Facing the Truth

Some people don’t like Facing the Giants, and that’s fine. However, being inaccurate about the details as Barbara Nicolosi did isn’t:

The film tells the story of a poverty-stricken, generally disdained, losing football coach who drives a broken down truck and goes home at night to a devastatedly infertile wife. Incited by no particular plot point, the coach reads the Bible one day and then kneels down in a field (Why the hell is it always a field? Is that like in Zecharaiah somewhere?) and gives his life to Jesus. In short order after he utters the Evangelical commitment formula aloud, he wins back the esteem of his fellow townspeople, he turns around his terrible team so that they win the championship, somebody gives him a brand new shiny red truck, AND his infertile wife becomes pregnant!

WOW! Give me some of THAT Jesus-stuff!

Absolute fantasy stuff. The kind of thing that makes Christians puff out their chests proud to be on the winning team! This film fumbles deep, deep in the prosperity Gospel end zone. It is icky to tell people that they should be Christian because of the career and health benefits. We have the problem on the team of that embarrassingly unsuccessful crucified coach of ours.

How does one so get the story wrong. Perhaps, it’s been months since she’s seen it, but let’s review.

First, the coach’s prayer was not a “sinner’s prayer” (i.e. a prayer of conversion.) If it had been, I’d agree that the message was off. The coach goes and prays in a field (because a field is behind his house) to ask God what to do. It is triggered by the plot point of him locking up at school only to hear others plotting to fire him.

The movie is not magic or prospertity gospel. He went through 6 losing seasons before this. Revival came to the school through the work and faithfulness of a man who’d been praying longer than that. If the movie is about anything, it is about the results of sticking with it through adversity and the ultimate faithfulness of God.

I would agree the Christian life is not a bed of roses and I don’t think Facing the Giants suggests that it is. There’s pain, there’s sorrow, there’s striving, but God is still faithful. All the events in the movie (including the new truck being given) happened to real people who attended the producer’s church.

The Jolly Blogger comments on the movie:

We see this in Christian fiction and movies with their neat and tidy happy-ever-after endings, in our church websites populated with pics of bright and shiny people, in our preference for idyllic countrysides over messy over-populated cities, and in our health and wealth gospels.

On the one hand we could argue with the statement about “that embarrassingly unsuccessful crucified coach of ours.” What Barbara forgets to mention is that the crucifixion wasn’t the end of the story, the resurrection was – a very happy ending. Yet, the point she wants to make still stands – things don’t always end well in this world for christians. That’s where pollyanna Christianity goes wrong. Christ promises us a cross in this life, not a trophy.

He’s right, things don’t always go right, but Facing the Giants never said that they do. You can debate the movie. You can argue indeed that every Christian movie should end in sadness, misery, and utter hopelessness, as a proof that is God never does anything, but sits there and wants us to be miserable as he never delivers, never saves, never heals on this side of Heaven.

You can also ignore the fact that the ending advocated would be totally out of character for the genre of sports films. As Dave Burchett wrote:

I long for believable sports story lines. Like a movie about a guy hearing voices, building a baseball field in the middle of nowhere, and having dead players walk out of the corn fields to play a game. And then having a dead guy “have a catch” with his son. That makes total sense. Oh wait…that is “Field of Dreams.” And I loved that movie. Or how about a movie about a player who uses a bat carved out of a tree that was hit by lightning. This home made bat is selected by the batboy in the biggest game of the year after the star player’s bat is broken. A bat he has never used in a game situation picked by a 12 year old. Then he hits a home run so massive it causes the light standard to explode and rain sparks and debris on the field as he runs the bases. It could happen. I’m sorry. That is “The Natural”. And I liked that movie. So let’s get real. It is not about stretching your imagination that is the problem here. It is the God factor that offends many in this film.

There’s a line between realism and snotty elitism, which is often crossed by critics.

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