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A Matter of Faith—movie review

Highlighting real world problems for Christian families

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Synopsis follows

On September 26, 2014 a new movie by Christian filmmaker Rich Christiano (Time Changers, Jonathan Sperry, and Unidentified) will debut on screens across America. In this venture Rich (and his writer brother Dave), tackle the issue of creation vs. evolution and how it directly impacts Christian families. Christiano films have been family friendly and generally theology sound. In short, they don’t usually suffer from the usual ‘fluff’ that passes for Christian entertainment, because most of their movies have educational value.

The stage is set when a young Christian girl (Rachel) excitedly goes off to college for her freshman year (1st year). Her parents are staunch Bible believing Christians, but they start to notice a change in their daughter’s behavior, and ultimately find out this is linked to her waning faith caused by her doubts in the reliability of Scripture. Because their daughter has done all the things Christian parents would want her to do while growing up in their home, they are shocked to the core and at a loss to understand the changes. After investigation, her father discovers that her biology professor (Professor Kaman) is teaching her that evolution is a scientific fact and the answer to life’s origins, and ergo, the Bible’s account of Genesis is incorrect.

Indeed, in my conversations with the director Rich, he stated that the aim of the movie was not necessarily attempting to deal with the specifics of the creation vs. evolution debate (so one should not judge it on that basis), but to alert families of the problems facing young ones today in college. We applaud the movie for attempting this because it is a tragic reality that Christian families all around the world have children that leave the faith after entering higher education. In the USA, practically every denomination can testify to the exodus of youth from their pews after just one year of college.

The father complains to his pastor and expresses shock that they even teach evolution in college and don’t even consider biblical creation. Now, we would agree that many parents are ignorant as to the corrosive effects of teaching evolution can be on one’s faith and don’t prepare their children sufficiently. Or that parents are overconfident that their children’s childhood faith will withstand the secular onslaught that will occur on campuses. But the portrayal that the father did not know what his daughter would be taught in a secular college was a tad unrealistic and I think it somewhat damaged the overall believability of the movie’s premise, because it portrayed the father as rather ignorant of the real world.

Train a child

As most readers are aware, CMI conducts over 1,000 ministry events around the world each year. One of our main goals when ministering in churches is to create awareness within Christian families that their children are at risk unless parents prepare them in advance. In short, the Bible is not enough for young ones when they will get peppered by academics that wheel out a range of seeming scientific ‘facts’ that our children have not been equipped to answer or discern.

The father goes to see Rachel’s college professor which only makes the relationship with her father worse. The arrogant college professor, believing he has all the ‘evidence’ on his side, challenges the father to a public debate. A sympathetic (creationist) male student approaches the father to offer some advice. He provides the name of a former college lecturer (Professor Portland) who was fired by the college because of his beliefs in creation. This was done at the behest of the evolutionist biology professor Kaman. The father tries to enlist Portland’s help but he is still bitter at the college and his former adversary Kaman and declines.

We won’t spoil the ending!

So, the father attempts to study and prepare for the debate. His daughter pleads with him not to do it for fear of her public embarrassment as news is spreading fast on campus. Under the surface this should make viewers realize that the daughter is apparently convinced that her father will lose, otherwise why is she embarrassed? Ultimately, the debate goes ahead to a packed audience and the finale of the movie is played out.

Summary

Despite some of the possible reality checks the movie lacked, we still feel this is very worthwhile viewing for the aforementioned reasons. Parents need to be aware that they must deal with this issue of origins in the home because public education is not neutral when it comes to origins. The fact is university campuses today are really churches of atheism because they teach a materialistic view of our origins. Such a view is in direct opposition to the belief that God is the Genesis Creator, and if Genesis is demonstrably wrong it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to extrapolate that the rest of Scripture is unreliable also. For, if Jesus is not the Creator as mentioned in John 1, Colossians 1 etc. then He does not have the power to save us from anything!

Bring the movie to your area

A Matter of Faith is looking for sponsors to bring this movie to local theatres in North America. You can contact the producers (in the US on 949 215 9121) or by email at rich@christianmovies.com. They offer a revenue sharing plan.

We would think that a great companion to this movie would be our own Evolution’s Achilles Heels book and soon to be released DVD (at the time of writing) as they deal directly with the very pillars that are foundational to evolutionary theory. The DVD contains interviews with 15 Ph.D. scientists who expose, with stunning clarity, evolution’s fatal flaws. So, perhaps instead of being impressed by the seeming authority of their lecturers in college, students might be similarly impressed by seeing renowned Ph.D. scientists explain why they believe in the Genesis account of Creation.

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Published: 25 September 2014

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