----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, October 19, 2003 8:48
PM
Subject: [Sndbox] Tale of Two
Hollywoods
Tale of Two Hollywoods
October 13, 2003
by Bruce Walker
The elitist snit at Mel Gibson over The Passion has everything to do
with anti-theism and nothing to do with anti-Semitism. Once, Hollywood – the
Old Hollywood - produced films that exalted the role of faith in our lives and
that included displaying the harmful results of people who ignored their own
faith and so became bad.
Fiddler on the Roof shows Christians ignoring Christian ethics by
mistreating Jews for being Jews. Exodus shows Christians ignoring the
plight of post-Holocaust Jewry. Gentleman’s Agreement shows bigoted
Christians sneering at Jews.
The villains of these films were faithless Christians, not the Christian
faith. The lyrics to Exodus were written by a devout Christian, Pat
Boone. Why did these films not offend Christians? Because recognition of sin
and repentance of sin is a central theme of Christianity.
Jews celebrated the goodness of faithful Christians as well. Old Hollywood
was dominated by Jews, and these men produced films like The Bells of St.
Mary, Angels in the Outfield, The Sound of Music, Going My Way and
Boy’s Town. These Jews never considered an honest appreciation of good
Christians to be a betrayal of Judaism.
These moral ideas were perfected in Chariots of Fire, the story of a
brave Jew overcoming the prejudices of un-Christian Christians and of a pious
Christian overcoming equally daunting obstacles of deep piety for the Glory of
God in a world that, after the horror of the Great War, turned away from God.
Without pulling punches, Chariots of Fire celebrates the
Judeo-Christian heritage.
Why did Hollywood come to hate religion? Marx replaced God. Marxists
replaced faithful people. This new and dreadful Hollywood sought to divide us
from God and from our common humanity as creatures of God. Because God trumps
every petty nastiness of life, He became the principal foe of New Hollywood.
New Hollywood began to produce films like Agnes of God and The
Last Temptation of Christ, which mocked Christianity with the venom little
different from how Nazi propaganda film portrayed Jews. No goodness was
allowed serious Christians and no accusation was too vile to make against
Christianity.
New Hollywood also mocked Judaism. King David showed Richard Gere
degenerating into a bitter agonistic by the end of his life, and even nice
productions like The Prince of Egypt reduced God to a bit player.
Nominal Jews like Woody Allen made films that were sentimental toward
Jewishness, but coldly indifferent toward Judaism.
As Michael Medved, film critic and observant Jew, notes in his documentary
Hollywood Hates Religion, even remakes of old classics like Cape
Fear and We’re No Angels were edited to introduce anti-theistic
themes which were absent from the original version or to remove God from the
remake.
The Passion does not portray all Jews as bad. It portrays some Jews
as good and some Jews as bad. This is consistent with Christian and Jewish
theology. Stories in which God is present require moral judgments. The
Judeo-Christian tradition is based upon the pivotal role of God in our
decisions. Whether The Passion is true or Torah is true, belief in
Jesus and the Bible is not the cause of misery in the world.
Based upon anti-theism, secular JINOs (Jews in name only) have leveraged
one of the worst crimes of the Twentieth Century - that part of Nazi democide
which murdered six million innocent Jews - into a voodoo hex on Christianity
and into an attempted transformation of Judaism from a great faith into a
Holocaust cult.
CINOs (Christians in name only) have diluted Christian theology into weak
broth drained of divine purpose. Jesus, God Incarnate to genuine Christians,
is infinitely malleable to CINOs. The Passion is an affront to the
authority of self-deified CINOs and JINOs, and like Torah, it proposes
evidence of something vastly greater than them in human affairs.
CINOs and JINOs find God inconvenient. They wish Him to vanish from public
consciousness. If He did, or if we forgot Him, then these CINOs and JINOs
would act as if nothing was more important than them. Torah and Christ,
however, have not vanished just because secular elites have willed it so.
New Hollywood does not care if faith dies or if America disintegrates or if
paganism and tribalism swallow mankind. New Hollywood fears only a living God
who will make a reckoning of those who sought Him and with those who have
rejected Him. God forgives the repentant, but the unrepentant - the CINOs and
JINOs who deplore the existence of a Blessed Creator - place themselves beyond
His love, and place themselves beyond redemption.
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Bruce Walker has been a dyed in the wool conservative since, as a
sixth grader, he campaigned door to door for Barry Goldwater. Bruce has
had almost two hundred published articles have appeared in the Oklahoma
Bar Journal, Law & Order, Legal Secretary Today, The Single Parent,
Enter Stage Right, Citizen's View, The American Partisan, Port of Call,
and several other professional and political periodicals.
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