A few months back, I read a couple of the winning scripts of a well-known Christian screenplay contest.

My aim was to figure out if I could write one.

My decision was that I couldn’t.

Now, before you jump to conclusions and assume I’m against all “Christian” movies, I’m not.  But there’s a difference between a palatable Christian film and a real film.  There just is.  Most Christian films that are deemed excellent by the Christian-powers-that-be are sugar-coated (cue in sweeping refrains of Christian music, which are foreign to most people who don’t go to church) and unreal to a large part of the American population (Christian or otherwise).

I don’t want easy answers (“JAY-sus saved me!  He will save you, too!).  I don’t want a squeaky clean story line (Really?  Seriously?  The protagonist never lies or cheats or screws around?  Where’s the story?  Why are we watching this?).  I don’t like deux ex machina endings.  I don’t want to watch Bible-spouting characters, unless it’s an integral part of one of the characters who will be humbled in the end.  I don’t want preaching or characters laying out the gospel plan for me.  It isn’t real, unless you’re currently attending a Bible college or you’re laboring in some sort of Christian ministry.

That said, the film doesn’t necessarily have to include all those things that make some people squeamish (foul language, sex, nudity, and violence).  See Invincible or Rocky or RockyII for great examples of gritty stories that use none of the above.

Give me a film about faith cornered up against poverty, drugs, infidelity, and abuse (of any sort).  Give me a film that isn’t wrapped up with a velvet bow at the end.  Give me a film that shows how life is…with a glimmer of hope that it could get better.

That’s the world most people know.

I think I have a great life, but I’ve still been hurt.  I’ve suffered much abuse–physical, spiritual, and emotional.  I’ve been betrayed.  I’ve been abandoned.  I’ve been rejected.

And when I see those things on screen, my heart pounds just a little faster, my palms sweat up, and my stomach clenches something fierce.

That’s what I’m talking about.  Give me truth any day.

Which brings me to a Time Magazine article by Nancy Gibbs that I LOVED…on “The Gospel of Glee,” referencing the new, snarky, and irreverent TV show about a high school glee club on Fox.

She asks the question: “Is the breakout TV show anti-Christian or replete with teachable moments?”  [The specifics do look insurmountable on the page: the only self-identified Christian is a girl who is pregnant but lying about it (she’s thrown out of the house by her parents when she tells them); Mr. Schuester is having a perky affair on his horrid wife; the kids lace their bake sale cupcakes with pot…]

In Gibbs’ voice: “Which led my husband to pose the question to our daughters, What would Jesus watch?  That in turn led to an intriguing–and useful–conversation around our dinner table.  It’s the oldest teacher’s trick, better to show than tell: the Sermon on the Mount was clean and clear, but Jesus also offered parables, little mysteries to unwrap and examine for their coded messages.  This is a delivery device especially good for teenagers building their rebellious muscles.

“It insults kids to suggest that simply watching Characters Behaving Badly onscreen means they’ll take that as permission to do the same themselves.  The fact that Glee is about a club full of misfits already makes it ripe gospel ground; Jesus was not likely to be sitting at the cool kids’ table in the cafeteria.  And it’s set in high school, meaning it’s about a journey not just to college and career but to identity and conviction, the price of popularity, the compromises we must make between what we want and what we need.”

She ends by mentioning the furor over the Harry Potter books and wonders what I’ve always wondered: “I never understood why J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis’ witches and wizards got a free pass just because the authors wore their missions on their sleeves.  (You see it in the Twilight saga too; we’re O.K. with vampires and werewolves as long as they’re fighting it out to protect a girl’s virginity.)  If, to some parents, J.K. Rowling’s subtlety makes her lessons suspect, I think it makes them powerful.  Kids, like adults, resist force-feeding.  When a whole generation obsessed about Harry, parents everywhere were given a rich new repertoire of characters and plotlines with which to teach about loyalty, courage, humility, and, Rowling’s central message, the notion that love has ultimate power, even over death.

That one, actually, wasn’t even very subtle.”

Kudos, Nancy Gibbs.  Couldn’t have said it better myself.

[Post image: Some of the Glee cast, FOX network photo]