Soul Surfer Questions

     I watched the movie Soul Surfer last week on Netflix. Bethany Hamilton does have a powerful testimony in it on how God was able to redeem a terrible event in her life (losing her arm) and use it to cause her to be more compassionate towards those who are disabled.

     However. I question the way Hollywood has packaged her story. For example, if the movie is shown to Christian youth groups, which is likely to be more powerful to most young men: her testimony of overcoming through Christ or the two hours of beautiful young girls in bikinis? I guess I would have been happier if they had at least put more shorts on them (cf Matt 5:28).

     However again. Many have remarked that the Church has seemed to get incensed over homosexual fornication but has turned a relatively blind eye to heterosexual fornication. Would the Church have accepted this movie if it had had included two boys looking lovingly at each other? I think these are comparable situations.

     However number three. James 2: 8-13 states:

If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. For he who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” If you do not commit adultery but do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. So speak and so act as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

So I might have a tendency towards self-righteous moralism in this whole area of sexual sins. I can murder with judgment because I see myself as sinless in this sexual area. Likewise, I can judge those who struggle with this while being greedy and self-serving.

     Last however. Maybe sometimes we have a messiah complex, in which we want to be the one to save people from their sins? But that’s God’s work, not ours. We should be available to help others, while asking God to help us clean up our own house so that the world would actually want us to take the splinters out of their eyes. Perhaps the Church needs to boast in her own weaknesses a bit more.

P. S. If you feel like you’ve just re-watched the movie “Inception,” you have a hint of how my brain works some days.…Pray for me.J