Someone sent me this. The author makes the point that if people judge Christianity by the portrayal in Hollywood – oh yes, they do, don’t they?
But why is that? We’ve never seen Hollywood go after Buddhism, Hinduism, or even Islam. I’d be inclined to believe that it’s due to the first two revolving around more subjective moralities (which is cool with the 310) and the latter… well, they blow crap up. Sure Muslims are the cause of virtually all terrorism in the world today, yet the good old folks of Tinseltown go out of their way to portray them as “good people, given a bad name by extremists” (see “Babel,” “Kingdom of Heaven”). On the other hand, we’ve got Conservative Christians who are statistically far and away the most generous people on the planet (whether you’re judging by missionary work or basic tax returns) consistently being portrayed as hateful villains often using scripture to justify horrifying acts (see nearly every spiritual horror/psycho thriller movie made in the last three decades). Disregard the fact that people like my middle-class father annually give more to charity than President Obama and Joe Biden combined, because folks like Sean Penn have already boxed him in as a greedy, judgmental jackass. If people in the Sean Penn clan feel that way, then it’s got to be true!
