A. W. Tozer: A Christian View Of Film

When it comes to views of film, and how Christians should approach film in general, there have been a number of different viewpoints that have been taken over history. There are the people who say that Christians should stay away from any aspect of film, even the faith based ones. There are also others who believe that we need to watch the secular films to help improve our understanding of the culture. I will be talking about several of these viewpoints, along with giving my own opinion on how I believe they fit in modern Christian society. The first approach I would like to bring up is the view that A.W. Tozer holds. With no surprise from the title of his article “The Menace of the Religious Movie,” (195?) he is strongly against Christian participation in the film industry. Tozer believes that words are God’s chosen …show more content…
The article “Redemptive popular art: Television and the cultural mandate.” written by C. Christians (1980) gives us three questions that we should judge our films by. The first being, “How does it portray human life, or more strongly, what do they presume about human nature?” (p. 14) most messages of film today usually promote some kind of materialism. If this is what the main message is, then it is not redemptive. The second question is, “What does popular art convey about the created order?” (p. 16) If a film tries to cut out part of God’s wonderful creation, then it can’t possibly be redemptive to Christians. The final question Christians says asks is, “What view of history emerges from popular art.” (p. 17) If the film portrays history in a mythical light, then is it really doing any good to our walk as Christians? C. Christians believes that film does not have the ability to be redemptive. There is too much of the human sinful nature that is prevalent in films to do any true good toward furthering the