Audacity is a movie that is appropriately named because it has a lot of it. The official log line is not as follows but yet is totally what follows: Christian Persecution Complex meets Christian Savior Complex. The film, made available on YouTube for free from Evangelist organization Living Waters, follows a “Christian” man who rescues homosexuals from perilous events in order to prove that condemning homosexuality is the best way to say “I really love you.”
I’m putting “Christian” in parenthesis because at this point, I think its safe to say that the Evangelical wing is so far removed from Christianity. When the majority of their base sees more of Jesus Christ in Donald Trump than in Universal Health Care, it’s fair to assume the Church is sick. It’s shrinking, and don’t just take my word for it: Studies show that Millennials are leaving the Church at alarming rate. Evangelical Christianity doesn’t have a clue, and Audacity is further proof that their version of “love” is nothing but a continued twisting of what it means to love and to be a Christian.
Recently, a factory worker in Ohio recommended Audacity to two of his lesbian co-workers and was upset to find they reported it to their supervisors. They felt uncomfortable, but the man said “that he couldn’t stop sharing his faith.” Instead, he kept “sharing” Audacity with gay co-workers and was ultimately fired, saying he now feels persecuted because of his beliefs. So it’s important to know that this film is out there and being used to target people like him, and asking them to “share” with lesbians and gay people, in hopes it will change us.
The film begins-and will continue for the rest of us, though not purposefully-as a bad dream. Peter (shout out Biblical name!) is a budding stand-up comedian who is worried that if he says what he really believes about gay people, he won’t have a career. No worries if he’s actually funny or not because in this world, the premise is based on entitlement. Peter dreams about seeing a lesbian couple on the elevator on their way to get married. They are happy-happy people on an elevator. Coupled with slow motion graphics and ominous music, happy people, arm-in-arm, are on the elevator. Their happiness is short-lived because unfortunately, on the way back from getting married, the happy lesbians fall down the elevator shaft.
I wish this were a comedy bit. It is not.
Peter wakes up sweating, swearing that he will do all he can to save happy homosexuals and warn them against the pits of hell. He wakes up committed to spread the message! To spread it far and wide, to not be silenced. In other words, he wakes up with an entirely ego-driven need to Godsplain. The plot wastes no time in putting Peter in positions to be a save the homosexuals and then wait for the perfect moment to Godsplain to them. Like some sort of Christian superhero, the film shows him rescuing a gay couple from a gunpoint robbery. It shows him in a bar, slipping pamphlets to a gay couple having a beer. At one point he says to himself, “I feel like I have to do this!” He cannot be stopped! He must! He must! He must increase his biblical knee space!
Please know, Evangelical Christians, your message is super conflicting. Audacity portrays Christians as jumping in the way risking their lives for gays and lesbians, yet in real life are afraid to bake a cake.
It ends with Peter’s hot co-worker coming out as a lesbian but deciding to change her ways.
There are just so many things wrong with this film. It is condescending, entitled and based on the assumption that they are one hundred percent correct in their interpretation of scripture. And finally, the bastardization of what it means to love. The characterization of real gay people answering softball questions about scripture only to be stumped and helpless—that’s a convenience the film indulges.
I grew up the daughter of a Southern Baptist Minister so this culture is not foreign to me. Some might, but it is my utmost belief that most Evangelical Christians have no idea what they are doing and how much pain they are causing. I want everyone to take a deep breath, because just like the crazy person at the end of the street who babbles to herself incessantly, this is their bubble; the world they live in without having the ability to actually understand at this moment, why they are wrong. And instead of truly trying to understand another person’s point of view, they seek out talking points and distorted facts that reinforce their point of view. Then they celebrate it as Absolute Truth.
Do you know the saying that everyone operates from his or her current level of awareness? This-and this is unfortunate for the rest of us with the ability to understand nuance and context-is truly their level of awareness. And they truly believe this way because nothing has happened yet to make them feel otherwise. The Bible actually speaks to this problem. In John 14:26 promises that while Christians might not understand everything now, the Holy Spirit will continue to convict over and over again, which thankfully the Spirit has done in the history of the Church. It is why the Church has evolved since being wrong on every single social issue for the past 200 years. The church has been wrong about slavery, segregation, and women’s rights, to name a few. To see them today, you’d’ think granting rights was their idea.
This isn’t their first rodeo. The Evangelical Right knows they are losing the culture war. It’s why Audacity has been hailed as “a unique approach to address a very sensitive subject in society!” It’s unique to nobody else except those within the community who feel this way, because it is an exchange for what has failed-fire and brimstone and abominations—for hope, a hope that they can hold onto their beliefs and still call it love. Alas, it is condemnation dressed as love. It won’t work, of course. We know that anything other than actual love bears rotten fruit no matter how hard it tries.
The incredibly crazy thing to me-and what is in the back of my mind as I write this-is the makers of this film are thrilled to be receiving this press, good, or bad. The way Evangelical Christians work is that they hope that by me writing this, if even one person watches this film and is convicted to accept Jesus then it has served its purpose. It’s sort of a twisted, weird game. As a lesbian, I have to laugh at the constant accusation that there is a gay agenda. I have never once seen a movie recruiting me to be a homosexual, I have seen many, many films recruiting me to Christianity.
So watch Audacity if you feel like pulling your hair out.
To the Christians out there loving well and embarrassed for the way that this conversation has been dominated, and is failing, have hope. I do, in you. To Audacity, Ray Comfort, and the Evangelicals so worried about happy gays and lesbians and whomever else, please get off the Cross. Jesus did.
And as the saying goes, somebody needs the wood.
Lianna Carrera is a comic. Follow her on Twitter: @liannac
