Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Soapbox

Bear with me. I must get this off my chest. Apparently, I am one of only a handful of sane people left in my little Georgia hometown. If one more nice little old Christian lady tells me how excited she is that the heathens have moved in and asks me am I going to watch, I think I might just explode.

You see, Billy Bob Thornton has moved his film crew in to film "Jayne Mansfield's Car". The film also stars Dwight Yoakam, Robert Duvall, Dennis Quaid, and Kevin Bacon. Now, I admit that I am not familiar with his work, and I do not know the content of the script as far as language and lewd scenes go; however, here is a list of Billy Bob Thornton movies and their MPAA ratings:

Billy Bob Thornton Filmography One thing you'll notice about his movie list is that they're almost all Rated R.

There is a good reason that I am not familiar with his work. I am a Christian. I do not watch movies that are full of adultery and fornication and pornography and drinking and immorality and heathen reprobates who take the name of my Savior and use It for a curse word. Since we do not go to movie theaters and we do not have cable television, and we do not let our children spend the night at friends' homes or go to public school where these are available, I thank the Lord that our children don't even know curse words and have never even seen a lewd scene and wouldn't know what it was if they did. We are not forest dwellers who hitch up the wagon once a year and head to the city for supplies; we are just redeemed souls, saved by God's grace, trying to live for Him, and very selective about what we allow into our home. We do have a television, iPods, a Wii, and we even have Netflix. I love Netflix because it always leaves a complete trail (no deleting) of everything watched. That keeps the whole family accountable because it flashes up "recently watched" every time you turn it on. I have made my children a "que" of family friendly selections, and they are not starving for screen time. Even so, by diligently staying on top of all their influences, I've been able to shield them from harmful influences. It isn't easy monitoring the movies, the internet filters, and even the iPod internet filters and restrictions......but, Mamas and Daddys, who said that nurturing a tender soul to adulthood would be easy? It's worth every minute!

The plot of this movie is something about a woman who leaves her family and moves to England. 20 years later she dies and her "new" family brings her body back to bury her in her small town. In the process, the new family and the old family meet up. "The movie is about relationships," they say. I don't really know what that means, but I imagine there will be very little of redeeming value since the script was written by Thornton himself, who is covered in tatoos (a heathen practice, by the way), has been married 5 times and currently lives in adultery with his girlfriend and 2 year old child.

I'm not ignorant. I realize that Hollywood is big business and that most people, even those who name the name of Christ, go to the movie theaters just about every weekend. I expected the heathens to be jumping up and down happy, but I really wasn't prepared for all my Christian friends to be this happy. People are taking off work and going to watch the filming. Will they even cringe when God's name is cursed? People are renting out their cars, businesses, and equipment all to help the effort. Everyone is fighting for a chance to be an extra in the film!

Having said all that, now I am forced to close down my crisis pregnancy center for 2 days because the streets will be completely blocked off! This will be during a week when we normally have a high volume of people coming in due to a yearly fundraising project we do. And then, as if I wasn't disgusted enough, some of the film crew came into the center today to get permission to have Life Matters Outreach in the background of some of the shots! To the complete surprise and amazement of many, I said "no thank you" and gave my office manager (my mother) permission to sign for me declining the invite and allowing them to cover up our signs or else take them down for filming.

I could live with all this inconvenience if all the Christians around me weren't posting pictures of themselves and Billy Bob on Facebook and just so bubbly that he is making yet another film to corrupt the hearts and minds of morally bankrupt America. Does Christian America not have an ounce of discernment or principle left?

"Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore shall they fall among them that fall: in the time of their visitation they shall be cast down, saith the Lord." Jeremiah 8:12

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