How would a faithful movie of the Bible rate?

I love movies. My wife and I have a fair­ly decent sized col­lec­tion of movies which we very much enjoy. We also rent movies, and we’re care­ful to check the movie rat­ings label on the back to see what kind of con­tent to expect. That is prob­a­bly a pecu­liar prac­tice for two adults who don’t yet have chil­dren, but it hap­pens nonethe­less. And it got me thinking…

If the Bible were faith­ful­ly made into a (very epic) movie, what would it be rat­ed and what con­tent descrip­tors would that rat­ing car­ry with it? 

With the first appear­ance of man we would have “nudi­ty.” And this would be real nudi­ty, not the art­sy kind where tree branch­es, flow­ers, or var­i­ous oth­er things just hap­pen to be act­ing as a cov­er­ing. Adam & Eve would have no rea­son to hide them­selves and a faith­ful movie would have to depict that. There was no shame in their nudi­ty. But there was nudi­ty, and it would cer­tain­ly be men­tioned on the back of the box.

And before long, anoth­er descrip­tor would need to be added, as Adam & Eve “knew” each oth­er. A faith­ful movie would have to depict that–it is just as much a part of the Word of God as “let there be light” so why shy away from it? And so we would add “sex­u­al con­tent.” We might also add “sen­su­al­i­ty” at this point as well; it’ll be there any­way once Song of Solomon showed up on screen.

Mov­ing on, we have more char­ac­ters intro­duced in this movie, a pair of broth­ers by the name of Cain and Abel. We all know their tale, and so we should not be sur­prised that “vio­lence” would need to be added to our movie’s box.

Let’s skip ahead to the time of the flood. Here we have sons of God mat­ing with daugh­ters of men, result­ing in giants. And the thoughts of men become increas­ing­ly and con­tin­u­al­ly wicked. And a great flood cov­ers the earth, result­ing in the drown­ing of count­less men, women, and chil­dren. I think it’d be safe to call all of these things “the­mat­ic ele­ments” and depend­ing on the real­ism of mil­lions drown­ing and what a flood would look like lit­tered with count­less dead men and ani­mals, we might also add “dis­turb­ing imagery” to the list.

We could jump for­ward a fair bit to the Judges, where we learn of Ehud thrust­ing a sword into a man so fat that the entire sword entered his body, his fat clos­ing in around the han­dle. Depend­ing on the trans­la­tion of the Bible used, either the exit point for the sword would make sit­ting down a very dif­fi­cult task or the man’s waste mat­ter was spilled as a result of the wound. Per­haps the “vio­lence” descrip­tor should be upgrad­ed to “strong vio­lence” or even “strong per­va­sive vio­lence” in light of the many bat­tles depict­ed in the Bible and the many, many mil­lions (or even bil­lions, in light of Rev­e­la­tion) that would die as a result of them.

As Judas’ bow­els burst forth on a rock and blood flows like a riv­er in Rev­e­la­tion, we should prob­a­bly note that this movie would con­tain “gore” as well.

Satan would cer­tain­ly have a part in this movie, as would his demons, witch­es, and so on. “Demon­ic imagery” should cer­tain­ly be noted.

Sor­cer­ers are men­tioned as well, and they were the “drug deal­ers” of their day, drug­gists or poi­son­ers who per­haps used psy­che­del­ic drugs to make peo­ple think they were com­mu­ni­cat­ing with lost loved ones or what­ev­er. At the very least, let’s add “drug ref­er­ences” to our list of descriptors.

I’m cer­tain the list could go on for quite a while.

Movies are often crit­i­cized by Chris­tians for their “adult con­tent,” but it does­n’t take labo­ri­ous research to dis­cov­er that much (if not more) of the same con­tent can be found with­in the pages of Holy Writ. Is read­ing it that much dif­fer­ent than see­ing it on screen? If one is real­ly get­ting into the Bible, his imag­i­na­tion will fill in the visu­al part of it any­way, would it not?

The Pas­sion of the Christ comes to mind; on more than one fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian web­site I saw the very idea of a Chris­t­ian movie con­tain­ing so much vio­lence and blood as being com­plete­ly and utter­ly wrong. But the Bible says that Jesus was beat­en and whipped even more so than the movie depict­ed for the Bible says He was unrec­og­niz­able after His beat­ings. In the movie, that was­n’t the case.

Per­haps Chris­tians think that if they see cer­tain things on screen, it some­how cor­rupts them. How could a gory movie pos­si­bly cor­rupt me? It isn’t real. It isn’t even a depic­tion of some­thing real. But the Bible describes real inci­dents which were real­ly gory and in some instances very, very, very bloody. Is imag­i­nary gore bad but real gore okay? Or is it sim­ply a mat­ter of visu­al ver­sus men­tal? I don’t know about you, but men­tal­ly imag­in­ing gore is just about the same as actu­al­ly see­ing it. The dif­fer­ence is most­ly of source–the mind or the eye.

As far as I know, most of you read­ing this enjoy movies; I’m will­ing to make that assump­tion. So, the next time some­one crit­i­cizes you for the movies you watch, ask them how they enjoy “The Bible — Rat­ed ___ for Nudi­ty, Strong Per­va­sive Vio­lence, Gore, Adult Con­tent, Strong Sex­u­al Con­tent, Drug Ref­er­ences, Dis­turb­ing and Demon­ic Imagery, The­mat­ic Ele­ments, and what­ev­er else you can hon­est­ly add.” The rat­ing itself I will leave up to you to fill in. Would a movie with all of these man­age the R rat­ing? Or would it be even more restricted?

How would you rate such a movie?