Sarah Clementson- Crazy Love- Outside Reading #4

In just ten chapters of his book Crazy Love, Francis Chan describes God’s character and then challenges Christians to examine themselves. In this book Chan uses scripture to directly address the idea that Christians need to be living their lives markedly differently from others. Chan’s book was something that totally called me out and was something that made me re-evaluate where I was with God. This being said, it was almost as if this book was a tool that wants to remove Christians from living in the profane existence that we so easily settle into boring days instead of living life with the expectation that God will show up. I think that Christians often are liminal, stuck in between two times- where they want to be and where they should be.
Francis Chan writes his book using tons of scripture in order to jumpstart the hearts of Christians to see that in order to get out of this rut, they must experience the crazy awesome love of the Father. The critical aspect of this is that there must be an experience with the “wholly Other” that Rudolph Otto talks about. Something revered and holy, and set a apart. That is what God’s love is based on. In order to expel themselves from the liminal, Christians must experience that sacred moment, kairos, that moment of spiritual significance where they make the decision to seek wholeheartedly after Jesus. Film comes into this because I feel as though many people in our generation do not like to read and great books like Crazy Love will not ever be read, but they do watch films. And films have an incredible upper hand in being able to portray the “ah-hah!” moment in a character’s life.
I love Crazy Love for its straightforward approach, but from what I have gathered in class, films take a much less direct approach to portray religion. I think that films as shocking and direct as The Passion of the Christ raise the most controversial attention and cause people to consider things but when films are more symbolic it may actually stay with a person longer than the direct approach.