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wingedbeastThose Christians who feel themselves most obligated to try to convert me tend to have a very low opinion of nonbelievers. I've seen it in person. I've seen it in the movies made by Christians and that do well in a conservative Christian demographic.
In God's Not Dead, Kevin Sorbo's atheist professor character is a bully in a relationship that he started with someone when she was a student in his class. Dean Cain's successful businessman non-believer is so selfish that he doesn't care about his dementia-suffering mother or when his girlfriend says that she has cancer. In Fireproof, Kirk Cameron's husband character is dismissive, emotionally abusive, and even physically threatening at one point to his wife. Nick, the atheist character in the previously mentioned The Encounter, nearly runs down a teenage hitchhiker in his car and, when called on it, completely lacks for any kind of remorse.
If you're any kind of non-Christian, to these movies and to the audience that makes up a sizable portion of my target audience for this series, you can have professional virtues but not moral virtues.
I could simply label a tip "don't be such a bigot" and be done with it, but I think bigotry breaks down into smaller behaviors that need to be addressed individually. And, I have done a bit of that with some previous tips. In this case, the part I want to point out is how it impacts your view of yourself and those you identify as fellow believers and how those outside your group can see you doing it.
In the case of God's Not Dead, there are a few Christian characters and the only good they do, outside of debating in favor of God or supporting same, is express a moment of empathy for another character who had been kicked out of her house. That *should* only go to say that they're not evil by what we see. It's a low bar that calls them good. But, still, the movie expects their goodness to be moving.
In an even lower bar, Kirk Cameron's character in Fireproof, after a quick conversion to Christianity, does two good things. He uses the money he'd been saving to help pay for his wife's mother's high-tech wheelchair. When his wife is sick, he gets her some fried chicken from Chic-Fil-A. The reason this is a lower bar is two-fold. Firstly, this is after he has emotionally abused his wife and after that scene in which he was physically threatening to her.
Secondly, and this is where it really gets to my experience of what Evangelists and Apologists expect, his "goodness" and utterly un-shown peace moves his wife to take on a similar conversion to his own.
If you want us to really think of you as so good and kind and loving that we want to be like you, you're going to have to hold yourself up to a better standard than assuming us lesser people and showing off how you don't use bad words.
We can see when you hold us down to horrid expectations and we can see you seeing yourself and your fellow believers as so much better in comparison. Those horrid expectations do not match our lived reality and that comparison falls flat, particularly when it's matched up with your own expectations that we'll view the comparison like you do.
You've got to deal with the notion that we're every bit the decent human beings that you are and that you, even with Jesus helping you out, aren't any better than us.
In God's Not Dead, Kevin Sorbo's atheist professor character is a bully in a relationship that he started with someone when she was a student in his class. Dean Cain's successful businessman non-believer is so selfish that he doesn't care about his dementia-suffering mother or when his girlfriend says that she has cancer. In Fireproof, Kirk Cameron's husband character is dismissive, emotionally abusive, and even physically threatening at one point to his wife. Nick, the atheist character in the previously mentioned The Encounter, nearly runs down a teenage hitchhiker in his car and, when called on it, completely lacks for any kind of remorse.
If you're any kind of non-Christian, to these movies and to the audience that makes up a sizable portion of my target audience for this series, you can have professional virtues but not moral virtues.
I could simply label a tip "don't be such a bigot" and be done with it, but I think bigotry breaks down into smaller behaviors that need to be addressed individually. And, I have done a bit of that with some previous tips. In this case, the part I want to point out is how it impacts your view of yourself and those you identify as fellow believers and how those outside your group can see you doing it.
In the case of God's Not Dead, there are a few Christian characters and the only good they do, outside of debating in favor of God or supporting same, is express a moment of empathy for another character who had been kicked out of her house. That *should* only go to say that they're not evil by what we see. It's a low bar that calls them good. But, still, the movie expects their goodness to be moving.
In an even lower bar, Kirk Cameron's character in Fireproof, after a quick conversion to Christianity, does two good things. He uses the money he'd been saving to help pay for his wife's mother's high-tech wheelchair. When his wife is sick, he gets her some fried chicken from Chic-Fil-A. The reason this is a lower bar is two-fold. Firstly, this is after he has emotionally abused his wife and after that scene in which he was physically threatening to her.
Secondly, and this is where it really gets to my experience of what Evangelists and Apologists expect, his "goodness" and utterly un-shown peace moves his wife to take on a similar conversion to his own.
If you want us to really think of you as so good and kind and loving that we want to be like you, you're going to have to hold yourself up to a better standard than assuming us lesser people and showing off how you don't use bad words.
We can see when you hold us down to horrid expectations and we can see you seeing yourself and your fellow believers as so much better in comparison. Those horrid expectations do not match our lived reality and that comparison falls flat, particularly when it's matched up with your own expectations that we'll view the comparison like you do.
You've got to deal with the notion that we're every bit the decent human beings that you are and that you, even with Jesus helping you out, aren't any better than us.
