watched this movie [again] on friday night.

i've been extremely surprised at some of the reactions from friends about it. i saw it in the theater with a friend of mine and we absolutely LOVED it. i recommended it to another friend [who often enjoys and partakes in wildly inappropriate and occasionally profane humor]... and he absolutely hated it. well, actually i think the phrase was that he "found it very disturbing". i've also gotten some middle-of-the-road responses as well.

the simplified version of the plot basically revolves around the antics and crises of students in your typical[?] christian high school in suburbia. in a sea of presumably good but generic kids swaying mindlessly to the worship music, we focus on a select few: a group of characters that are painfully broken... just like the rest of us [huh, go figure]. some are characters, some are caricatures; but there is a level of identification in each that is both painful and eye-opening. crises of faith. searching for God's will. over-the-top evangelism. moral ambiguity. rejection. touched by an angel this is not. this is a movie of messy faith.

skip: patrick, this is not a gray area.
patrick: dad, it's all a gray area.
skip: THE BIBLE IS BLACK AND WHITE!

ah, it all seems so easy. need an answer? BOOM, look it up, chapter and verse, and you're ready to go. right? riiiiight...? which doesn't explain all the schisms and splits and stalemates found in the history of christendom. yes, the bible is black and white on many matters. but between black and white there is -- inevitably -- gray. problems arise when we assume that gray is bad. that the gray must be solved. that there must be one answer, somewhere, that is definitively correct, and can be -- must be -- found within the gray.

we desire black and white; we desire straight answers. and certainly there is much about christianity that is, indeed, black and white. but gray... gray is not bad. it's just messy.

this is a life of messy faith.