Too judgmental? Maybe not judgmental enough!

One of my concerns with putting The Baby War: Defenders and Defectors out there is not that secular, worldly people would attack it and call it hopelessly ridiculous. In fact, I think that would be pretty awesome if this film gained enough exposure in order for that to happen. 

One of the main concerns I have is that Christian people would say that the film is "too judgmental."

There are several common phrases and even Scripture passages that are used when the "too judgmental" card is played. They usually involve "judge not, lest you be judged"(Matthew 7:1). This verse is a favorite in the wider culture, because it is exactly what the world wants to hear. 

But what does Jesus mean when he says these words? Look at the whole passage in it's context:

7 “Judge not, that you be not judged. ² For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. ³ Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? ⁴ Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? ⁵ You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.⁶ “Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.

The large majority who quote Matthew 7:1 never make it to Matthew 7:2. Jesus doesn't just say, "don't judge." He says "don't judge, because that judgment is going to come back on you in the same way you are judging others." So the point is that we are not allowed by Jesus Christ to judge others self-righteously.  We need to first take the log out of our own eyes before we start trying to remove the speck from someone else's eye.

So, to say that this passage means that we shouldn't "complain" about things as I heard one preacher put it, simply misses the point. 

In fact the Bible says that we are indeed to cast judgment on others. 1 Corinthians 5:9-13 is a tough passage: 

⁹ I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— ¹⁰ not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. ¹¹ But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. ¹² For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? ¹³ God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”

We are to judge those inside the church by looking at their actions and comparing them to the standards of the Word of God. So how exactly do we do that without being self-righteous? I mean, who among us haven't at some point been "guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard or swindler?" 

The key to this judgment is best explained in 2 Corinthians 10:3-6:

³ For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. ⁴ For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. ⁵ We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, ⁶ being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.

We are specifically to do two things:

1. To destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God.
2. To take captive every thought to the obedience of Christ. 

In other words, we judge thoughts and ideas, and bring those ideas kicking and screaming to the judgment seat of Christ. Now this may be the most culturally unpopular thing that a person could do living in 21st century America, because in our culture, the absolute worst thing that could be done is to say that another person's thoughts and ideas are wrong. 

Many Christians have bought into this, and even many churches now stay away from the confronting cultural lies, because it hovers too closely to the edge of sounding "judgmental."

So, in essence, we don't proclaim truth (God's ideas) and live in truth (God's ideas) because we are fearful of being thought as "judgmental." But there is a real problem with doing that. I think it was Ravi Zecharias who said something to the effect of "In the marketplace of ideas, some stalls smell better than others."

Some ideas are bad, ungodly, worldly ideas that, according to the ultimate standard and judge of ideas, smell pretty awful. The problem is that we are too afraid of sounding "judgmental" and we go ahead and step into the stinky idea and walk around just trying to ignore the fact that we are carrying the stink with us where ever we go. 

There is only one way for us to "judge" and that is in accordance with God's law. We don't have the right or authority to judge by our own standard because our standard is changing and flexible. Culture is always moving and changing and our standards of righteousness remain in a constant flux. So, Jesus says, to judge someone else by your own standard is to invite that same judgment back on yourself. 

Thoughts and ideas can only truly be "judged" by us finite, changing people, by submitting those ideas to the judgment seat of Christ. We do that by comparing our ideas to God's ideas in His Word.  

So, if this is done properly, the "person" is judged by comparing the thoughts, ideas, and even the actions of the person to the Word of God. We must begin that judgment with ourselves. We remove the log from our own eye before we help others remove the speck. 

Ideas have consequences. 

This is why we need to teach people constantly to evaluate their own lives in light of Biblical truth. 

When it comes to the topic addressed in The Baby War:Defenders and Defectors, I hope that the film causes people to ask this question: is the church's teaching on marriage and procreation in line with all the previous centuries of Biblical interpretation, or is it in line with some other standard? 

I have met very few people who have not struggled with this issue personally and have not been "kicking and screaming" as they brought their own ideas to the judgment seat of Christ. I myself can attest to this mightily, and I may share much more of that story in the follow up film.

If anyone says, this film is too "judgmental," I would say that yes, the film unashamedly judges ideas. The Church for too long has not been judgmental enough of those ideas. The baby war is a war of ideas: our ideas vs. God's ideas about babies. 

