Tomorrow I am going with Susan and her family to see the new movie that just came out called End of the Spear. I don’t know too much about the movie itself, but I do know the story on which it’s based. The story is of 5 missionaries who are killed by a vicious warrior tribe in Ecuador when they try to make contact. closIt strikes close to home because Peru is e to Ecuador, and once my dad accompanied two other missionaries for a month in the Amazon in an effort to make contact with an isolated tribe. (side note: when the tribe was eventually reached, they found that their language was close enough to another Amazonian language that they could use the same Bible translation! I think that’s pretty cool.) This story has been told in the book Through the Gates of Splendor, by Elisabeth Elliot, the wife of Jim Elliot, one of the five missionaries. It’s one of those stories that make you think, “Isn’t God awesome how He works through tragedy?”

Now they’ve made a movie of the story, and I’m going to go see it on Sunday. I’ve heard some controversy surrounding the film, most specifically about the fact that the lead actor is gay. (There are other things, too, like the lack of clothing for the indigenous people and the watering down of the Gospel. But those are other topics, maybe I’ll post on after I see the movie.)

This made me wonder, should a Christian support a movie where the main actor is a homosexual, if the movie itself is fine? I’m inclined to say that the actor’s personal life doesn’t really matter; it’s the content of the movie that matters. But maybe I should be more concerned about this?

I’ve been thinking about it, and it seems to me that an actor living an “alternate lifestyle” is not much different than an actor who, say, lives with his girlfriend. So should we refuse to see/support any movies where the actor has a sinful lifestyle? Should Tom Cruise with his Scientology and his pregnant fiancée be banned? Or maybe being gay is much worse than sleeping with members of the opposite sex?

What do you think?