Fariza

Have you ever heard someone rave about their favorite Christian movie? Exactly. Neither have I. The phrase itself sounds like an oxymoron.

If you have sat through a PureFlix production or most of what gets labeled “Christian cinema,” you already know the storyline: a struggling family, faith crises, and a predictable resolution. Nobody is even remotely moved, changed, or inspired. The plots of these productions are often sanitized, the characters lack depth, and the stakes feel embarrassingly low compared to the source material these films claim to revere.

I will be honest, in the entire history of Christians film, there are only two movies I genuinely respect: The Passion of the Christ and The Shack. Two. And ironically, both of these movies were controversial within the Christian community itself.

Maybe that should tell us something…

So why are Christian movies so painfully boring? How can we produce crap when we are the children of the Most High who created the heavens and the earth and everything in it, including all human beings?

Let’s talk about it.

The Bible Doesn’t Protect Its Characters. Neither Should We.

The Bible opens with a murder. It contains affairs, betrayals, genocide, prostitution, and a man willing to sacrifice his own son. It is, by any measure, one of the most dramatic, morally complex, and emotionally devastating books ever written.

Here is the argument Christian filmmakers seem to have missed: The Bible is not a collection of clean, comfortable hero stories. It is a brutally honest account of broken people stumbling toward a God who refuses to give up on them.

David was a man after God’s own heart, who ended up being an adulterer and a murderer. Rahab was a prostitute, and Jacob was a con artist. Paul persecuted and killed Christians before becoming one, and Moses had a violent past and a speech impediment.

None of these people was qualified to do what God asked them to do. And that is exactly the point.

The heroes of Scripture are underdogs, not because the Bible is trying to be relatable, but because they are not the main characters.

God is!

Jesus is the hero of every story in the Bible.

Every unlikely protagonist, every possible redemption, every moment where the weakest person in the room changes the world — it all points to one thing: we are not gods. We are fragile, flawed, desperate mortals whose every breath depends on the mercy and grace of God.

That is the most compelling story ever told, and it is also the one Christian filmmakers consistently refuse to tell.

So, Why Are We So Afraid?

What is stopping Christian filmmakers from making something truly great?

Here are my honest answers:

1. We are afraid of resembling the world. There is a deeply ingrained instinct in Christian culture to stay separate — to make sure our art is clearly, safely, unmistakably “Christianese,” which, in practice, means scrubbing clean anything that might make an audience uncomfortable. But discomfort is often where transformation begins. The most powerful films ever made do not protect you from depicting brokenness and darkness. They take you through it.
2. We do not invest in art. Christians, broadly speaking, undervalue the creative arts as a vehicle for God’s glory. Producing films is expensive, risky, and hard to justify on a church budget. I don’t understand why we stopped investing our money into making art. The early church built magnificent cathedrals that still take your breath away. These ancient structures stand to this day, a testament to faith and artistry. Throughout history, Christians have made immense contributions to the world of art.

Why did we, somewhere along the way, stop believing that beauty and art were worth the sacrifice?

I understand that Hollywood can be intimidating. There is a sense, spoken or unspoken, that the film industry belongs to the devil, that it is too corrupt, too evil, too dangerous to engage with. But this is a lie we need to stop telling ourselves.

Nothing belongs to the devil!

He doesn’t get to have a monopoly on the film industry. Who allowed him to tell Christians where they belong or don’t?

Everything belongs to God and His children. God gave human beings the capacity to create — the imagination, the talent, the creativity to tell stories. That gift did not come from satan. It came from the same God who spoke light into existence.

We Have Great Stories To Tell. It’s Time We Started Filming Them.

Christians do not lack material for great scripts — we have witnessed miracles, lived through suffering that should have destroyed us, and emerged on the other side with inexplicable joy and unshakable faith.

Film is one of the most powerful forces on earth that changes people’s hearts and minds. A single movie can shift the way an entire generation thinks about justice, love, identity, or God. We know this because it has already happened — just not usually with films we made.

The Christian community does not need more safe, self-congratulatory movies that play to audiences who already believe. We need filmmakers willing to tell the truth — the full, uncomfortable, glorious truth, about what it means to be human, what it means to fall, and what it means to be saved by a God who was never obligated to show up but always does.

So if you have a story burning inside of you — tell it! Tell it honestly and bravely. Don’t sanitize it into something palatable. Don’t water it down to keep it “on brand.”

Make something that reflects the God who made you — wild, creative, fearless, and relentlessly committed to the truth.

Bring glory to Jesus!

And bring more people into His Kingdom.