Jesus Camp | the most stressful film ever made

Here's the trailer for a film we watched at the ULB GBU group last week.

We had a social 'pause' in the middle of our studies in John, we ate spaghetti and beignets, it was great.

And then we watched Jesus Camp, quite possibly the most stressful film I've ever watched.

What do I mean by that? Well basically, there's a whole lot of truth and a whole lot of falsehood all muddled up right here. So part of me is like, "yeah great, that's true!" and another part is like "nooo that is SO not the Gospel what are you doing?!"

For example, watch the trailer, somewhere around 0.40 a boy says he was saved when we was five because he "just wanted more out of life". Number 1. You're five. Number 2. You don't "get saved" because you want "more out of life", Jesus isn't a self-help, life improvement program! Salvation is realising you're a sinner and deserve God's punishment, and then realising that God sent Jesus to take that punishment for you! The topic of sin was definitely one that was distinctly lacking. Although with clever editting, you can't say for sure that it was never mentioned at all. Film makers can pick and choose what they want to use.

Anyway, when I wasn't cringing over heresy or how inevitably non-Christians are going to see the film and immediately apply it to the Christians in general. (Check the youtube comments for accusations of child abuse and being in a cult.) I was getting angry with the radio presenter/narrator type person in the film going on about how ridiculous it is to want to teach creationism in schools alongside the theory of evolution, or just being really misleading saying "this country (USA) has always had a separation between church and state", and yeah, I don't know loads about American history, and I know they don't have a church like the church of England (probably a good thing), but isn't the whole constitution, or wasn't it, based on the Bible? "One nation under God"... stuff like that? Correct me if I'm wrong.

Anyhow, all of that made up for a pretty stressful evening, but then followed by a really interesting, and taxing on the old french brain, discussion of the film with questions about how Christian parents should raise their children (homeschooling?), Christian involvement in politics, abortion, the gift of tongues, child preachers, the true Gospel and whether or not children can really understand the Gospel.

One little girl featured I just loved because she was so enthusiastic about living for Jesus, but just had some really rubbish teaching sometimes! She spoke about how she didn't mind if other kids laughed at her because it was God who was going to judge her, not them, and it's his opinion that matters. And a couple of times she went to speak to strangers about God and gave them tracts. Other times though she spoke about how God wasn't in churches where people didn't basically shout 'hallelujah' a lot or didn't look enthusiastic. Funny moment at the end though, she goes up to this group of Asian men, maybe in their 50s-60s who are just sitting chatting and asks "If you died today, where do you think you'd go?" "Heaven." one replies. "Really?!" she answered, "Are you sure?" They obviously reply yes, and then (maybe it was the editting, but it seemed like...) she walked away, rejoined her friend and said "I think they were Muslims".