Just finished the new movie Amazing Grace (I was going to catch it in the theaters but frankly I got so sick of seeing LifeWay prostituting itself once again for the sake of yet another movie that I held off). I found that it was a very enjoyable movie -- I love period pieces -- with a stellar cast. Albert Finney has always amazed me with his abilities. He is an absolute chameleon. But there was something unsatisfying about the film. I couldn't quite put my finger on it at the time, but I think that I've figured it out now:
The movie treats the Christianity of its main characters with respect. I am actually glad that they avoided clubbing us over the head with it, as it made the characters more natural (although they certainly didn't mind a good deal of preachiness regarding the abolition issue). The movie does a wonderful job of capturing Wilberforce's passion and Newton's abject repentance as the core of the characters. However, it seemed to fail to make the vital connection to show that the men were abolitionists BECAUSE they were Christians--that their compassion for the helpless arose from their Christianity and not from mere humanitarianism.
Wilberforce, a student of the great Calvinist preacher John Newton, had a profound understanding of man's sinfulness. His theology was captured in the words of his mentor, preserved in the film, that "I am a great sinner, and Christ is a great Savior." It was a lack of this understanding, he believed, that was at the heart of the corrupted Christianity of his day; and that led professing Christians to support social evils such as slavery.
In his book Real Christianity Wilberforce wrote:
"But here, I am afraid, is the very place where we find the greatest flaw in the faith of most professing Christians. This flaw is like a physical defect, like a malfunction in our hearts that at first has no external symptoms and yet eventually puts out all the body's energy and motion, a paralysis that spreads through the entire organism until each molecule of the body falls still and silent. This defect that I am talking about is closely related to the last chapter's main subject: "They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick" (Luke 5:31). If we had really felt the burden of our sins, if we were aware that they are a load that we are not strong enough to bear, if we knew that eventually the weight of them would sink us into destruction, our emotions would have rejoiced when we heard the grace in this invitation: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" (Matt. 11:28).
But when we barely feel the weight of our sin at all, we would be merely putting on an act if we pretended to think highly of the deliverance we have been offered. That is why few people even bother with this pretense anymore; if the most superficial observer were to compare the feelings and opinions of most Christians with the doctrines that we still keep in our creed, and with the Scripture's strong language, that person could not help but be struck by the amazing contrast between the two."
The more things change, the more they stay the same, n'est ce pas?
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