Last night, I watched The Book of Eli, a post-apocalyptic quest movie. The lead character, played by Denzel Washington has a command from God to take the last remaining Bible to a safe place in 'the West.' To make a long story short, through many trials, he delivers the content of the Bible from his memory to the printing press of a colony dedicated to preserving books (a.k.a. my people). The movie ends with shots of the printing press making copies of the Bible. Commentators are divided as to whether or not the movie is explicitly, implicitly or incidentally Christian... I suppose a lot depends on your perspective.

The greater question, in my humble opinion, concerns how I, as a Christian, should respond to this movie and to movies in general? I think my response should be this: whenever Hollywood creates a cultural nexus to Christianity, I should have enough knowledge, ability and experience to influence another person toward faith in Christ, or to deeper faith in Christ. I should clarify where Hollywood's caricature of Christianity fails to match reality and where Christians objectively fail to measure up to a Biblical understanding of Christianity.

Eli creates an opportunity to talk about how God actually did preserve His Word in the past and will preserve it in the future. I'm sure there are many inside and outside of Christianity who remain uninformed of the early church's struggle to preserve, copy and disseminate what we take for granted today, a complete Old and New Testament in our choice of translation.

The most disturbing element of the movie was the main character's hatred toward cats. The movie opens with the demise of a hairless cat, later consumed as food and shared with a mouse (sick irony!). Another scene shows the graphic shoving of a cat from a bar. What's up with that? If you love a tasty barbecued cat, no worries. But if you are the other kind of cat lover, be warned.