The motives may not be evangelical, but many evangelicals understandably have encouraged and applauded the development of some upcoming Hollywood productions featuring Biblical characters. Indeed, this can only be good, even if the producers and directors are seeing in it only the same sort of results they have had from making effects-laden (as the Biblical flicks will be) productions based on Bible stories.
Russell Crowe as Noah, Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah, Christian Bale as Moses, Brad Pitt as Pontius Pilate–what believer would not celebrate this kind of publicity for Biblical stories and chracters?I would not say we should not. But I also am thinking of all the young lives that have been turned from the Bible because of wretched Sunday School curricula that moralized on the lives of Biblical characters–only to be disillusioned later on. \
The films will be an opportunity for pastors to point out to people–who may thankfully have a heightened or new interest in the bible because of the movies–that the same God who worked through these seriously flawed characters works through us in our place and time to bring about his purposes of ddrawingpeople to himself and making them part of his plan.
May we all be drawn to the one Main Character.