I watched the Christian Movie “Facing the Giants” last night and this question came to mind:

If our lives as Christians are rated R,

then why do Christian movies depict them as rated G?

I’m absolutely serious on this. It was a good wholesome movie (decently well made), but it just didn’t seem realistic. The message: if you trust in God everything will work out in you favor. I think that this is the exact message that we try to portray to the onlooking world. If you have Jesus then life is easy. From my experience, that couldn’t be more UNTRUE.

As Christians we whitewash the reality of our lives into some sort of fake sappy happiness. The non-believers see this and say that Jesus [and believing in Him] isn’t real either. That’s why Christianity seem pointless to the world. We come off looking brainwashed to be happy. Am I saying that there isn’t a joy in living for Christ? No. I’m just saying that life is hard and Jesus makes it bearable. Without Him there is no hope. But Jesus isn’t some magic pill. He’s not the new anti-depressant that we take to make our problems go away. He’s the Savior to an hurt and broken world.   

I know I live in an R rated world. I work with R rated kids. I would actually like to see a movie that shows a real Christian walking out his faith in the real world in a real way.

[Note:I'm not advocating sex, violence and profanity, but look at the Bible - it's completely R rated! The first Christian  movie that actually seemed real to me was The Passion. It depicted Jesus's last hours in a realistic manner that years of Sunday school had tried to whitewash out.  Look at 300. Hordes of people went to go see it. It was real and raw. People connect with that because in some way their lives feel that way. Read the story of Gideon and his 300 warriors (Judges 7). It's equally violent and God was involved in it!

All I'm trying to say is that Christian movies don't need simply inject sex or violence (like Hollywood does), they just need to tell real stories in real ways - and often times that won't get you a G rating.]