This movie echoes something I myself was taught as a young fundamentalist: that by doing loving things, one can create loving feelings in oneself and inspire loving feelings in a target. In other words, just like the old song by Air Supply put it, we were taught that we could make love out of nothing at all.
You can’t really talk about Fireproof without talking about the Love Dare, and vice versa. Today I found out why that is.
(This is part of our Fireproof review week–here’s the review itself and here’s where I talk about how the movie assumes that only Christians can make marriage work. Consider this, like all my movie posts, full of ALL THE SPOILERS. Also, I’m popping this into our Unequally Yoked Club series Read more
While someone might see this movie and assume–as I did repeatedly–that it was hawking a particular marriage advice manual, The Love Dare, that’s not entirely true. The characters repeatedly reference the book and laud how amazing it is and how much it’s helped their marriages, but the movie is quite clear about exactly what really saved Kirk’s marriage in the movie.
Everybody can learn new things. Why, just this morning I figured out how to get italics into my blog post titles. So I knew going into this movie that it’s about Kirk Cameron’s character saving his marriage, so who knows, maybe I’ll learn some amazing new tips and tricks to use in my own relationships!
Back in my Pentecostal days, there was a phrase I heard non-stop: “the original Greek and Hebrew,” used to describe my denomination’s doctrines and creed. The idea was that our denomination, unlike those of all those other inferior Christians doing everything wrong, had gotten our ideas from “the original Greek and Hebrew” and therefore were closer to what our god wanted out of his followers than all those other Christians were. I notice that Christians still love that phrase, so I want to talk about it today.
Sometimes it’s hard to believe that a culture can be this blind to its own faults and problems, and yet here we are at another installment of “Heads in the Sand: Southern Baptist Edition.”
Recently we talked about the Jordan Root/TVC scandal, which involved a megachurch learning about a pedophile in their midst and mishandling that news in every way conceivable. Today we’re going to talk about how this scandal is another illustration of exactly why fundagelical Christianity is doomed and deserves to be so.
We’re still reeling from the Duggar sex abuse scandal, but on the heels of it comes another involving Christian leaders totally misreading a child-abuse situation and handling it in the poorest, most insensitive way possible. Another day, another fundagelical scandal involving sex abuse. Say hi to Jordan Root!
There really are two types of Christian in this world, and one of them hates the other with every fiber of its hate- and rage-filled little body.