Machine Gun Preacher

So tonight for the first time in a while I hung out with my friend Luke, aka my movie buddy. We went to the $2 theater and watched a double feature of The Muppets and Machine Gun Preacher. The Muppets was just as delightful as the first time I saw it. Machine Gun Preacher, however, was a lot better than I expected. It's a movie based on the biography of a guy named Sam Childers, who was a druggie biker in the 90s who became a Christian and then became a missionary to northern Uganda and southern Sudan. It wasn't amazing or anything but it was very thought provoking. Although overdramatic at times, it really highlighted the issues of child slavery and warfare in third world countries. It really did a phenomenal job of contrasting the darkness and strife of the Sudan with the excess and shallowness of our own world. One scene in particular was challenging to me. About 3/5 of the way through the movie, Sam is asking a business-owner friend of his for $5,000 to buy supplies for the orphanage he maintains in Sudan. His friend tells him he'll see what he can do and then invites Sam and his family over for a barbecue the next week. At the bbq, which is located in the guy's mansion and is full of swanky looking people, tons of food, and lots of other excess. The guy gives Sam an envelope and tells him it's for the kids in Africa. Sam goes into another room, opens the envelope, and then the scene cuts to him pulling his wife and daughter out of the party to leave. When the wife asks why they're leaving, he tells her how the guy hosted this massive party in his mansion and gave him a check for $150, which Sam says is less than he probably spent on salsa for the party.

This movie isn't perfect and the Christianity presented in it is watered-down and hardly Christ-centered, but the contrast of first and third world living highlights the excess and materialism we all live with and endorse and also shows the horrors of child slavery and abduction. Not a perfect film by any means but certainly thought-provoking.