I was less offended than I thought I would be by this one part comedy, two parts drama, starring presumably affordable actors - Mandy Moore and Macaulay Culkin to name two - who kept my attention only because I could relate to the "Christianese" background each of them portrayed. For someone who didn't grow up in the Church, I'm not quite sure how he or she would understand half the jokes. It's as if the movie was produced for every Christian teenager in America. I commend the director, Brian Dannelly, for his decent portrayal of typical adolescent hypocrisy among American Christians. On the flip side, I couldn't tell if Dannelly was intentionally satirizing particular "Christian" postures (raising hands while singing, speaking in tongues, etc.) in an effort to not belittle genuine worship. In one scene during a high school chapel service, students are raising their hands like a crowd at a rap concert. Plus, the music selection throughout the whole movie - as best I can remember - did not include a single song used in mainstream Christiandom. Could Dannelly, with his colored religious background (according to some accounts), really be trying to push faith while mocking it, not mocking faith while dispelling it?

Not surprisingly, the reviews out of Christiandom for this movie are mostly negative. J. Alan Branch, vice president for student development at a Baptist seminary said, "No evangelical Christians are presented in a positive light." (Source: BP News) I beg to differ. I think the true Christians in this movie are the ones many would assume are not "saved."

I am not here to review or defend the movie. If you're okay sitting through a 93-minute flick with teenage titillation and tantrums, go right ahead. I think you'll find a group of students who reflect authentic hunger for meaning to life and try and fill it by what they have been told and taught all growing up. The connect isn't happening until life begins to connect with them. And isn't that the way it is for all of us? Why do we need self-control until we have something to be controlled from? Why do we need a friend until we need a shoulder to cry on? Why do we need a God until we truly understand what we need to be saved from?

The real bummer behind this movie is that I am the one to blame for it being created. I gave them the content. Christians gave them the content. The fact that Brian Dannelly - and everyone else who made the film possible - had material like this to work with says more about Christians than the movie really does. I don't see movies made about Mother Teresa that mock her life. If they will know we are Christians by our love, when are we going to stop letting our actions get in the way of that?