Being Decisive and Committed
I saw the Spirit last night and I was thinking about why it has gotten such poor reviews. I definitely is a fringe film and it lays heavily on a certain style of humor that many just don’t get. But I think what kills this movie (pleae die already) is that it can’t make up its mind. It kind of thinks it is an action movie, but it is really slow for action. It could be considered an art film, but it just isn’t stylized enough to really fit that category. It could even be a Kill Bill knock off, but it falls flat of that too. Basically, it just doesn’t commit to any one way, and it does it in a way that just doesn’t really work, at least for me.
When I was with Young American Showcase, they had some really great thoughts on entertainment. One of them was to know what you are doing. That is know your appeal to the audience and commit to it. Doing a show without committing to it is death in entertainment. Half-hearted performances just don’t appeal to audiences, and if they see that you aren’t sure of your performance, they begin to think that you are messing up.
In the Christian life, I think the same is true. In many ways, Christians don’t seem sure of what it is they are doing. You can go to different churches and one stresses a moderate lifestyle while another encourages freedom. There are just as many perspectives on how to live a Christian life as there are churches (and probably a whole lot more). There seems to be little uniformity though and very little commitment.
I wonder at what people would really commit to if they knew what they should do. I wonder why the church has done such a poor job in helping people understand what it is they should do. I wonder why the church doesn’t really understand what it is that it should do. All of these are fairly philosophical, but I don’t think these questions are answered often or even discussed.
Maybe it is because God doesn’t want a formulaic faith or a checklist of things we can do to be close to him. Maybe, like the Christian bands out there who won’t call themselves Christian, he won’t be limited by our list of ways to relate and grow closer to him. I’m not really sure, but I am thinking a lot about it this morning.
