We watched "Slumdog Millionaire" *on Sunday night, I want to give you some of my impressions.
Let me begin by telling you how we came to pick this movie. Most of you know that I do not hold recent movies in very high esteem. I generally do not appreciate the standard pattern for most Hollywood movies these days; most of them downgrade the things that I believe that we should be holding out as examples, things like - God, family, the work ethic, honor, integrity, self-control, achievement, patriotism, honesty and true love.
I like a movie that leaves me feeling better - or at least challenges me to be better.
I think there is more depth in those "cheesy" 90 minute wonders from Hollywood's Golden Age than hardly anything this side of 1959. Directors like Frank Capra - who felt he had a mandate from God to say something worthwhile with his movies, since he had been given the opportunity to speak with hundreds of people for 90 minutes in a dark theater - produced masterpieces in a very short time and on a very tiny budget and with often "home-made" special effects-
Oops, I have climbed onto my soapbox (sorry).
Someone in R.'s Bible study group mentioned seeing "Slumdog" - her husband had been to India and said that it was an accurate depiction of what he saw there.
My Sunday School Class teacher mentioned it as well.
And since we are reading "When Helping Hurts" in that class, the idea of poverty alleviation is on the forefront of my mind and in my heart.
So R. ordered it on Netflix (they should probably sponsor me) and we watched it Sunday night.
Having had a steady diet of those slow-moving Black-and-White treasures for a number of years, I find that I am much more sensitive. Extreme violence, profanity, even extreme action all seem to assault my sensibilities. This movie assaulted my sensibilities.
I am put off by the filth Jamal Malik, the protagonist in this movie, endured.
Anarchy, hatred, little regard for human life or individual property - all these were rampant in his world.
It made me thankful to live in America. It made me thoughtful . . . this would be the result of a Godless America. This would be the result of the end of capitalism, individual freedoms, and the rights we take for granted but came to us as a result of God's grace.
Because R. and I are in a missions-focused Sunday School Class and for the better part of the past year, we have been surrounded by a "missionary next door" type of atmosphere. We have had missionaries visit the class often, we recently sent a family out to Guatemala, we have had constant updates from others. And because we believe that God has us immersed in all this information and teaching and these tales of adventures for a reason. . . . I wondered how I would feel, should I be suddenly dropped into a culture like the one on the screen before me.
It scared me.
Could I find a place in my heart for people of a culture for which I can find no common ground?
Could I love anyone portrayed on that screen? Or would I just be duped by their poverty, repulsed by their stench, or frightened by the apparent absence of God or anything like the old U.S. of A?
These questions haunted me throughout the movie and since.
I don't know the answer.
A point that is brought out in the book, "When Helping Hurts" , is that because we are all partakers of Adam's fall, we are all victims of the brokenness of sin. That sin effects not only our relationships but also the systems that are in place. Material poverty is just one of the by-products of the Fall.
But Christ has redeemed us. And the only way that poverty can truly be alleviated is by pointing people to His redemption, so that He can heal their brokenness and begin to heal the brokenness of the systems in place around them. In so doing, He truly changes the world.
I saw no redeeming factors portrayed in this movie.
Early in the film, Jamal and his older brother found themselves alone after their village was attacked and their mother killed.
As they slept in a makeshift tee pee on a trash heap, in the afternoon sun, a couple of fairly clean cut, well dressed men approached and offer them soft drinks.
My fear was that these men were out to abuse the boys in some way and I braced myself for more shocking images. But instead they took a number of the children to what appeared to be a peaceful compound filled with clean, happy children. They fed them.
And I thought - perhaps these are missionaries.
Soon I learned different. These Fagin-like miscreants meant to enrich themselves by using these children to beg on the streets.
There were no missionaries.
No peace. No safety.
What a scary world for a child.
That's scary for adults, too.
The movie has an honorable story line depicting true and selfless love.
But it troubled me.
There are people living in this paradise we call home that are no less hungry and frightened and empty and all alone than little Jamal Malik.
They need for someone to live redemption before them. Someone that will get engaged with them, where they are and explain the Kingdom of God with their lifestyle.
Where are the missionaries-next-door?
*Slumdog Millionaire -Warner Bros. 2008
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