PG-rating for God Reference

A film has actually gotten a PG-rating because it contains too many references to God. This actually might help at the box office since most teenagers don't want to see G-rated movies. Sarah, my 14-year old, did not want to see Bend it Like Beckham when we thought the movie was rated G (there were three or four ratings on the back of the DVD case and I read the wrong one, it was actually PG-13). She said that G-rated movies were boring. Her 10 year-old sister watched it and when I found out that it was PG-13, she wanted to watch it but by then it was too late (she's not allowed to see PG-13 movies, even if her sister got to see it :-). So maybe this could be considered a good thing.

But I think it's just one more indicator of how far Christianity has fallen in the view of society in general, how much an offense it has become. I believe that some of the animosity is related more to our political involvement (I'm going to post on this later today or tomorrow) and less to the message of the gospel:

The Motion Picture Association of America is crystal clear when it describes why its "PG" rating exists _ it's a warning flag.

"The theme of a PG-rated film may itself call for parental guidance," states the online explanation of the rating system. "There may be some profanity in these films. There may be some violence or brief nudity. ... The PG rating, suggesting parental guidance, is thus an alert for examination of a film by parents before deciding on its viewing by their children. Obviously such a line is difficult to draw."

Disagreements are a given. The Christian moviemakers behind a low-budget film called "Facing the Giants" were stunned when the MPAA pinned a PG rating on their gentle movie about a burned-out, depressed football coach whose life _ on and off the field _ takes a miraculous turn for the better.

[...]

"Facing the Giants" is too evangelistic.

The MPAA, noted Fuhr, tends to offer cryptic explanations for its ratings. In this case, she was told that it "decided that the movie was heavily laden with messages from one religion and that this might offend people from other religions. It's important that they used the word 'proselytizing' when they talked about giving this movie a PG. ...

In today's society God and Jesus are equivalent to profanity. Recently I had two problems with the blogroll and to me they seemed like mirror images of each other. On the one hand, I had Christians upset because we linked to women who used profanity. They didn't use that type of language on their blogs, so they didn't want to link to those who did.

On the flip side, I had a woman who requested to be removed from the blogroll because there were Christians on it. That surprised me, that she was so honest. I would think that if you were going to be intolerant enough to be so opposed to a group of people just because they talked about God, then maybe in this day of political correctness you might want to hide your intolerance behind a lie.

This rating confirms to me what I've witnessed on the Internet, if you talk about Jesus or God, you are being offensive. We should not be surprised by this rating, we've been heading in this direction for years.

And yeah, I know that this is not new, it's not something that should surprise a Christian:

Romans 9:33 as it is written, "Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame."

But my fear is that we, the American Christian is the cause of stumbling and not Christ.

Updated to add: A link, which I forgot. It seems that if you forget the link, it might be implied that you are making it up, even though you have a quote that anyone with even a little knowledge of Google could use to find the original article.