Tag Archives: ericmetaxas

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Daily Broadside | You Should Probably See A Movie Before You Recommend It, But …

Short post today to recommend a film that I’ve not seen but at least two writers I respect have — and both enthusiastically recommend it. It’s made for Christian audiences, but avoids the pitfalls that most movies aimed at that audience stumble into: low production value, terribly moralistic and sappy messaging, idealized relationships, and avoiding the depiction of realistic evil.

I’m gobsmacked and thrilled to report that a movie of this quality is opening this weekend, Nefarious, based on the novel by conservative TV commentator and author Steve Deace of The Blaze. I heard about it from Eric Metaxas, who’d seen the preview screener and highly recommended it. I sat with a friend to watch it, and we were riveted. Imagine the insights of The Screwtape Letters conveyed with all the intensity of top-notch courtroom drama like To Kill a Mockingbird. Or the “Grand Inquisitor” scene from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, set on death row in a U.S. “red state.”

I don’t want to give away too much, and drain the film of its power to surprise, unsettle, and challenge. Suffice it to say that it’s an, intense, occasionally violent psychological thriller of a similar genre to The Exorcism of Emily Rose. The story is simple: a smug secular psychologist goes to evaluate a serial killer on the verge of execution … to see if he’s lucid enough to undergo capital punishment (as our law requires). But the killer insists he’s possessed by a demon. Is that proof he’s really insane?

The film confronts genuine evil — not confusion, bad ideas, mere human weakness, or even the sordid fact of Original Sin.

No, Nefarious brings us face to face with principalities and powers, the bloodless calculating entities who cast their shadows today in the abortion industry, the transgender movement, and the intolerant new gospel of the Antichrist we refer to as the Woke cult. We hear the subarctic voice of deathless spirits who whisper in our ears, who teach us to love the sin but hate the sinner, who manage our culture and politics and arrange for the State to groom our children.

I will make the disclaimer that John Zmirak makes: not every Christian will be comfortable seeing this movie. If you’re easily disturbed by intense situations and the portrayal of stone-cold evil, this may not be the film for you. As I said, I’m recommending it based the strong recommendation of Zmirak and Eric Metaxas, not on having seen it myself (yet).

The reason I bring it to your attention is that it opens in theaters today and a movie’s staying power is often determined by how well it performs at the box office. As this is its opening weekend, I’m encouraging you to help make it a strong one.

Whatever you choose to do, have a good weekend. I’ll be back Monday.

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Daily Broadside | Learning from Those Who Have Gone Before Us

Daily Verse | 1 Corinthians 11:26
“For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”

Friday’s Reading: 1 Corinthians 12-14
Saturday’s Reading: 1 Corinthians 15-16

I hope you had a wonderful day yesterday and were as full of thanksgiving to God as you were of turkey and pumpkin pie. I took my own advice and read George Washington’s thanksgiving day Proclamation of 1789 as we sat down at our table. When I was finished it was silent for a beat or two as the realization of how far removed we are from our founding values and reliance on God sunk in. No one could imagine the same proclamation being made today by any modern president.

We’re so far from the humility and dependence on that “beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be,” certain new books are raising the alarm. One in particular is Eric Metaxas’ book, Letter to the American Church. The description tells us the “author of a bestselling biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Metaxas reveals the haunting similarities between today’s American Church and the German Church of the 1930s. Echoing the German martyr’s prophetic call, he exhorts his fellow Christians to repent of their silence in the face of evil.”

I haven’t read it yet, but I’m more interested now having just watched an interview Metaxas did with the found of The Stream, James Robison.

In the interview, which I encourage you to listen to, Metaxas says that “there’s no hyperbole in what I am saying.” He continues,

The thesis of this book, the reason I know the Lord made me write this short book, is because the silence of the church in Germany that led to the satanic evil of the Nazis and the Holocaust, is exactly the same as the silence of the church in America today, which will, without question, lead us to horrors unimaginable, unless we repent, unless we cease being silent. I cannot think of a more urgent message. I beg people, I beg people, to take what I’m saying in this book seriously, because it’s not me talking.”

I have no doubt that there are parallels between the failure of the church in Germany to speak up when it needed to and the failure of the church in contemporary America to speak up now. The question is, what are we to be speaking up about? From the description again: “God calls us to defend the unborn, to confront the lies of cultural Marxism, and to battle the globalist tyranny that crushes human freedom.”

One of the challenges I see to this call is a divided church. We have church fellowships that have not only refrained from standing up to abortion, cultural Marxism and globalist tyranny, but have embraced those ideological practices. When Metaxas refers to “the Church,” he (hopefully) means those conservative, bible-believing, evangelically-minded fellowships that retain some semblance of godliness and righteousness, not the woke liberal fellowships that have been consumed by the rising tide of secular culture.

Because I’m sensitive to practical ideas of what we can do in response to the corruption all around us, I’m wondering what Metaxas has to say to the Church at large and in what ways he thinks we should speak up. For instance, how does one “confront the lies of cultural Marxism” as “the church”?

If anyone reading this blog has read his book, I’d love to hear what you think.

Have a great weekend.