{"id":1447,"date":"2010-04-08T06:47:05","date_gmt":"2010-04-08T13:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/?p=1447"},"modified":"2010-04-14T06:49:20","modified_gmt":"2010-04-14T13:49:20","slug":"letters-to-god-%e2%80%93-christians-should-vote-with-their-wallets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/?p=1447","title":{"rendered":"Letters to God \u2013 Christians Should Vote with their Wallets"},"content":{"rendered":"

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by Marc T. Newman<\/strong><\/span> [critic]<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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This Friday an amazing thing is going to happen.<\/strong><\/span> The kind of movie that evangelicals loudly claim to want is coming to a theater near you. Letters to God<\/em> — a film directed by one of the producers of Fireproof<\/em> — is a family drama about Tyler, a young boy who literally writes, and mails, letters to God. In the letters, Tyler speaks to God as a close friend in a way that recognizes that he may meet his Maker before too long. Tyler has cancer.<\/p>\n

As you can imagine, the U.S. Postal Service does not have a lot of luck getting Tyler\u2019s mail to God, so the task falls upon a troubled mail carrier, Brady, to deal with the letters. He tries to take them to a church \u2013 a seemingly fine place to deliver letters to God \u2013 but the local pastor makes it clear that the letters were entrusted to Brady for a reason. So Brady, a divorced dad struggling with his own demons, suddenly discovers that he is on a mission from God.<\/p>\n

Letters to God<\/em> has a lot of talk about Jesus. People openly pray in this film, discuss death, and rejoice in their lives. Maddy Doherty, Tyler\u2019s mother, is a single mom trying to raise two boys. The family \u2013 including a helpful grandma — cares about each other, though they are not perfect, and not all endings are happy ones. If this sounds a lot like the real life of Christians you know it may be because Letters to God<\/em> is based on a true story. Young Tyler\u2019s real-life letter writing campaign has changed the lives of countless others.<\/p>\n

So where do you come in?<\/p>\n

Christians lament the realistic portrayal of Christians on the screen. They say that they want to see more positive content \u2013 films that move them spiritually and that they can use to make an impact in the lives of their friends. But when To Save A Life<\/em> came out earlier this year, it grossed only $4 million \u2013 despite being a better (and more thought-provoking) film than many Hollywood-produced small films. Even Fireproof<\/em>, a movie that many Christians viewed as a success, brought in only $33 million. Just to compare, the completely dismal film The Bounty Hunter<\/em> so far has raked in $50 million and is still climbing.<\/p>\n

Are the films produced by Christian production companies completely up to Hollywood standards? If you are going to compare them to movies such as The Hurt Locker<\/em> or expect the special effects to rival Transformers<\/em>, well, no. But are they as good as, if not better than, many of the films that achieve wide release? Absolutely.<\/p>\n

But the most important thing is that if we want these studios to get better at their craft, we need to support their efforts. In medieval times, artists in the church had patrons who supported them in their art. Today ticket-buyers take the place of patrons. In this case, you literally get what you pay for. So this weekend you can choose to support Clash of the Titans<\/em> a terribly-plotted remake of a cheesy film from the 80s with some great visuals but not much else. Or you can take your family to a little film that will challenge the way they choose to deal with adversity and that will help them to reach out to others. Don\u2019t \u201crelease the Kraken\u201d — see Letters to God<\/em>. ExileStreet<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

copyright 2009 Marc T. Newman<\/em><\/p>\n

Marc T. Newman, Ph.D. is<\/em> <\/em> founder of <\/em> <\/em>MovieMinistry.com<\/a><\/em> and is an associate professor in the School of Communication and the Arts at Regent University. Requests for media interviews, or reprints of this article, can be made to marc@movieministry.com<\/em>
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> > by Marc T. Newman [critic] This Friday an amazing thing is going to happen. The kind of movie that evangelicals loudly claim to want is coming to a theater near you. Letters to God — a film directed by one of the producers of Fireproof — is a family drama about Tyler, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1447"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1448,"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1447\/revisions\/1448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/exilestreet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}