www.TheOldSchoolhouse.com
we will be the first ones to tell you: ef-
fectively telling stories only becomes sec-
ond nature to us after thousands of mis-
takes and countless hours of training the
mind and affections—the whole person
really—to see everything in light of the
lordship of Jesus Christ.
Point Two
Dabney’s second point is even more important than the first one, namely that
the frequent engaging the mind with fictitious scenes, no matter how pure they
might appear to be, will produce a morbid affinity for mere feelings, to the neglect of actually engaging in real things
in the real world.
Read the following statement and con-
sider how it applies to movies and litera-
ture: “The purpose for which fictions are
read, and the drama is frequented, is to
excite the attention and the emotions.
They must be animated and full of in-
cident, or they will not be popular. The
reader [or movie-goer] who indulges
much in them soon becomes so accus-
tomed to having his sensibilities excited,
and the labor of attention relieved by the
interest of the plot, that he is incapable of
useful reading and business.”
Think about it. If a filmmaker is going
to successfully communicate his message
to an audience, he is going to need to,
in some fashion, manipulate their emo-
tions. Christians often complain that
“faith-based” films are mostly lame, bor-
ing and not very interesting at all, per-
haps with the exception of a handful of
films like Courageous and War Room.
Again, it takes time to do this right. But
therein lays the problem: the better a
filmmaker gets, the better he must get at
making people believe that what they’re
watching is not scripted, acted, edited,
basically “manipulated” to provoke a re-
sponse, even if that is a worthy and legit-
imate end, like helping someone realize
their need for God.
I believe Dabney was right when
he said, “All works of fiction are full of
scenes of imaginary distress, which are
constructed to impress the sensibilities.
The fatal objection to the habitual con-
templation of these scenes is this, that
while they deaden the sensibilities, they
afford no occasion or call for the exer-
cise of active sympathies.” We are called
to be doers of the Word and not hearers
only. I’m afraid many of our children
are watching too many movies, and are
being trained to see the world in terms
of neatly packaged story lines that almost
never transfer over to the real world.
Iain Murray ends his short but immensely important book, The Undercover Revolution: How Fiction Changed
Britain7, with a chapter that simply asks
and answers the question, “Is Christianity Fiction?” In it he demolishes many
atheists attempts at explaining the New
Testament as nothing more than the perverse imaginations of the followers of
Jesus of Nazareth, dishonest men who
were intent on forcing a narrative that
would somehow match the Old Testament prophesies about the Messiah by
applying them to Jesus. Murray asks, if
most of what Jesus did was fiction, “how
is the extraordinary confidence of the
first Christian disciples to be explained?”
Why would people telling lies about a
poor carpenter from nowhere be willing
to die for him? Well, unlike fiction, Mur-
ray says, “the New Testament teaches that
the Christian faith is verifiable every-
where, and at any time, because Christ
lives now to make Himself known (…)
All who trust in Him will find certainty,
not fiction.”
A regular dose of fiction, communi-
cated through whatever medium, can
become a hindrance to the proper de-
velopment of Christians who are com-
manded by God to go “make disciples
of all nations.” This is active, not passive.
This is, “get up from your seat, put your
hand to the plow and do not look back.”
This is, “Rise up, O men of God! Have
done with lesser things. Give heart and
mind and soul and strength to serve the
King of kings.”
We must guide our children toward
the real world and away from fantasy,
we must help them deal with real people
who have real problems, and we must
train them to discuss real and important
things that matter for life on earth and
for eternity. One way we can do this is
by feeding them a healthy daily spiritual
diet. The main course should always be
God’s Word, aided by a meaningful, in-
sightful side order of non-fiction books
and films, and an occasional and care-
fully picked dessert of excellent fiction,
all of which, in a proper balance, can
help them understand that the most im-
portant narrative of all is not comprised
of mere stories and imaginations of men,
but that History is God’s true story of
how He is redeeming a people for His
own glory.
Joaquin Fernandez is a veteran producer
of documentaries, television commercials,
and educational and marketing videos. He
has worked all over the U. S., the Caribbean,
Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. His
most recent project is the award-winning
documentary film IndoctriNation: Public
Schools and the Decline of Christianity
in America, and the book by the same
name, which the Lord is using to grow
home education worldwide. Joaquin is a
media consultant for The Exodus Mandate Project, president of The Lighthouse
Video and Graphics, and founder of Great
Commission Films, a ministry dedicated
to producing kingdom-building Christian
documentary films and mentoring the
next generation of Christian filmmakers.
He also teaches filmmaking at the New
Geneva Christian Leadership Academy.
Joaquin lives in Wake Forest, North Carolina, with his wife and four children.
Endnotes:
1. http://www.truecovenanter.com/against_the_
world/ dabney_on_dangerous_reading.html
2. Ibid.
3. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/
fiction
4. http://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/
Fiction
5. http://webstersdictionary1828.com/Dictionary/
feign
6. http://www.truecovenanter.com/against_the_
world/ dabney_on_dangerous_reading.html
7. https://banneroftruth.org/us/store/history-biog
raphy/the-undercover-revolution/
The most important
narrative of all is not
comprised of mere
stories and imaginations
of men, but that History
is God’s true story of how
He is redeeming a people
for His own glory.
