The McConaughey Follow-Up

Well, yesterday was interesting. I wrote a post and put it out there as usual, expecting my usual 150-ish people to read it, and somehow it got passed all over the world. I generally don’t write for all over the world. No, I write for my friends and family, and I consider them my true audience.

I started this blog because I wanted to leave something of myself for my children to read when I’m gone. I wanted to leave a legacy of faith in Jesus, and a testimony of how real God is and how He has worked in my life. Despite all of His work on me through the years, I am still plagued by plenty of weaknesses. But, I’m learning to depend on Him and trust that where I am weak He is strong, and He can take my okay-ness and do something good with it. I am trusting that is what He is doing with the Matthew McConaughey post from yesterday.

If you’ve read the comments, you know that I was not a popular person in lots of different circles yesterday. Many people felt like I was judging Matthew McConaughey. I was certainly judging the content of his movies. I think that it’s okay for me to do that, as a Christian. I didn’t watch the movies, but I get information about the content of movies and television shows from a great website called pluggedin.com. I don’t enjoy watching movies that are filled with sexual content and foul language, even if the overall message is good. I think explicit sex scenes are spiritually harmful to Christian people.

Yesterday’s post was not about whether Matthew McConaughey is a Christian. It wasn’t about whether I am better than him or worse than him. It wasn’t even about him thanking God in his acceptance speech. The post was a reaction to what I was seeing on the internet in the hours following his speech. What I saw was Christian people reaching up to that stage in Hollywood to cling to Matthew McConaughey’s nice tuxedo jacket, to hang on to his coattails and excitedly exclaim that he is one of us. That he validates us and he makes our God more acceptable, and if Matthew McConaughey is going the praise the Lord, then that must make our faith worth more. I didn’t want us, as Christians, to feel like Matthew’s speech somehow legitimized our trust in Jesus.

This is my little corner of the internet, and I try to fill it with truth. I certainly don’t hold myself up as an amazing example of Christianity. I fail. A lot. But, this is my place to be honest with fellow Christians about the wonderful things and the difficult things about being a Christian in our current world. And, that’s all I was doing yesterday. I was trying to speak the truth.

One person asked what I thought Jesus would think about my blog post yesterday. I don’t presume to speak for Jesus, but I pray that He, knowing my heart, has taken what I said, in all its imperfection, and done something good with it for His kingdom. I know that He can bring beauty from ashes, in my life, in Matthew McConaughey’s life, and in this little blog that suddenly got big for a day. It was an interesting experience.

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Matthew McConaughey is Not My Hero

Matthew McConaughey won an Oscar. And, boy, are Christians happy about it. I mean, Christians are jumping up and down for this Texas boy for his big win because he actually thanked God in his acceptance speech. He did, he gave God credit and he thanked his wife like he should and he gave a rambling speech that really made me wonder why they weren’t starting up the music to cut him off. They let Matthew talk for almost four minutes, and the clip of his speech is all over the internet.

Christians are so proud.

And, I can’t blame us. I mean, how often do we hear a major celebrity, an Oscar winner, no less, identifying with us? How often do we get that kind of star power in our corner? It almost makes us seem sort of cool and legitimate.

I liked his speech, although I thought it was a little heavy on the Matthew McConaughey. He’s chasing a hero, who is himself in ten years? Really? But, no matter. He mentioned God and that’s all that counts. It obviously shows that he loves the Lord and lives his life for Him and we will all be fans of his forever because of this speech.

But, there’s one tiny issue with setting Matthew McConaughey up as our next great Christian idol. And, the problem is the movie he won the Oscar for. And pretty much every other movie he’s ever made.  (Anyone remember a little film called Magic Mike?) According to pluggedin.com, Dallas Buyer’s Club opens with McConaughey’s character having sex with two girls at the same time in a rodeo stall.  That’s only the beginning of the explicit sexual content in the movie.  In addition to the nudity, masturbation, and pornography, the film contains over 100 f-words and God’s name is used as a curse word over 20 times.

Matthew McConaughey made this movie, which he was rewarded by Hollywood for making, which goes out into our society and poisons the hearts and minds of our men, women, and young people.  And then he gets up to accept his award for making filth that turns hearts away from God, and he thanks God for the opportunity, and Christians applaud him as if he has done something incredible.

We have got to get over our obsession with celebrity and start making connections between what people say and what they actually do.  It is never going to be a good thing for Christianity for us to hold these celebrities up as examples of what a Christian should be.  If we want to show the world examples of Christianity that should make us cheer, it’ll be our faithful pastors, our grandmothers who have lived quiet sacrificial lives, our friends who would lay down their lives for us, the teachers who go to school every day and live out the commands to love the unlovable and to value every life.

Not Matthew McConaughey.  I’m sure he’s a fun guy to hang around with, and I bet he’s a great dad and probably a really good actor.  But he is not the next great champion for Christianity.

And that’s probably why I’m not a member of the Academy.  Thank you, and good night.

**Please check out the follow-up to this post here!

**Due to the fact that everything that can be said HAS been said–many, many times–comments are now disabled.  Thanks for stopping by!