Aug 17, 2004

grand slam

Recently, thanks to a random neural firing, I dredged up a memory of an evangelistic film I once saw at Bible camp. (Those were the days!) It involved, if I remember correctly, an artistic boy whose salvation was in doubt, but who eventually found Jesus before tragically dying by crashing through a sliding glass deck door. (His family knew he was "saved" because the last picture he drew was Jesus sliding into home plate.) It was called "Home Safe" or "Safe at Home" or "Home Run" or something like that, and I thought I might find it online.

There's a whole genre of preachy videos and films whose whole purpose is to convert the unbeliever. Take a look at this list (where my search began, thanks to Google) to get the flavor of the movies in question.

You get the feeling that all is not well in EvangeLand, thanks to these little psychological tidbits:
Title: Your Baby Can Read! Volume I
Description: Introduce your baby to reading words. I didn't like volume II because it had "Row, row, row your boat". Life is NOT a dream

Title: Joni
Description: Young girl becomes a quadrapalegic. A couple of kissing scenes I did not care for. Based on true story starring the real Joni.

Title: A Woman Rides the Beast: The Roman Catholic Church and the Last Days
Description: See the pope on stage with just about every other type of Satan worshipper there is.

Just because a company says "Christian" and they sell some good resources does not mean everything they sell is good. In particular, I've noticed that Gateway Films sometimes have cussing. They have a video on William Tyndale that is masterfully done but after watching it about half a dozen times, I noticed that near the end when there was some uproar there was a quick cuss word. I don't think I've watched it since. The only reason I haven't thrown it away is because I plan on recording it on another tape and excluding that one second expletive. I did not include this tape in my recommendations because I can't recommend anything with cuss words. I also believe Gateway Films sells Cross and the Switchblade which has cussing--I bought it on a recommendation and never did finish watching it. In addition, some of these companies sell straight up Catholic stuff or down-low Catholic stuff (not expressly Catholic but with Catholic sensitivities). CBD sells a book on a Tibetan (?) monk. I mean that is outrageous. You have to be wise as a serpent.
Outrageous indeed. Babies growing up to be Buddhists, chanting "Life is but a dream"... Kissing... popery... and one-second expletives that tar entire movies. (What kind of paranoid freak even notices the lone "cuss word" in a hullabaloo?)

But enough of that--what about the movies I found online? None seemed to match.

Not this one
Released in 1991 by Creative Youth Resources A clever film about 3 Little League Baseball players who are best friends. Two of them are boys and one is a girl. The two boys believe in Jesus and in heaven. The girl does not. In a baseball game, one of the boys gets hit with a line drive and ends up going to the big ball park in the sky. He sees a way to come back and tell the girl about heaven, but there is a problem; he is still 9 years old and she is now in high school.

or this one
Description: "From the Publisher:" This exciting sequel to "Safe at Home" will provide you with compelling stories of faith in the lives of America's ballplayers as they reveal their hopes and dreams, their triumphs and struggles.

or this one
Description: Based on a true story, this powerful drama demonstrates how love, repect, faith still applies in today's family. Home Safe will encourage and challenge you with Biblical truths of discipline and obedience to scriptural principles. 74 minutes.

or this one (but we're getting closer)
Rusty is 12 years old and small for his age. His size creates a real chip on his shoulder. Conflicts with friends always end in fighting for Rusty. This entertaining film teaches children to read their Bibles, pray and trust in God.
I'll keep searching. If you know the title of a Christian film where a kid dies by crashing through fifteen square feet of plate glass, let me know.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I don't get it. What's with the seeming demands that Chrisians read exclusively the Bible? Seems to be a trend...but is that the only book that really matters?

Jim Anderson said...

As an agnostic, I can't speak for Christendom; as a former evangelical Christian, though, I can say that yes, the Bible, to fundamentalists, is the book, primarily because it's thought to be dictated by God himself. All other knowledge plays second bassoon to God's wisdom, and has to be judged by the standards of God's Word. In some fundamentalist homes, this generates a paranoid fear of secular (or, "the World's") influences on impressionable youth, leading to the silly practice of Bowdlerizing even a single "cuss word" from an otherwise inoffensive (and moral?) film. Bibliolatry, as some call the unhealthy obsession with the Bible, reaches absurd heights in the works of King James onlyists, who believe that God re-dictated his Word to a collection of British scholars early in the 17th century.

Unknown said...

With some small amount of irony: Damn.