This guy is not to be trusted.

I am privileged and very grateful to have a role in a film about the writer and speaker Josh McDowell, filming in Traverse City, Michigan.  McDowell is one of my heroes so this is a very special treat for me.  Director Cris Krusen says I’m the villain in the film and according to McDowell’s true story, that is the case.  But McDowell’s life of faith testifies to the triumph of the true King over all villainy.

Don't let life just "happen" to you.

Many of us have said, more than once, we would like to be more like Jesus.  Do we really?  How does that happen?  Do we simply count on God to “drop more Jesus” on top of us as the days and years go by?  Maybe we believe going to a church building regularly is a magic formula that makes us become more like Jesus.  We definitely should gather with other believers regularly to worship and celebrate God.  But is something else involved, beyond church attendance, when we seriously follow after Christ?

Do we believe sanctification (growing in the Lord) is a little bit automatic or even entirely automatic?  Doesn’t the Bible say “He who began a good work in you WILL perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus?” (Philippians 1:6)  Yes, but Paul also writes “work out your salvation with fear and trembling.” (Phil. 2:12)  Then the very next verse reads “for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”

I want to continue to trust God for my sanctification.  But trusting God does not mean I play no role in my sanctification.  I may trust my doctor to patch me up physically when I am hurt, but if I don’t OBEY my doctor’s instructions about how to maintain and improve my health, then I don’t trust my doctor.  The doctor-God analogy is imperfect, and happily so.  Our spiritual health includes the miracle that God often overrules my sin, my warped self-interest, and grows me spiritually in spite of my sinful efforts to stay a spiritual dwarf.  Even so, trusting God means obeying Him.  There are things I need to do, consistently, if I am to grow as I ought.

But I don’t want to.  I’d rather worship and serve Rusty than God.  At least I think that’s what I’d rather do.  So I need God to grant me a vision quest now and then.

Native North Americans used to talk about something they called a “vision quest.”  Those English words are the closest we can come to their concept.  Basically, when a person embraces a vision quest, they envision what they wish to see happen, and they set out on a determined quest to see that thing happen.  The vision feeds the quest.  Without the requisite robust vision, the quest will not be realized.

Usually a vision quest involves a noble quest, a difficult task.  Climbing Mount Everest would be a typical vision quest.  Building a Community Center that helps meet the needs of the Community might be a vision quest.

A vision quest could be very simple.  A teenager might make doing their homework a vision quest.  Doing their homework consistently might be a stiffer vision quest.  Doing their homework consistently and excellently is an even larger vision quest.  The vision and the quest are even more dramatic if the teenager has a history of not doing homework, or not doing it well.

A vision quest, by nature and definition, is a spiritual undertaking.  It is a way of focusing our spirit, our will, on a goal and embracing the means necessary to achieve the goal, and then setting out on the quest.  It is not just “being intentional,” though that is involved.  Virtually all of our life would be more Christ-like if we lived more “intentionally.”  That is, we need to intend to do certain things and (maybe more important) intend to BE a certain kind of person.  Living intentionally is rare; those who do it stand out.  If we sincerely intend to be Christlike, we are at least desiring to escape that haunted forest of “I never know what is going on; life just happens to me.”  But to really get out of that forest and onto the narrow road of thinking, living, and feeling as Christ did, we need more than good intentions.  We need something like a vision quest.

When a young person grows up in a Christian home, they can tend to mimic the Christian activities of their parents or guardians.  At some point the youth comes to a crossroads where they consider the validity of their parents’ Christian faith.  They consider if Christianity is true and if it makes a difference.  If they answer yes, it is a difference-making truth, then they are on the path to constructing and embracing a vision quest whereby they will live intentionally.  They have a vision (to live as Christ) and they are on a quest to see the vision come to physical reality.  That is, they want to actually live, think, feel, and love as Christ did.  They side with the apostle Paul “That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.” (Phil. 3:10, the quintessential Christian vision quest).

