Facing the Giants

Ryan writing:

A friend of ours lent us a DVD, "Facing the Giants," to watch and review. Joy and I just got done watching it and wanted to record our thoughts and feelings about the movie. We were actually given an assignment to develop a five page, double spaced, critique of the movie. This probably won't reach that length (we'll have to settle for less than an "A" on this one), but as long as we do our best, and leave the results to God, I'm sure we'll be ok. (BTW, don't read on if you haven't seen the movie and don't want it spoiled!)

What Joy really liked about it was that parts of it portraryed the life of a Christian school employee accurately. Some parts weren't (the 25% raise of $6000.00 would be unlikely), but for the most part it was a realistic portrayal of what their life would have been like.

1. The salary mentioned was not too far off from the national average


2. The house they lived in would have required two incomes (and the wife was working)


3. The people meeting behind other people's backs (gossip is sometimes rampant in the Christian School)


4. The Bible teacher wearing a tie (from personal experience this is known)


5. The fact that sometimes the most encouraging part of being a Christian school teacher is sometimes the students themselves - seeing them come to know Christ in a new and deeper way is something that drives all of us as Christian teachers.

Joy thought that in the beginning, when everything was going poorly (absence of pregnancy, losing the football games, losing the job, the car dying on them, and the oven breaking) the acting was also lacking somewhat. However, as the movie progressed, it was her opinion that the acting also improved. So on the mechanics of acting, there was development throughout the movie. (An interesting thought was that God may have supernaturally provided better acting as the movie went on, and this is just another amazing miracle of the story???)

As for me, I appreciated the line, "We'll praise God if we win, and we'll praise God if we lose." They only lost one game after that where this same comment came up which was a solid thought.

My other thought was that they tried to wed Christian principles to football in a weird way (e.g. Nehemiah building the wall and building a defensive line). I don't know...when I was a bit younger, I would go to the West High football games. My brothers (Denny and Chad) were in the marching band and we would stay until half-time and watch them march. We didn't stay for the rest of the game. I would sit in the stands and pray for West High to win, and every time while we were there, West High would be winning. I told my mom that it was because I was praying that we were winning and she ventured a question, "What if someone on their side was praying too?"

I also felt poorly about the student who believed on Christ as a result of seeing positive things happening in the football team. I might feel like the little ninny of the conversation, but is this the basis for one's faith? Seeing a positive movement on a football team and making the logical connection, "Because God is blessing us, therefore I should believe in God's Son?" Look, may God use whatever He needs to use to convince us and so enable Himself to forgive us of our sins, but should that young man not develop in his Christian life through some serious discipleship, what's going to happen when God is not blessing the team? How long is it until the opposite connection is made: "Because God is not blessing us, I no longer believe in God's Son?"

On the positive side, you could clearly tell the husband loved the wife and the wife respected and admired her husband. In a day with sitcoms regularly berating the husband/dad as an idiot, and the wife as controlling and domineering, it was great to see God's formation of a family modeled. It was neat how the wife looked at her husband with a sort of glowing in her eyes, as if he were the best thing in the world even when things were down. When the husband looked at his wife, it was with compassion and thoughtfulness. Not that any family is going to be that way all the time, it is something that will build relationships - the husband loving and giving his life for his wife and the wife respecting and honoring her husband (hey, I think this might be mentioned in Ephesians 5???)

Overall, if you have a family structured around God's Word, this will be a great movie for you. It's on par with a "Hallmark" movie in terms of acting and script writing, but it will leave you with a great feeling in the end. If you're prone to deep welling compassionate tears, it might get you once or twice too (not if you're a manly man like me, but if you're like Joy, you'll cry all the way through).