Fireproof Thoughts
2008 October 27
So my response to the new Christian subculture movie Fireproof and its conception of marriage are posted over at the God’s Politics blog. Here. Enjoy.
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Julie Clawson
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julieclawson(at)gmail(dot)com 
Haven’t been tempted to watch the movie. Expected just about exactly what your review confirmed.
why am I not surprised that you twisted this around to your own agenda Julie???? Did you not hear the father at the end tell his son that the situation was actually flip flopped in his own marriage? this is not about gender, this is about the fact that so often when a marriage has degenerated this far, one person wakes up and smells the coffee before the other one. And very often that other person does NOT want to work on the marriage but just wants out. The parties involved can be either gender. But when things have got this bad, both people don’t usually sit there and say “I want to save my marriage” at the same time”. It is usually up to one person to win that person back. Often the one spouse feels just about as much hatred as Catherine did in the movie. They have lost trust and just aren’t willing to invest any more in the relationship. Sometimes (as in this movie) a concerted effort on the other parties side will regain that trust. I am sure it takes two to tango. I have always said that. But someone needs to get the ball rolling, especially if the other person only wants to move on. So maybe the movie should have made sure it drove home the message that Catherine was also a grade A bitch to Caleb just to make sure we knew it wasn’t all him. Or does everything have to be spelled out??? My take away from the movie was that even if the other person has begun to move on, one person can turn things around. I took away that its easier to blame the other person (as Caleb did) than begin to look at yourself. That if YOU begin to change, it can make a HUGE difference. THEN you can get them to want to mutually work things out. I guess your head is so far up your feminist rear end that you missed these things, though.
what’s that joke??? “How many feminists does it take to change a
lightbulb”??? answer: “THAT’S NOT FUNNY”
Personally I liked the movie. And I HATE cheese. I HATE the usual simplistic chick flick relationship movies Hollywood pumps out, Christian or not. I think it is a very valuable tool to get people talking who may have given up hope and think that the problem is just that they need to get away from the other person and all will be well. Is that a problem for you Julie????
You know what I think??? I think that you and all your emergent friends think you are so much better, so much smarter than all the rest of the Christians out there. You are so prideful that it is nauseating. Anything mainstream Christians like is just food for you and your ilk to mock and judge and preen your intellectual little feathers over. I suggest you stick it where the sun don’t shine.
Are you enjoying yourself yet Liz? honestly.
whatever. I guess it is easier for you to assume that anyone who disagrees with you is someone who just gets off picking on people than to think that maybe they could be right. Oh, and Julie: when it comes to truth: everything isn’t about a “dialogue”…sometimes you just have to stand up and put your foot down. Like I said, I wasn’t terribly surprised that you found stuff in that movie that wasn’t even there.
However, if it makes you feel more secure in your beliefs to pretend to yourself that anyone who finds your viewpoints to be disturbing is someone that only needs to be pandered to like a bad child; feel free to continue on in that delusion.
thanks for this review. It is disheartening to see that evangelicals are beginning to downplay the image of God in women again.
I was wondering if this shoe happened to fit????
thanks, julie, for your review. like scott, i haven’t even considered seeing it. the usual folks are promoting it, so that’s enough for me not to see it.
on the other hand, Call + Response was amazing. that’s a movie more christians ought to be seeing.
Just saw the DVD. Everyone knows that the acting and movie craft are what they are; I’ll focus on how well I think the producers achieved their purpose.
I think the characters portrayed are too simplistic, as are their problems. I think that people’s problems are far more numerous, have greater levels of good and evil, and are also more gray in their morality. Humanity is complex.
If this is true, then the 40-day approach may give false hope as it may not address more complex problems. Is continued marriage is always better than divorce? The obvious example is abuse, but moderate verbal abuse can drive very sensitive teens to suicide – does every week. But who knew it was coming to _that_? Would it have been better for dad to divorce the moderately verbally abusive mom to shield the child? Without the benefit of hindsight? Would mom be less abusive to the child if dad did the dishes after working 70 hours that week, when mom worked 35 but was “just as tired?”
So the problem is that the 40-day approach depicted as the solution to what were intended as difficult problems comes off as simplistic, when there may be hope for more severe problems, but the solution may be more severe as well, and may or may not involve an overtly Biblical set of simplistic (albeit challenging) A, B, C steps.
In some ways, Gran Tourino did a better job of depicting real love played out in the context of complicated humanity, with only one Biblical allusion.
This movie will probably help some moderately challenged marriages, but it will also contribute to the belief that Christians are a simplistic, vapid, preachy, and irrelevant force in dealing with complex problems in a broken and suffering humanity.
