The Problem with Courageous

I was visiting the family of a friend last September and I saw the study that went along with the movie Courageous – the latest Christian movie. I flipped through it and winced, not liking what I saw.

I saw the movie anyways and it was pretty good. It wasn’t cheesy and it was funny. I liked the part where the guy kept telling the police chief he loved him. When Javier pretended to be a gang member in the back of the police car I cracked up. The resounding message of the movie is a call for men to be good dads and husbands. This is a great thing. The state of masculinity in our culture is desperate. The issues that the movie seeks to address are urgent.

Javier was my favorite character. "Vamos a almorzar... Voy a comprar un pollo." He said to intimidate the gangster with whom he was sharing the back seat of the cop car.

I want my tone to be gentle yet bold, though we all know that gentleness is not always my forte with matters that matter most to me. I try not to frequently blog in the negative,  I would much rather point out what is right, or point to things that are right. That said, part of the business of joy is to point out things that hinder joy and the message of Courageous is very destructive and can destroy the joy we were meant to have.

The movie called people, men specifically, to step up and be courageous. That is, provide for your family, spend time with your kids, love your wife, etc. Like I said, all of these things are good, so good. However, this movie is harmful because misses the gospel.

It mentions the gospel for sure. God is talked about a lot. One character actually shares the gospel with another and we see someone become a Christian. All of these things are good. However, the gospel is not central. What is central in this movie are the men themselves and their decision and effort to be courageous. At one point in the movie, it has men chanting, “I will! I will!” – I literally shivered when I saw this. The movie portrays the gospel and Jesus as this sort of quick beginner concept or the key to get into the Christian club. Once you are in the club, then it is all about living a life of duty and responsibility. These are good ideas, but they will inevitably fail because it is a man-centered, effort-driven ideology.

I'm bummed Javi didn't make the movie poster. They could've had him off to the side working on the shed.

This is not new. These ideas have been around since Promise Keepers and beyond. For middle class, suburban Christians, this stuff is like crack. Duty and effort based ideas make people in this culture go crazy because, frankly, it appeals to our pride. I know because this was me during high school and college. I loved a duty-driven, work-ethic-exulting form of Christianity. Sure I paid lip service to the gospel. I knew that I needed Jesus to die for my sin and I framed my speech with phrases like “by the grace of God” to sort of Christianize whatever accomplishment I was talking about. But what was central was myself, the perception of my holiness, and satisfaction for taking care of it myself.

“Courageous Christianity” is an action oriented form of  fake Christianity. I would call it religious game-playing.  What is central here is not Jesus or loving God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. The mantra of Courageous Christianity is not “Jesus paid it all”, it is “Jesus got me into heaven, now I will take it from here.” If someone has a problem in “Courageous Christianity” the answer is usually to do something to make it better, instead of first stopping to seek God and focus on how the gospel speaks to the issue at hand.

What real Christianity calls people to is Jesus. He’s enough. He’s taken care of everything. We don’t call people to a lifestyle or behavioral correction. We call people to Jesus and literally everything else will fall into place – not right away of course, but when Jesus really becomes Lord of a life, the process of sanctification begins and the life begins to grow holier.

A friend of mine started coming to church before he was Christian. He was smoking pot and sleeping around and stuff that a lot 20-something guys do. The people in his community group didn’t tell him stop doing what he was doing, they didn’t call him to change his behavior, they called him to Jesus. This might seem pretty liberal, but it is biblical. It doesn’t make any sense to try to get a non-Christian to stop sinning or change his behavior. They goal of Christianity is not to get the world to stop sinning, it is to create more worship for The King. They called my friend to Jesus. Once Jesus became Lord of his life, then they worked on helping him change these behaviors, not out of duty and definitely not on his own effort, but because Jesus is better than anything else and the Holy Spirit enables us to change.

Instead of having an "I Will" service at your church, try a "Jesus Already Did" service. It leads to more joy and less frustration.

A big part of this Courageous movie is to be an example of a godly man for your children. This is awesome. However, the movie misunderstands what a godly man actually is. A godly man is a man who has deep, genuine affection for God. It is not a morality code or a list of duties. If it was, David, who had the God given title of “man after God’s own heart” wouldn’t have counted since he committed adultery and murdered someone to cover it up. If you want to show your kids what a Godly man looks like, seek to delight in God. Be satisfied in God alone. Kids pick up what makes dad excited. He might lead a family devotion every now and then or pray before meals, but on Sunday or Saturday afternoons in the Fall, that’s when dad’s emotions really come out.

This stuff is tricky. It’s hard because it requires supernatural involvement. “Courageous Christianity” makes sense to us. “Work harder” is a solution that most of us understand. “Be transformed by the Gospel” or “Seek God first” are solutions that require some thinking and learning to grasp. But it’s how God designed it. He works most things in our lives to wean us off of our self-sufficiency and draw is to lean heavily on Him.

I write this for your joy. I pray that this isn’t too harsh or offensive, but that real, Christian manhood would be defined by deep, ferocious, pursuit of and delight in Christ and the gospel. I pray that men would be free to cling to the cross when we fail. I write this for the glory of God, that He might be central and get all the credit for manhood done well. I write this so that your delight might be more and more in God Himself.

~ by jfoor on February 23, 2012.