We’re about to say farewell to “The Year of The Bible” and I, for one, am ready to see it go. Kirk Cameron has saved Christmas (or not, according to Rotten Tomatoes); Todd Burpo proved that Heaven is For Real; a bunch of white people with British accents pretended to be Middle Eastern.
One possible depiction of 2 Kings 2:23-24 | Image from Tico Bassie via Flickr (http://bit.ly/12DfsaE)
Because they tend to focus on the message at the expense of the art, Christian movies often fail to engage wide audiences. On the other hand, movies like Noah and Exodus that are based on Bible stories but made for wider audiences tend to stray from the source material. That’s not a problem in itself, but it does make me squirm a little when I see these films being marketed to churches. They’re entertainment, not devotional material.
So all of this is why I’m ready to count down on January 1st and move onto a year of some other movie trends.
Mostly.
There is still one Bible story I would love to see made. It’s a little-told tale of mockery, revenge, and cold-blooded murder. Come with me, if you will, to 2 Kings 2, where we meet the prophet Elisha on a journey to Bethel:
From there, Elisha went up to Bethel. As he was walking along the road, some boys came out of the town and jeered at him. “Get out of here, baldy!” they said. “Get out of here, baldy!” He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the boys.
This is really in the Bible. It’s prime material for, say, the Coen Brothers or a post-Exodus Ridley Scott. Can you imagine the mauling in IMAX 3-D? So let’s close the door on the Year of the Bible and cross our fingers for 2015 to be the Year of Elisha. And in the meantime, watch who you make fun of.