Why I’m Showing a Rated R Movie to Teenagers
This Friday evening at Asbury I’m screening The Mission, the great 1986 Roland Joffé movie starring Jeremy Irons and Robert De Niro. I’m showing it our middle and high school students and their parents. It’s rated R, and deservedly so. Here’s why I doing this.
God is going to hold me accountable for the spiritual development of the young people at our church; I think about that all the time. We all know that the data over the last 50 years on young people leaving the church are grim. Here’s my abiding belief: young people are not leaving the church because we are giving them too much, but too little. If I am going to err as a pastor, I’m going to err on the side of more not less. In other words, I don’t want to dumb down the faith.
The Mission is a movie that asks deep questions about what it looks like to live faithfully in the world, but it doesn’t provide neat answers. There isn’t a nice clean ending. In fact, the final line of the movie haunts my thoughts as it makes the viewer consider his own place in the world.
This movie is going to stretch our young people—it’s not the kind of thing most of them will be used to watching. But, I think that can be a good thing.
One of the opening scenes of the movie features a beautiful depiction of masculinity in the service of God. In our time, we lack good examples of what masculinity is for—I like The Mission because it shows us what masculinity can look like when used appropriately.
But, be advised—this movie is not for little children. Here’s what I wrote in my description of the event:
"The Mission is one of my favorite movies, and I’ve been wanting to screen it at Asbury for our students for a while. Released in 1986 and with an all-star cast that includes Robert De Niro, Jeremy Irons, and Liam Neeson, The Mission is about Spanish and Portuguese colonization of South American Indians in the Amazon in the 18th century. Be warned—the movie is rated R for a reason and includes violence and non-sexual nudity of the native peoples. Obviously, I think the movie is worth seeing and I’m excited to get to show it to our students and their families, but it is NOT a movie for children.”
(For families with younger children, we will be playing the movie The Wild Robot in the room next door to where we are screening The Mission. We will be one of the divided families, with a child in each room. I’d like my daughter to see The Mission when she gets older, but it’s not appropriate for her right now.)
Propaganda vs. Art
Much of the Christian content produced these days is not art, but propaganda. Propaganda wants to tell you what to think, leaving no nuance. It expects nothing of the viewer. In fact, propaganda fears the viewer and worries that if there are any loose ends, if anything deviates from the neat and the clean, then people will fall into theological error. Propaganda worries that if people are allowed to think, then they will think the wrong things.
That may be true—people can easily fall into error. Left to their own devices, people will like as not think the wrong things. In fact, people have been thinking the wrong things since the Garden of Eden. So, if propaganda actually worked, I’d be all for it. But the problem with propaganda is that ultimately it doesn’t work! It isn’t captivating. It doesn’t stick with you. It doesn’t change you.
This is my problem with so many of the “Christian” movies being produced these days—they don’t really work. There is nothing wrong with that kind of thing in and of itself, but those sorts of movies are not going to reach people the way great art does. See, art expects something of the beholder—it asks you to do the thinking. It respects the idea that the world is not neat and clean, and that there are always questions along with answers.
The Bible, among many of things, is great art. The Bible expects something of the reader, and it doesn’t wrap things up neatly. For all the answers it provides, it also raises questions, questions through which God’s people have to learn to trust. (This is what faith is, by the way—trusting God’s goodness when you still don’t understand.)
What Movies Have Stayed With You?
I’m not expecting that every single student will find The Mission compelling this Friday, but I don’t care—I’m trying to put something out there that is worth attending to. I love what Chesterton said:
“An open mind is like an open mouth: it is meant to bite down on something nourishing. Otherwise it becomes like a sewer: accepting everything, rejecting nothing.”
So, that’s my goal with this movie: to give our students something to chew on.
Interested? Register here. I’m told that there will be a cornucopia of amazing movie snacks set out for our enjoyment, and, as I mentioned, a movie for little kids right next door to where we are screening The Mission.
What’s a movie that has stayed with you? Let me know in the comments.
