News Flash: The Gospel is Safe!

According to a recent poll by 15,000 people, the Gospel is now safe. Forget what Christ said about stumbling blocks and offenses. Forget what Bonhoeffer wrote about a Gospel that calls men to come and die and his writings decrying cheap grace. Forget about bloody substitutionary atonement and disrupting calls to follow. What we want today is a gospel that is safe for everyone.

The MPAA recently gave a PG rating to an upcoming movie produced by an Atlanta-area church, “Facing the Giants”. The distributors of the film claim the MPAA told them it was for “religious content”, which the MPAA denies, saying it received that rating partly due to the discussions of infertility and depression.

The misnomered Religious Right has been crying foul and claiming persecution, making 15,000 phone calls to the MPAA demanding a rating change, and uttering statements like “This incident raises the disquieting possibility that the MPAA considers exposure to Christian themes more dangerous for children than exposure to gratuitous sex and violence.” (House Majority Whip Roy Blunt). One has to wonder if he is really that ignorant, or if he realizes it’s an election year and thinks his constituents are all stupid. Quick, someone name the last movie that featured “gratuitous sex and violence” that was rated PG.

Another ironic fact is that, of all the Billy Graham films that have received ratings from the MPAA, only two were rated G. The rest were PG or PG-13. Does anybody remember them protesting? Remember, there is no practical difference between G, PG, and PG-13 ratings in that children can buy tickets for all three without parental permission. So what does a PG rating mean? It means exactly what it says, that Parental Guidance is recommend.

IF this film were rated PG for “religious content”, I would completely agree. I wonder what kind of gospel this film presents. One that “calls a man to come and die”, to live a new and transformed life? Or one that helps you win football games? If it’s the latter, then yes, I agree, it should have been rated G.