I think most Christians do not stray from Christ’s path by committing dramatic sins.  Most of us Christians stunt our growth by not envisioning our growth, thereby not intending to grow.  We flop around in the haunted “forest of no intentions,” like tragic wingless birds that are intended to fly.  We lack a vision to be Christ-like.  A vision that compels the incredible quest to “be more like Jesus.”

Director Tom Makowski, me, D.P. Steve Shaw, Mike Rosenbaum

The movie “Decision,” in which I was blessed to play a lead role with Christian singer Natalie Grant, airs on GMC TV Channel in September, 2011.  I play Wyatt Johnson, Natalie’s dad and country singer Billy Dean‘s father-in-law.  Michael Rosenbaum also stars in a movie written by Kevan Otto that deals with the ultimate decision we all must make.

            Do you recognize the following words?  “The world is changed.  I feel it in the water.  I feel it in the earth.  I smell it in the air.”  If you’re a film buff, you would say those lines are the “voice-over” from the opening images of the movie “The Fellowship of the Ring.”  If you are a “reader,” one of those ancient types that opened books and turned pages and used artifacts called “bookmarkers,” you recognize the powerful, mystical sentiments of Galadriel, the Lady of Lorien in Tolkien’s story.

Change is like a haircut.  It’s hard, or impossible, to see change in process.  But it’s impossible to ignore after it’s happened.  So Galadriel’s observation doesn’t just tell us change is taking place; it tells us Galadriel has a gift for sensing (smelling?) change while it’s still cloaked to those without such a gift.  Galadriel is a special type of prophet.  She prophecies what IS happening in front of our open eyes, but we cannot see, we cannot recognize.

            We Earth-bound mortals are always surprised by change.  Like a lot of our tendencies, this is quite odd.  It would make more sense if we were always surprised when things stayed constant, stayed the same.  The world is a two-year old child.  It’s constantly moving and falling and crawling and walking and changing.  One of the first philosophers historians still remember was a guy named Heraclitus.  “Put your foot into the river and take it out.  Put it back in the river again and it’s not the same.”  He meant the river, in those milli-seconds, had changed, because the water’s constantly moving, and the foot-dipper is also changed in those milli-seconds, so.  Furthermore, the river’s change affects the guy with the foot, and his change affects the river’s change, so “No man steps into the same river twice.”  Which means EVERYTHING IS IN FLUX and ALL THE TIME.  This was a revelation to the other Earth-walkers and River-dippers with whom Heraclitus shared this.  Actually, they threw him into the river for interrupting their business day with ridiculous notions about what changes what and what not.

            If you ever had a dog, you know how much they like routine.  They live by it.  My master’s world has an arc, and it is my quest to bend with my owner’s arc.  Time to walk me, time to feed me, time to get up on this chair because the sun’s in this window, time to move to the next chair with the sun’s moving.  Time to get off the chair because Master is coming into the room.  Time to get back on the chair, because Master has left the room.  I’m told cats aren’t near as predictable.  They live by their own private arc, and this person that lives in their house can join them in their arc or not.

            Our songs and stories are full of this question of change.  Sixties songs: “I’d love to change the world, but I don’t know what to do, so I leave it up to you.”  Seventies songs: “Nothing lasts forever but the Earth and sky.  It slips away.  And all your money won’t another minute buy.  (All we are is) dust in the wind.”  Eighties songs:  “I’m looking at the man in the mirror.  I’m asking him to change his ways.  Take a look at yourself and make a change.”  I don’t have any song quotes after the eighties, because the music world kind of stopped for me then.  Well, what it did was CHANGE to hip hop and rap and I guess I didn’t change with it.  Much of popular music was far more prophetic and lyrical in those long ago decades than today’s sexual base beats.  Although I’ve heard that lyrical depth is making a comeback.  It’s about time.

The above Seventies’ lyrics are right out of Ecclesiastes, which is right out of that book that doesn’t change.  The rest of the Bible proves Ecclesiastes’ reference to the Earth and sky lasting forever is “poetic license,” since the Earth and sky will not last forever in its present form.  There will be a new heaven and a new Earth.  Change is coming, certain to happen.  The only thing that doesn’t change is that everything changes.