Who will win the war? In the wider world, the ideas that get the most "air time" will win, because when we hear it often enough we believe it. But in the hearts and minds of the Bible believing Christian married couple, the war of ideas will be won by God as the Holy Spirit convicts them through His Word and the testimony of Christian witnesses throughout history.

The reason this film is needed is because someone needs to shake up the modern church's silent acceptance of the world's ideas about what marriage is to be. 

On The Baby War: Defenders and Defectors Post Production

So, the goal all along had been to finish TBW:D&D by October 15th in order to submit the film to the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival. We had finished everything and were just attempting to transcode and burn DVD's the week before the deadline, but the it took Adobe Encore around 36 hours to transcode. This is on a very high end production machine. We made a few tweaks after the first transcoding, and then the second 36 hour round finished on Saturday morning the 13th. 

Knowing that we would not have enough time to transcode it again, I watched the DVD with great despair because the quality of the DVD was so poor. The images were blurry and the many images of text were so fuzzy that some of them were practically unreadable. 

But, I knew that we didn't have time to do it again, so I gathered up my pathetic DVD's, went to the Post Office on Monday the 15th to get the film submitted by the 15th postmark deadline. 

Jenette and I went to Springfield and came home later that day, where I found  an email from the Film Festival that said that the deadline had been extended to October 31st. 

So, I just knew there had to be a way to get better quality. Through a very late night of internet research I learned that Adobe Encore was known for producing poor DVD quality because of it's encoder. This is really frustrating, because you would think that such a quality package of software as Adobe Production CS5.5 would be able to produce quality DVD's.

There is a possibility that some of my video card settings are not playing nice with the Adobe Media Encoder, so maybe it's not all Adobe's fault, but still, I would like to blame someone. 

One of the great wonders and benefits of the internet is that if you are having any kind of technical problem, someone else has experienced that same problem and has complained about it on the internet, and usually someone else has helped find a solution. 

Well, that's exactly what happened. Through some very helpful technical tutorial videos and other articles, I was able to download and run free open source software that transcoded the film video file to AVI and then encoded it to MPEG2-DVD in a fraction of the time it took Encore, and at a stunning quality difference, with a lower file size. Did I say stunning? What I meant was a stupendously crazy wonderful quality difference. 

So, bottom line is, don't ever give up on making things better quality. I seriously thought about not trying to distribute DVD's of this film because our initial attempts were so horrible. Now, I am pleased to be able to put this on DVD. 

If you are using Adobe Encore to make DVD's, I highly suggest going through this challenging, multi-step process to make your quality better. 

I will do another blog where I will describe the process in detail, not because I think anyone would be interested, but because I want to document the process well so I can know how to do it again. 

So, Jonathan did more post work to redo the chapter headings and burn the new DVD's and I am going to be very glad to send the revised DVD submissions to the film festival this week. 

Furthermore, I had some more thoughts about the content of this film. I am nervous making this public because I know that many people we know and love will think this film is too "out there." This film doesn't just challenge the mainstream ideas of the world, this film challenges the mainstream ideas of Godly, conservative people. 

We were very careful in this film to present everything in an historical light, and show the results of that history. Most of the clips in this film show facts: facts of history, facts of current events, and facts of Christian culture. We removed nearly all of the "snarkiness" from the script. We have attempted to leave a lot of room for viewers to come to their own conclusions. 

There is a section in the film where we highlight three different clips of sermons regarding sex and marriage from American pastors whose sermons are available publicly on the internet. When we first wrote the script, we called these sermons, "the good, the bad, and the ugly." But as our family sat and poured over every word of the script, we felt that we weren't leaving the viewers enough room to determine for themselves whether what these pastors was saying was "good, bad, or ugly," so that part of the script was chopped. 

Inevitably, someone is going to say that this film is too "judgmental." Here's my response to that:

1. Being "judgmental" implies self-righteousness. You will find no self-righteousness in this film. 
2. The film judges no person, but judges ideas. 
3. Ideas are to be brought kicking and screaming to the judgment seat of Christ through his written word. 
4. The evangelical church (as a whole) has, through it's silence on the priority of procreation in marriage, has not been judgmental enough of these ideas.  

This film is controversial because, apart from a few writers, no one is talking about this matter in the church, at least until this year. It's interesting that the HHS contraceptive mandate has put the issue in the forefront, and church leaders of many flavors are talking about contraceptives for the first time in half a century. 