But, it’s a good and necessary start, and all of this could be fixed.
Actually, I drew something quite different from the movie. I did see some feminist ideology written into the film. It seemed to me more like there was an injection of second wave feminism. The wife has her own bank account and that is never questioned. She also is in an administrative job and is considered accountable for her actions. She doesn’t put up with his crap and is looking for better things. These would have been completely counter cultural 30 years ago and were brought about through the work of feminists. The only hold out I really see is the desire for hierarchy as is perceived to be dictated by scripture. Obviously, from a feminist perspective that’s a biggie. Regarding how the film was wrapped up in a neat little bow at the end, the institution of marriage is central to the film. “Fireproof your marriage” was the slogan, not “Fireproof your relationship”. I think they were just delivering what was promised.
I saw the movie and think the tenet of the film is right where God would want it to be.
If iron sharpens iron and one resist the sharpening, you don’t get a pass to bail out because the refining process will be painful and uncomfortable.
I am 7 months into a nightmare of a divorce proceeding and custody battle, and my three children are being torn in two.
This is sin on a visceral level. God hates divorce. Get it fixed. Push through to the other side and make it work, but DO NOT bail and stomp on the hearts and minds of the innocent children you both brought into the world and were a blessing to you from God.
Anything short of doing EVERYTHING you can to save your marriage isn’t good enough in God’s eyes. Barring domestic abuse, violence and addiction.
It states clearly: for better or for worse, end of story.
And, if one spouse wnats to continue to fight to make it work then the “no fault” state is all the more of the problem.
And, for what? an orgasm? the excitement of a new lover? Freedom from having to self reflect and make hard change? ability to delight in the si gle life again? NOPE. A vow is avow is a vow.
A male “Christian” from a local home church recommended that I take my wife to see this movie. This was just after my wife attempted to get away with forging my signature on a government document (a felony by the way) in order to get a passport for my son. I had no problem with getting the passport, but the fact that she would forge my signature really bothered me.
My wife, despite reading the Bible almost daily, has not apologized, she only makes excuses for her behavior.
I decided to go see the movie myself first before taking my wife. I am sure glad that I did, because the character of Caleb’s wife was even worse than that of my wife. She has not ever put our marriage on the line in order to get what she wants out of me. That is called extortion. It is sin, and I will not encourage it in any way.
What is even worse, is that Caleb enabled Catherine’s sin of extortion by submitting to her will. Her attitude was: “Prove that you love me and stop dreaming of spending your hard earned money on a boat and spend it on my parents medical bills instead or I will leave you”. Caleb had no responsibility to her parents. She already was working a job to cover her parents medical bills. And, it was because of that job, that she was in daily contact with a doctor that she was dreaming of having an affair with.
Catherine was nothing but a self-righteous hypocrite. After going through the “Love Dare” 40 step process, what was Caleb’s solution? It was for him to play the Ahab to Catherine’s Jezebel.
Caleb may have had a responsibility to sacrifice himself for her (should her life be in danger, which it never was in the movie), but he certainly did NOT have a responsibility to sacrifice himself TO HER!
When I heard that the movie was about a fireman and his marriage troubles, I expected that there would probably be a scene where Caleb saves his
wife from a fire in a friends house, and he would have to put his own life at risk to do it.
Was there any situation in this movie where he sacrificed himself FOR her? No, there was not. Giving up his dream boat only taught her that she could get away with extortion. This only aided her in her journey to hell.
Way to go Caleb! I won’t emulate you, and I won’t have my wife stoop to Catherine’s level either. No man should take his wife to this movie. That is, unless he wants her to suffer the same fate as Jezebel.
I liked the movie itself but it is just not very realistic to think that it is going to save every marriage. Some marriages are so dangerous and toxic that saving them should not even be contemplated. What if you are married to a person with a severe character disorder, for example a psychopath or a dangerously abusive spouse? I know one girl at my church who was married to an abuser and tried the love dare. She did everything she could to save her marriage, including following the love dare and still ended up with a gun to her head. Another friend tried it to save his marriage to an unfaithful wife and after all his efforts she still walked in one day and non-chalantly announced she was leaving him for another man. The point I’m trying to make is that life is too complex to reduce love and marriage to a simple formula. I have seen it help save troubled marriages but these were cases where BOTH spouses were reasonably mentally healthy and motivated to work on the relationship. It did help my brother’s marriage. I just hate the idea that it would give some people false hope and possibly damage their relationship and trust in god if it doesn’t work out according to script.