Civilizations and culture are like the weather on an open plain.  If you don’t like it, wait a few minutes and it will change, because there are no mountains to hold the weather in a fixed pattern.  The trick is to recognize change before it recognizes you.  What I mean is we may want to anticipate cultural shifts and new informational transfers before they buzz over our heads like new supersonic aircraft. 

Or we can foolishly retreat from “the fight,” until the fight storms over our supposed “retreat.”  We were born into a struggle.  Take the fight to the enemies of Truth and Grace.

            Our Christian faith is most obvious and most appealing to the watching world, when we express it by loving and serving.  It is arguably least obvious and least appealing when we express it solely in the context of what we favor politically and what we oppose.  I’m not suggesting we abandon political activism; I think God honors our efforts to be politically informed and active.  I’m simply talking about our witness.  If the ONLY time Christians are recognized trumpeting our faith, it’s in the context of what we favor and what we oppose politically, then of course non-Christians will assume that Christianity is just one more political position among many clamoring for attention.  But if skeptics see us feeding the hungry (and enabling the hungry to feed themselves) and see us loving the unlovable, and see us doing justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with God (Micah 6:8), they will be intrigued.

            The actress Sandra Bullock, now garnering “Oscar buzz” for her work in “Blind Side,” initially turned the role down three times, though she loved the script from the get-go.  Filmmaker John Lee Hancock, desperate for Bullock to do it, convinced her to travel to Memphis and meet the real family and mom she would portray, and check out Briarcrest Christian School.  Bullock did, “fell in love with the role,” and the rest is history.  In one of a number of revealing interviews, she said “I now have the blessing of having my restored…”  Bullock caught herself, before continuing, “…not a restored faith, but I now have faith in those who say they represent a faith.  I finally met people who walk the walk.”

            This is how the world changes.  This is arguably the ONLY way the world changes.  The world changes only when Christians live out their faith, one day at a time, loving God and loving people one day at a time.  Then let the world stand back in wonder.  This doesn’t mean we don’t speak out against real sin and real injustice.  It DOES mean that we be careful our political advocacy does not become our Scripture and our political goals do not become our “god.”

            Hollywood filmmakers are catching on to what sells and what does not sell.  Independent researchers conducted an extensive review of money-making Hollywood films in the early part of this decade (2001 to 2005) and concluded that films with sexual content do worse at the box office than films with little or no sexual content.  Gross sales were 31 percent lower than films without such content.  The study is published in November’s “Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts.”  These are not Christian researchers pushing a Christian agenda (though I welcome their efforts too!).  These are researchers from the University of Cal-Davis and Vancouver.  There is of course, still a huge pornography market.  I’m writing here about mainstream movies that reach a mainstream audience.     

            Part of what makes “Blind Side” work is the deft hand of the director and screenwriter John Lee Hancock.  They do not push the family’s (the Touhys) Christian faith on the audience.  The movie is far subtler than “Facing the Giants” or “Fireproof.”  I celebrate those films too; I am merely considering the different approaches to Christians involved in movie-making.  Hancock is a Christian.  So is Quinton Aaron, and the man who plays the gentle giant football player Michael Oher.  Aaron says “Before this, I was working alongside my pastor as understudy at Salvation and Deliverance Church in the Bronx.  I love the church.”

            Surely you have seen, and maybe been a part of, other stunning examples of Christians reaching out and loving an unlovable world.  Think of the possibilities for films, for movies that reach thousands, millions of people.  Did you know the ONLY movie that showed on Turkish Airlines (a Muslim business) for weeks and weeks on end was… FACING THE GIANTS!  How does that happen?  It happens because God does whatever he wants to do with whomever he wants to do it.  He turns the heart of the king in the palm of His hand.

            Movies are the “church” of the unsaved culture.  Christians know that’s a poor church.  But if that’s where unsaved persons go to get some insight, entertainment, and revelation about life and God and all things, why shouldn’t Christians show up there with our messages of insight, wholesome entertainment and even revelation about God and God’s mission to save people?

            Things are changing in Hollywood and in movie-making.  I hear it in the wind.  The Spirit wind.