Someone will also say, "So what are you saying, that we should stop using birth control? - Uh, that means that we would have more kids, and that's pretty freaky and would change my life dramatically!" The film never says this. What we hope each person will take away from this documentary is this: 

1. The Christian defense of procreative marriage is a fact of history
2. The defection from that belief has led to all kinds of horrible consequences.
3. It is time for Christians to once again defend the basic Biblical definition of marriage.  

If watching this film causes some Christian married couple to re-evaluate their personal use of birth control in the light of Biblical interpretive history, that is a good thing, but it is not the primary goal of the film.

The film is about the historical Christian definition of marriage and that certainly involves having children. Each couple should consider God's Word first about their decisions in this matter; not what some family expert or what Dr. So & So says.  Our family struggled though this "Baby War" - our ideas vs. God's ideas about babies, and we ended up with nine children. However, other couples have trusted God for the number and spacing of children and only had one or two children. Either we believe God's promise that children are an unqualified blessing (Psalm 127 & 128) or we don't.

One of the real problems with this film is that it is only part of what needs to be said. The Baby War:Defenders & Defectors looks at the issue from an historical lens. The follow up film that we want to make called The Baby War:A Conflict of Fears will look at the issue through a Biblical lens. 

The opening lines of the film say it well: "Proceed with caution. This film might challenge you to think different thoughts and to lead different lives." 

The Remember Movie

http://www.theremembermovie.com/Remember/Home.html

Remember is a movie that may go down as one of the best sci fi stories ever made. Some reviewers will say stuff about it's low budget. I don't really care about that. This is just a really good story. The acting and  the visual effects are very good, but the story itself is outstanding. 

Having said that, this is an ambitious project with a small budget that has resulted in a powerful movie. I won't give a synopsis of the story, as that can be found on the movie website. I encourage every family to buy this movie and support these independent Christian filmmakers. I especially like the scene where Carl and Wendy are talking to each other and they both hesitantly figure out that they have both stopped taking the memory block meds. The music is powerful and majestic. 

How amazing it is that independent Christian filmmakers can make a film of this qualtity that is sci-fi? I don't remember anything quite like this before, and I hope it will encourage other filmmakers to take on projects like this.

Thank you Moviemakers for a job well done. 

Time to start the can opener.

The Baby War:Defenders and Defectors Trailer from Jim Clay on Vimeo.

Ok, it is with great fear and trepidation that we being the public exposure of The Baby War: Defenders and Defectors. From the very beginning, we have intended to open "a can of worms" with this film. I guess now is as good a time as any! 

We will be releasing this film free for internet viewing on November 1. After that, we will be producing DVD's that will be available in late November. 

Originally this project was intended to be made for submission to the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival, (and we are submitting it), but we have learned that this message is far too important to just submit it to the Film Festival. We hope many more people will see it.  The website for the film is http://thebabywarfilm.com/index.html. We will be posting more information on facebook as we approach the release.

Here's the trailer for the documentary film we have been working on. Be warned! This film is as controversial as it gets. It is not politically correct! As I know that most people will probably get very nervous at the content of this film. That's ok, because I am nervous putting it out there. 

Although I have produced, directed, and written this film, my production team has been Joel Clay - original music. Jason Clay - visual effects and animations. Jonathan Clay - sound design and post production. Jenette Clay and Jordan Clay have also been key parts of this production, working on the script and many other things. Although many others have helped with this, this has been a family project. I am very pleased with how it has turned out. 

And, by the way, the music in the trailer is also completely original by Joel Clay.

So, why a film about this topic? Well, in my opinion, it simply is ignored by the church because it is too politically incorrect to talk about procreation in marriage. Because of that, most of us have just gone along with everything that everyone in the world thinks and believes about this. I want to challenge Christian married couples and young Christian people considering marriage to think about the issue of using birth control in a Biblical and historical framework, instead of just going along with what everyone says about it. 

This film is called The Baby War:Defenders and Defectors because it is about the war of ideas: our ideas vs. God's ideas about babies. 

But at it's heart and core, this film is about the definition of marriage. And as Christians, we believe that God has the authority to define it. The real question of this film is this: why have modern Christians quietly removed procreation out of the Biblical definition of marriage, standing against 19 centuries of Biblical interpretive history? And the conclusion of the film demonstrates the results. 

More blogs will follow as I begin to share my research into this issue.