Last night Nancy and I watched Fireproof and I wanted to tell you what I thought of it.
I figured I needed to give it a look because it is a big evangelical thing and some folks in my congregation had asked me about it. I did not have high expectations going into it for what I think might be all the obvious reasons. For example, I had read one criticism in Salvo magazine which had dismissed it as emotional pornography for evangelicals — making cheap and easy that which which ought to be challenging and demanding.
But having watched it, I really think a distinction has to be made. The production values were those of a B-level made-for-tv movie. The performances of some actors were decent, while other ran the gamut of emotions from A to B. Everything about most scenes screamed out “pristine movie set” (especially in HD), and you could see everything there but the cameras. So this was not what we should call a successful attempt at the movie-makers art. The phrase tour de force does not come to mind.
But it was a very successful motion picture tract. This was edifying propaganda, and when I use the word edifying I am not putting quotation marks around it. The word propaganda is, if memory serves, the Latin passive periphrastic, meaning “things to be propagated.” Most made-for-tv movies and soap operas have low production values and they propagate the most frightful didactic drivel. This was a movie within that same genre that communicated the gospel clearly, and which walked people through some very basic and very real principles that contribute to the success of marriage relationships. It was not sophisticated at all, and revolved around a rudimentary come-to-Jesus appeal. And you know what? That is just what a lot of people need.
If I set myself to think of couples in marriages that I think would be greatly helped by watching this movie, I would run out of fingers inside of a minute. I can also think of Christians who would be offended by the schlock, but many of them would be those who know more about how a movie ought to be made than about how a woman ought to be treated. And they would rather watch a movie about a woman being abused so long as the movie was made right than to have the woman treated right in a movie that offended their refined sensibilities. So which is the altar and which is the sacrifice? Makes me think of Augustine’s comment about rhetors who cared far more about avoiding grammatical misuse of the word man than they cared about their actual treatment of actual men.
Now an obvious problem would be if the movie makers mistake the nature of their success (which has been enormous), and adopt the posture of artistes, and take to using a walking cane and a cape. That would be unfortunate, and let’s hope it doesn’t happen. But if they keep it real, I have better things to do than be upset with evangelicals helping others with a live-action marital catechism.