Children of Men

One of my newest favorite movies is Children of Men, which I've now seen twice in the theater. I adapt here my recommendation of the film for people at my congregation, Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church of Manhattan (TELCOM):

Quite simply, watching Children of Men was the first time I ever experienced in a movie the full and true meaning of what Christians call the Incarnation of God as a human being. I was reduced to sublime silence after seeing the film. There is one scene near the end that portrays, in terms profoundly relevant to our own war- and violence-torn present, why it is God might come into the world as a child, and what kind of world-order that child's birth points toward with defiant hope. When Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ came out, I saw it and felt so betrayed by its portrayal of a Christ on the Cross whose mission and purpose were alien to the God I worship. Watching Children of Men gave Christ back to me cinematically, and I was able to affirm of it what the late Pope John Paul II is reputed to have said about Gibson's Passion: "It is as it was."

The longer I study Christian faith as it has been transmitted across milennia, the harder it is to answer the question, "Why am I a Christian?" Some days, I just don't know. Most of the time, I desperately cling to the kind of community Trinity tries to be, pointing to it and proclaiming, "THAT'S why I can claim to be a Christian with integrity - the possibility of creating such communities." It is gratifying that I can now also point to the movie and say, "That's the kind of Christ that makes it possible for me to be a Christian."