Hair-raising ‘Harriet’ includes positive portrayal of Christianity

(spoiler alert) After several hair-raising chase scenes, armed runaway slave Harriet Tubman gets the drop on her former slave master.

Aiming her revolver, she steps out from behind a tree and demands Gideon Brodess, riding on horseback, to drop his rifle, which he does. But he tries to surprise her and pulls his handgun.

Harriet shoots his hand, walks over and grabs his rifle and trains it on him.

“God did not make people to own people,” she declares.

The fact that the biopic Harriet, in theaters now, portrays Christianity in a positive light is refreshing and rare from a secular production company from Hollywood. It would have been so easy for them to gloss over the ‘Black Moses’ connection to God in a rewrite that could have highlighted only feminism and race equality.

Harriet (played by Cynthia Erivo) decided to flee slavery in Maryland rather than be sold “down the river” and parted from her husband. Despite being illiterate, she successfully made the dangerous 100-mile journey to anti-slavery Pennsylvania.

A year later, she made the dangerous incursion back into Maryland to free her family. This became the mission of her life. Harriet Tubman, born Araminta “Minty” Ross, disguised herself, often as a man, to lead more than 100 slaves to freedom. She became notorious among white slave owners, who kept increasing the bounty on her head. Several riveting chase scenes are the fodder of this movie. Read the rest: Christianity in ‘Harriet.’

Christian actor Denzel Washington portrays evil characters as a lesson

 

Even as a child of the Light, Denzel Washington hasn’t shied away from playing children of darkness, and his latest collaboration with Nightcrawler director Dan Gilroy is no exception – even as it carries a warning to avoid the enticements of evil.

“God put us together,” Washington told the Gospel Herald. “We prayed every day, we read the daily Word every day. Dan and I have been prayer partners in this whole collaboration. We were on the same page from day one. We know Who we work for, and we’re just trying to do our best work.”

Washington is a vocal Christian, whereas Gilroy maintains a low profile regarding his faith.

In the film Roman J. Israel, Esq., Washington plays a bumbling, autistic lawyer, who is a law genius but socially awkward. The crux of the plot centers on the moment when Israel loses his idealism and sells out to become rich. As cynicism takes over, his life spirals downward.

Just before he’s killed by a rival’s henchmen, he sees how his life, before giving up self-sacrificing heroics, impacted others positively. The movie is a parable to anyone who has quit pursuing noble goals, whether a disgraced pastor or 1960s activist.

The son of a Pentecostal preacher in New York, Washington once considered becoming a pastor, but he decided he could reach more people through his acting. That might seem an odd choice since his father didn’t let him watch movies as a kid, but Washington found that his gift for acting was given by God.

“I speak now and I’m doing what God told me to do from the beginning,” Washington said. “It was prophesied that I would travel the world and preach to millions of people. It was prophesied when I was 20. I thought it was through my work and it has been. I’m all about the message, to the degree that I know it, and I’m unashamed and unafraid to share it.”

Pastor A.R. Bernard, senior pastor of Christian Cultural Center in Brooklyn, New York, helped him understand his calling, Washington said. Pastor Bernard spoke to him from Daniel chapter 10: “God puts leaders in place for a reason and a season… There’s a reason, you may not like what’s going on but the Boss has a reason.”

The 62-year-old actor has won two Academy Awards and has a long list of credits dating back to the 1970s that include Cry Freedom and Malcom X. While filming a T.V. movie, Washington met Pauletta Pearson, whom he married in 1983. The couple reside in Los Angeles and have four children.

About his latest role, Washington said he was drawn to the moral and psychological complexities of Israel.

“He is Old Testament, he knows the law, but, not to say he doesn’t have faith, but he has faith in the law,” he said. “His conviction was through the law.”

If he doesn’t balk at depicting evil on the screen, Washington also doesn’t falter from being a spokesperson for clean-living and loving God. Read the rest of Denzel Washington Christian.

Knowing, not knowing

Knowing what God can do, we don’t know what God can do.

That’s why we go to prayer — not out of compulsion or religiosity — but out of wonderment. What unimaginable answer will God produce? The world’s greatest fiction writer couldn’t think up what God does.

Sometimes, you go for a long stretch without seeing an answer. Then out of the blue, God moves dramatically, unexpectedly, unforseen. And then praying is gratifying. He is at work always; we do not perceive always. We win at the end, after the enemy has scored so many points that a lopsided victory seems sure.

I think Los Angeles is the city most like Gen. 1:2 — formless and empty, (with) darkness… over the surface of the deep. Out of Los Angeles, has come corruption-propagating

Photo thanks to Ben Rogers Blog

entertainment to poison the world. They may have built this city on rock and roll, but the prayer warrior rebuilds it on prayer. Not only is there Hollywood here, there is also Azusa Street.

A friend of a friend, a super model and an actress, has cancer and is now praying and reading her Bible. When the mask breaks up, you turn to something of true value. Prayer has brought her to Christ and is bringing her to Christ.

 

The Matrix falls short when explaining evil

Betrayal over steak dinner

Neo

Although The Matrix bellows the standard New Age mantra of sinlessness, it undermines this thesis with Cypher’s betrayal of his comrades.

The major conflict is humans fighting against the machines, who personify evil — a not-so-original sci-fi plot. Deprived of solar power in post-apocalyptic world, the machines turn to cultivating humans in farms to supply their energy needs. A vast human population is kept docile in a holographic, computer-generated world. Only a few enlightened humans fight the machines in this world.

The nearly indestructible Agent Smith who suppresses the human rebellion.

The balance of the fight will fall to Neo, the foretold savior. But Neo doesn’t believe in himself. Most of the movie then is dedicated to him overcoming his lack of belief and

Morpheus tells Neo that humans are raised on farms to become batteries

accepting his fate as “the one.” The only evil is ignorance, a New Age philosophy with roots in Buddhism and Gnosticism, which is now embraced by humanists.

But a subplot undercuts the ignorance-is-evil myth. On the one hand, Cypher betrays the enlightened friends because he is tired of fighting and only wishes to return to the

Trinity

software illusion world of blissful ignorance. But he also turns Judas because he loves Trinity, who is attracted to Neo. Thus, jealousy undoes this major thesis of the movie. The roots of evil lie in many desires.

I like The Matrix because it’s not mindless. But it also shows that the anti-God crowd cannot adequately grapple with evil. We Christians believe that evil lies in the human bosom. If a person follows the Spirit of God, he will conform more to God’s image and manifest compassion. But if a person unbridles his passions, he will fall into evil. Because evil lurks in all of us, we need a Savior, who forgives and transforms us daily. Achieving a higher consciousness, whether induced by occult or psychedelics, is not the answer.