Righteous Insanity

Company Man: Are Christians Christianity's worst enemy?

Over the last few years, I've come to realize a hard truth about Christianity today: Christians are the worst enemy of Christianity. Not atheists, not liberals, not the media, not Hollywood, but Christians. In fact Christians are a bigger obstacle to people coming to Christ than the gospel - a message that Jesus himself described as offensive to the world.

The world still finds it offensive that it is sinful and in need of redemption. But more offensive than that are the people who wag their fingers telling the world "you must repent" who fail to live up to the standard of Christ in every conceivable way. Christians are gossips. They constantly judging others. They are complete hypocrites, condemning people for sinful actions while excusing their own. They walled themselves off from the world completely, and then they self-righteously wept for the fate of the world that doesn't get it 

If Jesus walked into a modern day church, I wonder how many disciples he'd see vs. Pharisees. I bet we'd be astonished at the ratio of pure white sheep to white-washed tombs. I'm lumping myself into that latter category because most of my life, that's where I've belonged.

Biblical Christianity is not the way of judging and hypocrisy and legalism, but that's what we've made it. Until we go back to the model of Christ, we will continue to be the biggest stumbling block on the road to salvation for the people we claim we want to see saved.

That's why I want you to read "Company Man." It's a business parable written to help Christians go from legalistic, self-appointed judges to true followers of Christ. It's about learning to live by the second greatest commandment: love your neighbor as yourself.

Our world is dying apart from Christ, and until we get out of his way, they will continue to die apart from him. We will be held accountable for our actions one day, and self-righteous excuses are not going to let us off the hook. Please pick up a copy of "Company Man" today, and share it with your fellow believers.

 

More movie news from Righteous Insanity

If you haven't noticed, I've been busy with a lot of film stuff lately.

 

The Righteous Insanity films page was expanded again over the weekend, this time to include the complete film library from our production partners, Sunday School Dropouts. The Dropouts films are now exclusively on Righteous Insanity's website and Youtube channel.

 

The SSD website is not going away. The heart and soul of the site is their growing catalog of free drama skits for the brave and the bold, and that's where they've chosen to put their focus. You may see a few more shorts from them down the road, but when you do, they'll be on our page and our channel.

 

The Youtube page got a new look this weekend too. All our film series, including Deleted Scenes of the Bible and the re-release of Adam and Eve, are now on their own individual playlists so they're easier to find. You can also find all the Getyoked videos posted in their own playlist as well.

 

There's a lot more film in production at the moment. Here are just a few things scheduled for 2012:

 

Zombies R Forever - Wrapped and finished, headed to a film festival (hopefully) near you in 2012.

 

Fluffy 1947 - Currently in production.

 

The Scotty Love Show - A re-boot of The Sensitive Christian Man film series.

 

Evil Puppets from Planet Z - A prequel to the Zombies R movies.

 

Despite my giving up directing major projects several years back, Righteous Insanity seems to be gaining traction as a film company. People are really starting to take notice on the website, Youtube, Sermon Spice, and other places on the web, and we're very excited to see these films getting used in ministry.

 

By the way, if you do use something of ours, please email me and let me know. We'd love to hear about it.

Adam and Eve - Now in high quality video

The original Adam and Eve shorts are back! See the ten funniest clips from our early film project "Adam and Eve's Home Videos" on Righteous Insanity's website, now in full quality video! 

See Adam and Eve at Righteous Insanity

New film - No More Rules

This film was a story in and of itself, so here's a little blog on how we made it.

 

I wrote the script last spring, intending it to be a kind of "hit and run" illustration about morality and relativism. Originally I intended to farm this one out to another young film maker to produce, and I had no intention of shooting it myself. About a month ago, I came across the script again. Seeing how short and simple it was, I decided to make it one of my lunch hour film projects.

 

I recruited two of my favorite actors for the project. Denny Grinar has been in almost all of my films since around 2006. For better or worse, he's the Bruce Campbell to my Sam Raimi. Then I asked one of my former students, Darrian Z. Phillips, to take on the lead role. He's a loose cannon type as it is, so Roger Hacker was not a stretch for him.

 

We were originally scheduled to shoot this on Monday October 24, but had to delay a week and a day. The day of the shoot - Nov 1 - Denny texted me and asked if I could give him a ride since his car was broken down. This would mean driving 15 minutes to get him and then 15 to the shooting location - leaving me 15 minutes only to shoot the film before I had to head back to work.

 

Darrian was a few minutes late himself, so by the time the camera was out and rolling, we had about five minutes to shoot. Darrian ran the opening lines twice, giving me different camera angles to choose from. We then shot the final sequence with Denny three times.

 

Now here's the cool part. I called action on take three just as a car was headed up the road toward us. Darrian took the same pace with the dialogue as his first two takes, and as fate would have it, the car passed behind me at JUST the right moment when Darrian walked out of frame. We could not have timed it more perfectly if we'd had a driver on hand to help with the scene.

 

The result is that the car you hear in the final film is a real car that just happened to drive by at the perfect moment. I had intended on making the accident sound much more horrific, but the realistic car sound led me to go with a more understated. It's just enough, and Denny's reactions to the scene really make the moment.

 

Some people speak of divine appointments, moments ordained by the Lord, that cannot be mere coincidence. Does that mean that God delayed us all those times in order to give me that perfect moment of comedy? Probably not. But knowing from experience that God has a dark sense of humor, I can't rule it out.