Kneading Bread

It seems it is all the rage right now in religious circles to point out the christ-like-ness of Superman. If you put superman and christ into google news you will see over 40 entries in the last 24 hours. I feel like this is symptomatic of an issue within Christianity today – we want heroes in our media, but we are so artistically stunted that we aren’t creating out own.

At present “christian” music struggles with credibility, “christian” filmmaking is even more of a joke and “christian” art makes me cringe. It is not like we don’t have valuable source material, it seems that we’re just in a dark age of inspired art. Take a look on the shelves of modern fiction, Tolkien, Lewis, L’Engle, O’Conner, Greene — all managed to build credible respect in “the real world” of literature with works inspired by their faith (some are even clearly allegorical.) I wish that the modern church, in all its forms, would embrace artists.

I hope that in my lifetime I can see a movie in a theater by a Christian filmmaker who crafts a story, not just simple pandering to the “christian” audience. Just once, I want to feel proud of a modern author who steps beyond the mediocrity of the “christian” publishing industry.

I think I’ll see it, I can feel the tension across my generation… a tension to do amazing things for Christ. I think we’ll have heroes on the big screen that we know we can be proud of. Sure, it is fun to dissect and analyze a film to find the Christian symbols and metaphors, even if they’re just classical archetypes… I just pray for richer sustenance.