Recently, in a desperate attempt to find a movie to watch this weekend, my family and I watched a movie that was labeled as a Christain film. Regardless to say, this movie sucked, losing the plot constantly, never answering the central question of the film, and more. While I feel like I may have lost IQ points while watching it, it did make me have to ask the question: “Why is Christian media so bad?” When I say, “Christian media”, I’m not just referring to movies and T.V. produced by Christian companies. I’m talking about all of it, from movies, to music, to books. Having grown up in a Christian home (though I wouldn’t say we became mature Christians until 2021), I’ve watched, read, and listened to much of the media popular in the so-called Christian ghetto and now looking back on it, I can say that much of it isn’t art. Much of it is just a template that watches like a propaganda film.
If any of you have ever watched a Christian movie or are familiar with them in general, then you know that there seem to only be two templates (or “skeleton plots” as I will call them) that are commonly used. The first is the plot that we’re the most familiar with that follows the main character who is a deist/agnostic/atheist who’s angry at God and needs some sort of guide (the Christian love interest, an angel, God himself, etc.) to bring him to the faith. Once he is in the faith, his life automatically gets better and he all of a sudden has a family, a white picket fence, etc.
The second skeleton plot that is also used is this: A child or someone else comes down with a horrible, debilitating illness such as cancer that can’t be healed by any doctor. Then, the sick person sees God or heaven, is healed all of a sudden, and shares his/her testimony with everyone and brings people to Jesus along the way. These types of movies are somewhat less common and are sometimes supposedly based off of true stories (though several of these “true stories” have since been debunked as being hoaxes).
While these stories might have been okay the first time around, it seems that a lot of Christian media makers saw that it worked and said to themselves, “Hey, we had one good movie, yes. How about a second, mediocre remake that basically plagiarizes everything from the first movie, but with none of the good parts?” Since then, it seems that that pattern has continued with Christian movie company after Christian movie company until the movies have had pretty much all of the soul sucked out of them. Every story is the same, and they are so watered down that it’s obvious that they’re just there to pander to the Christian crowd who are so starved of good content that they’ll consume anything with a Christian label on it.
This doesn’t just stop at movies and T.V. either. It even has made its way into the Christian music scene. When was the last time you watched a Christian music video or listened to K-Love and didn’t hear basically the same song for thirty minutes? I think the comedian John Crist hit the nail on the head with his satire song, “Every Christain Music Video” which you can watch here:
Other than just pure laziness, I think the answer to why Christian media sucks so much is because Christian/ Christian-adjacent media creators have become so scared to accidently offend their audience with anything that might be even slightly controversial or divisive that they just won’t try to make anything new. They want to get as many people in seats as they can so they can not only make money, but also to feel like they’re spreading God’s word through media, even though there are barely any secular people watching because they’re busy watching something more entertaining. This is the reason why I’ve often said that if J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis were alive today, their work would never be published (much less adapted into film) because they aren’t woke and it would divide too many Christians on matters such as portraying witchcraft in a film or the fact that the Gospel isn’t constantly being shoved into your face.
Speaking of the Gospel (or what they may mistakenly call the Gospel) being shoved into your face, another reason why Christain media sucks is because they focus too much on smacking you upside the head with their version of the Bible that they lose any semblance to a good story. If you’ve read my post about the book Pilgrim’s Progress, you’ll know that this has been a problem for a long time. The message is so ham-fisted that while there may be a story somewhere, it’s completely overridden by the need to make sure that everyone knows the character is/will be a Christian. Even The Chronicles of Narnia series had this problem in its portrayal of Aslan, something that the great J.R.R. Tolkien famously criticized C.S. Lewis for. It’s incredibly sad to see this, as it used to be the Christians who were the leading force in popular media.
So, what’s the solution to this problem? How can Christian media become better?
The first things Christian/Christian-adjacent media creators should do is pretty straight forward and that is: make something new. While almost nothing nowadays is perfectly original, a new story of some sort that doesn’t have to do with an atheist finding Jesus or a child being miraculously cured of some horrible disease is desperately needed. Telling real stories about real people (like what we saw in Sound of Freedom, The Case for Christ, or Jesus Revolution) is a start, but as more and more truly creative people come onto the scene who aren’t afraid to possibly offend people, new stories that are actually good will be able to be produced.
The second thing that they can do is start adding in the message in a much more subliminal way. This is where the Christian media companies should really take a note from Hollywood, who have been experts in putting subliminal messaging in their movies for years. When you make the message of the movie so obvious that it doesn’t take even a second of thought to figure out what it is, it turns people off to the movie, especially when it comes to trying to reach a different demographic (in this case, seculars). That isn’t to say that Christians need to make the Gospel so vague in the movie that no one can detect it or if they do, it’s totally up to interpretation. They just need to allow the actual story to shine through and carry the message. The book and Disney adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe did this quite well and it’s something that more people should be less afraid to do.
I think if a Christian movie company wanted to try this out, a good place to start would perhaps be doing an adaptation of C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. It could be done in a T.V. show format and while the main character would be a head demon (Screwtape), there would still be plenty of room to put a good Gospel message in without it being totally in your face. It would be an original story never brought to screen before and a huge breakaway from the traditional stuff that Christian media puts out.
Until next time,
M.J.
The Tanuki Corner 
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