“Get Low” and the Gospel

Get Low is not a “Christian movie.” The point of view is decidedly non-Christian, as is most of the mode of discourse. And that’s just the point. The film portrays something the Christian Scriptures insist to be true. Guilt isn’t something society foists upon us. There’s something primal, something real, in the guilty conscience. . . .

Get Low portrays where we all are, apart from Christ. Our conscience shows us who we really are, cut off from our only source of life and unable to get back to it past the watching angel’s fiery sword. That kind of guilt is enslaving. Like the protagonist in the film, we want somehow to explain our actions, or to assemble a cloud of witnesses who can explain it for us, without admitting our culpability. We want to live through judgment (which is, after all, what a living funeral is) so that we can reassure ourselves that the end result of our choices isn’t quite the horror we fear it to be.

Get Low isn’t Christian, but it’s Christ-haunted. In an often animalistic culture, it reminds us that even the Gentiles know that guilt is real, and that it burns. It also reminds us that, no matter how deep the exile, where there is still a conscience there is still the God who put it there.
That’s not the good news, but its a step toward acknowledging the bad. It’s not the whole truth, but it’s the truth, the (almost) gospel truth.

You can read the whole thing here, and watch the trailer below: