Andrew was asked to speak about "Christianity in the Culture" to the students of Grand Canyon College. He came to Christ because of the culture (reading books and watching movies).
Christians invented science!
Christianity is under attack. People on the Left allow Islam to get away with stuff they would never tolerate from a Christian!
Islam is involved in 10 of the 12 wars going on around the world now. Andrew has yet to see a gay couple go into a Muslim bakery and demand they cater their wedding. There are eight Muslim countries where homosexuality is a capital offense. They kill you for it! No one on the Left says a word about this!
Your parents can always press your buttons, because they installed the buttons. The Church installed our buttons!
Because of Hollywood hostility, when Mel Gibson made The Passion of the Christ, he paid for it out of his own pocket ($25 million dollars). It has made close to one billion dollars!
Even the Bible movies are anti-Christian! Noah, with Russell Crowe; the Moses story, Gods and Kings. Hollywood is unbelievably hostile to Christianity, but our response is equally problematic.
At the age of 49 Andrew became a Christian, after a 35-year conversion! He wanted to be a tough guy writer of mysteries. He studied the great writers of that genre. One of the common themes he found was chivalry. How to be a Christian when you are a man.
Andrew's parents did not even have a New Testament in the house. When Andrew was fifteen, his father walked in to Andrew's bedroom and saw Andrew reading the Gospel of Luke. His dad was furious (his parents did not believe in God). They were Jews but not believers in God. His dad threatened to disown him if he ever even thinks about converting to Christianity. Andrew protested that he just wants to know what makes these stories so great.
Skip ahead a few years. Andrew is in college, learning about moral relativism. No one culture is better than any other one. He reads Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. A man who believed he was above moral law commits murders and realizes he was wrong. A friend who is a prostitute begins to lead him to Christ.
Once you find there is a moral law, there is no escaping God! Until the age of 28, Andrew says he was a really miserable, depressed human being. Since that time he has lived a life of increasing joy. But at age 29 he thought he should commit suicide. He tells the story of Mets catcher Gary Carter saying, "Sometimes you have to play in pain!" All we have to do is speak the truth, and the truth will set us free!
Andrew thinks the best Christian work of the last twenty years is The Sopranos. Art rises at certain times. We now live in the golden age of television. How to be cool? Stop trying! Any time you make people laugh, you're cool! The Left are knuckleheads! Just report what they say. You'll win the culture war!
Where do you get censored now? YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter! Why, because they are the culture! The movie business is near death. T.v. is dying for content.
Andrew is very hopeful that the elite intellectuals in America will rediscover the value of Christianity.
All joy in life is by following virtue, doing the right thing. "I do what I do because it makes my life beautiful right this second" (not because I am expecting a reward in Heaven).
One questioner asked, "Why do you think Christianity abandoned its beauty and art for squeaky clean bookstores and cheesy movies? Andrew: Christianity has lost its sense of tragedy, which is kind of a joke for a religion founded on a crucified God! You can't be joyful until you know the world is sad, that life is tragic. America was a place where you could be a Christian without getting killed for it. It made Christians lazy. They thought everything goes great with Jesus.
Question: Name three of your favorite crime movies. The Maltese Falcon established the genre of crime films. Andrew also mentions Chinatown. Another Bogart film is The Big Sleep. Another: The Bank Job.
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