are faced with a new paradigm: the one that doesn’t comfort us from the event of death with the existence of places like heaven.
Now, let’s face it, if heaven doesn’t exist then I don’t really want to die at 90 years of age if I had the possibility to live till 200 years old for example. Wouldn’t you agree?

to me, the books/movies don’t give a good role model for girls. bella is nothing more than a 1950’s archetype of the “good housewife.” she has no friends but the cullens and refuses to actually make friends other than them. i’d personally rather take a blonde, bubbleheaded fake over bella. at least they try to get out and have a life that doesn’t revolve around one person.

“Evolution” is an easily misunderstood and misused word. Many people use it to imply simple change within a kind of animal, such as the process of natural selection to create and refine varieties of fish. Others will use “evolution” to imply change from one kind of animal to another, like reptiles to birds, ape-like creatures to humans, etc. Technically, these are called micro- and macroevolution, respectively.

Although technology can certainly enhance our lives and help defeat lethal diseases, I really don’t believe that technology will extend our lifespans beyond how long our “healthy” bodies would otherwise survive.

Artificial intelligence will always improve as better algorithms are written. But that’s all it really is, preprogrammed algorithms. These algorithms are glorified “if > then” statements.

Thanks for reading and I hope listening!

“Near the beginning, surrogates were called the next evolutionary step for mankind. If evolution is a biological process, how could a step out of biological existence be the next big step in evolution?”

Many scientists would argue that humans are the first species capable of directing their evolution. Raymond Kurzweil predicts that in the next 40 years or so we’ll be using machines like robots and nanobots to extend our lifespan and that AI will truly begin to flourish. And while evolution is undeniably a biological process, the word has come to apply to profound change in general.

I have some thoughts, but I’ll see if you cover them in part two before I take the time to type them all out.

Hmmm. I don’t know that that’s necessarily the case. What qualifies a work of art as being “Christian”? Is it enough that it is written by a Christian author? Should all works written/produced by a Christian have an overtly Christian message?

Is it possible that a work written by a non-Christian could deal with certain themes more effectively than one written by a Christian?

I’ve read, written, and reviewed a number of works that would indicate that your statement isn’t always entirely true, depending of course on how you answer those questions.

Thank you for bringing up this topic. While the line might be different for everyone, it’s really, really important to think about the line. So many people just march blindly into the movie theater because that’s the thing to do. It’s so important to be aware of your actions, interpret them in light of scripture, and live consciously.

Thank you, too, for bringing up the point about supporting these things with our money. That often speaks very loudly.

Cheers,
Amanda

I don’t support all Christian art. In fact, I actively avoid horribly written Christian fiction. I do have quality standards that even I won’t cross, especially when Christian publishers make really bad decisions just to get a certain message out or to fill a quota (I don’t really know why they do it, actually). I do enjoy reading well-written Christian fiction, though, and try to support the authors and publishing companies that produce the good stuff.

However, I think you need to define what you mean by bad quality, especially when it comes to movies. I’ve seen two of the Sherwood Pictures productions (Flywheel and Fireproof) and while extremely low budget, both movies were entertaining to watch, had good characters, interesting plots, and very good messages. They were feel-good movies that made you feel good at the end. I call that success. Sure, they can’t hold a candle to the multimillion dollar productions that fly out of Hollywood every year, but they are still good. I went to see End of the Spear in the theater opening week and thought it was a very good movie. I also enjoyed The Second Chance, though I had to buy it on DVD–I missed it in the theater. So far, I haven’t been disappointed. Yes, they are lower budget, use little known actors, and well-worn plots, but all-in-all, they were worth seeing, at least once, and at least my money supported something wholesome for a change.

The main reason that I say that we should support Christian movies when we can is to send the message to the producers that if they make them, we will watch them. If producers find that the market is favorable and they can make money at it, then their production quality will improve on the next movie (Flywheel to Fireproof is a good example of this). Basically, you need to vote for what you want with your pocket book. Technically, anything Christian at least has a better “quality” message than anything secular. What’s most important to you?

That’s my 2 cents.

Do you support Christian art that is bad (quality wise)?

Is being uncomfortable a bad thing? There are things in the Bible that disturb me. Plenty of great art is designed to make you uncomfortable/take you out of your comfort zone.

Okay that was more than one question.

Thanks for listening!

So how about just giving one single disclaimer at the beginning. “This episode is an in-depth look at ______; if you haven’t seen it yet, you might want to save this until after you have, because it is going to contain many spoilers.”

Otherwise all you can really say is “I liked/didn’t like it. Or some general things like “it included profanity or immorality.” You won’t be able to support that with examples. The podcast will be over in five minutes. I’m guessing that your listeners are like me, in that we actually want to hear the movie discussed in detail.

Stay tuned!