Human Hell House

Posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago at 12:07 am. 4 comments

I am currently watching my way through the top 25 documentaries, one of which is a film called Hell House.

I already knew what this documentary was about because I had seen something on a TV show where one of the presenters went to go and see it. What I understood from that TV show was that Hell House is a show put on by a Christian group in America to try to convert people. It is basically a house you walk through and in each room something is realistically dramatised like a school shooting, or an abortion, or a rape and suicide. Towards the end you find whether those who died went to Heaven or Hell and why. Then you are given a chance to become a Christian.

It sounds horrendous, twisted and manipulative. And it is.

But the people aren’t.

I had put off watching the documentary because I thought I’d just get wound up with the hypocrisy and condemnation of the Hell House. But the film is put together so well. It is not judgemental or one-sided. It simply documents the preparations and opening night for the 10th year of the Hell House.

One of the people involved particularly touched me. It was a man with 4 kids. You first meet him one morning in his house as he is making breakfast for his children and getting them ready for school. After calling to his teenage daughter to hurry up, he walks into the kitchen to find his youngest having a fit. He calls out to everyone that “We’ve got a fit, yes a real one.” and carries his son into his bedroom and lies him on his bed so he can fit safely. As he phones 911 he says a quick prayer for his son who immediately relaxes his muscles and begins looking around, still in shock and recovering, but no longer fitting. The man tells the 911 operator that his son is OK now but an ambulance crew turn up anyway to check his son out. His son has multiple sclerosis which causes the fits. Later on we find out that his wife had left after an affair leaving him with their children.

Throughout this scene, I saw the gentleness of this man, his unassuming nature and his devotion and love for his children. It was wonderful and touched me deeply.

The film later shows his teenage daughter auditioning for the role of the abortion girl which moves him to tears. During the opening night of Hell House he escorts a group through the Hell House and during the domestic abuse scene where the wife is caught having an afai and is then killed, he looks very awkward. During the last room when a man asks people to become christians, he looks very uncomfortable and actually goes into the ministry room with the people who want to become christians. The film then shows him explaining that he feels he still hasn’t forgiven his wife and her other man, then he gets some prayer.

There are many scenes in the film which made me feel very uncomfortable. There are scenes where people are speaking in tongues, singing Christian songs and laying hands on each other in prayer. I’ve been to plenty of meetings like these in my past, but to see it on screen, especially this side of Amy dying, was unnerving.

The man I’ve mentioned above isn’t the only person the film focusses on, but the documentary shows how human the people who put on Hell House are. I was taken aback at how undisgusted I was after finishing the film.

They are clearly right-wing, evangelical christians and part of the Assemblies Of God Church. Hell House is obviously a gross presentation of Christianity. It assumes that the purpose of being a Christian is to get into Heaven rather than Hell when you die. I disagree. Surely Jesus’ message was more about bringing Heaven to earth, to those around you, particularly the poor and marginalised. Hell House also attempts to scare people into a relationship with Jesus, something Jesus himself never did!

At the end of the film, it says that 15,000 people have committed themselves to Jesus through Hell House over the 10 previous years. I truly wonder how many of those 15,000 are still following Jesus. I’m sure many are still going to Church most Sunday’s because many churches make it easy to be apathetic to one’s walk with Jesus yet still a member of the Church. But a relationship based on the fear of Hell can’t last because that fear will fade, there are too many distractions in the world. You might accidently stumble across Jesus through that fear, but it must be rare.

Sure, they have a twisted understanding of Jesus’s message and a horrible way of showing it to people. But for me, the film showed the humanity of the cast and production team and for that, it was beautiful.

Junebug

Posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago at 9:59 pm. 0 comments

A couple of weeks ago I was getting very angry. Not about anything in particular, just in general. Small things which annoyed me would send me into a rage and I didn’t know why and found it hard to control myself. I swore and smacked a cupboard door at one point over fumbling with a tea spoon.

I was a bit scared too becuase I didn’t like who I was or who I was becoming because of this anger. I slowly realised that it was probably due to a wave of grief over Amy, plus anxiety about Toby arriving and about needing to make more money through my web business to support him and Mary-Lou.

One evening during this time I sat down and watched a film called Junebug. It’s about an art collector from Chicago who goes to meet her new husband’s family who live in the southern states. The film has a unique style and shows the clash between her liberal tactile ways and the conservative, christian family in a humerous way. The reason the film is called Junebug is because her Husband’s brother’s wife is expecting a baby imminently and wants to call it Junebug.

As I was enjoying the film, I was intrigued by the husbands brother, the father of the unborn child. He obviously had issues, one of which was anger. In one scene he tries to record a TV program for his wife while she is having her baby shower upstairs but the video recorder kept ejecting the video. He gets so angry that he starts shouting and swearing which makes the ladies upstairs hush in embarrassment. His wife comes down to see what’s wrong but he rejects her help and throws the video against the wall. I was interested and glad to see somebody else dealing with anger issues.

A bit later in the film, his wife goes into labour, rushes off to the hospital all excited, then loses the baby.

At this point I literally sat forward in my chair. I couldn’t believe this baby had been stillborn. I couldn’t believe that such a movie would deal with stillbirth. I was positively shocked. All of a sudden the film took on a whole new meaning for me.

The most amazing scene in the film was in the hospital after the baby had died. The mum and her husbands brother were talking together and the mum (played by Amy Adams who was rightfully nominated for an Oscar for her role) went beck and forth between talking about normal things and crying so desperately about her lost baby and her husband. It reminded me of our weekedn in the hospital after Amy died. We too would go from talking normally about something to crying together then back to chatting casually. It was a very strange time.

One of the things the mum said in the hospital scene was that she felt so scared because shes didn’t know what her husband was thinking. He had left the hospital without saying a word. I felt even more that I related to this character, this angry dad who had lost his first baby. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that I could relate to a character so intimately. It was reassuring but sad.

Religion, Politics and Hope

Posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago at 12:41 pm. 0 comments

When I read God’s Politics by Jim Wallis I became hopeful that there were American Christians who thought and spoke sense. It was great to read this challenge to the Church and to have it explained so intelligently and passionately. So I enjoyed this video of him on the fabulous Daily Show:

Christianity and Politics obviously conflict alot in America, but much less so in Britain. I have long rued the lack of voice the Church has in both Politics and the Media in Britain. By “Church” I don’t mean the institutional leaders, but the people themselves. The Church has not been speaking out loudly enough over the last 50 - 60 years about social and political issues for many reasons. One might be the rise of the individualistic gospel making faith more of a personal gain and private matter. Another might be the rise of the less needy middle class in the Church which does not have an understanding or proximity to the poor.

Whatever the reason, the Church has become more and more irrelevant to the general public and the number of Christians has declined drastically over the last few decades. Meanwhile, Politics has become more and more capitalist, keeping the poor poor and the rich richer.

But I have seen a rise in young Christians become more socially and politically engaged in this country and this makes me hopeful - both that this nation’s social ills can be corrected and that the Church could become more like who she was created to be.

Please Church, stop naval gazing!