Thursday, March 22, 2012

Lord, Save Us From Your Followers


Don Merchant puts out a thought provoking documentary titled Lord, Save Us From Your Followers.  He addresses the problem that many others have addressed concerning one of the greatest enemies of Christianity is the actions and attitudes of Christians.  I am fascinated with this topic and think that the premis of this documentary could not be more true.  As far as a documentary goes there are some things that I really like and really don’t like.  I think that his overall message that he conveys is spot on, and does make you think about how you have treated others if you are a Christian, and makes you think about the way you view Christians if you are not.  I personally am not a fan of “man on the street Q and A.”  I think that anytime you engage someone on the street by just walking up to them and sticking a microphone in their face to ask them a question you get a person looking to respond in a guarded or slanted way, or in a way that hopes they are not getting caught up in a “gotcha” moment.  I don’t think that you get honest meaningful responses because quite frankly you are merely looking to put a sound bite on camera that will impact your audience without allowing the person you are talking with be accurately represented as a person within the film.  It also doesn’t help that Merchant is doing these interviews in a stupid suit that is covered in religious and social bumper stickers that is really cheesy and hoakey.    As the documentary progresses it moves much more to a sit down discussion style interview.  When he does his sit down style interviews with people like Rick Warren, Al Frankin, and William P. Young (Author of “The Shack”) he is able to wonderfully engage his message.  I think that there are some really thought provoking things in the documentary such as the gospel of prosperity and how consumerism and Christianity should not be such good friends.  It is very powerful to see him take a page from Blue Like Jazz, the Donald Miller Book that has recently been made into a movie, and set up a Confession booth in the middle of a gay pride festival, where Merchant apologized to homosexuals and confessed the sins of Christians to them asking for forgiveness from the community.  At 142 min this is a long documentary.  I found that the beginning of the movie was a little cheesy but was very pleased with it by the time I got to the end.  No matter what your religious views are I would recommend this movie for everyone if to just give a different perspective. 


Many documentaries run the risk of taking current public figures and portray them in one way, but time gives them ample opportunity to show you they should be portrayed in another way.  Several times Rick Santorum who at the time(2007) was a senator from Pennsylvania talks about his faith and times when he should show compassion.  Several times we have seen that Rick Santorum has not showed that same kind of love when trying to appeal to the super conservative right wing base of Republicans.  Don’t let the hypocrisy of some keep you from understanding the message that is trying to be portrayed by the director.

The common phrase “The book is better than the movie” is very rarely used when talking about documentaries.  This has been a trendy topic to write about in Christian circles lately.  If the documentary is intriguing to you and you are the type of person that likes to read more.  Or you are the kind of person that likes to click in the box “people who like this have also enjoyed…”  This documentary is also a book and there are a couple of books that I have liked that deal with similar subjects.




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