All the Actors Will Be Left Behind

I think we can all agree that the worst thing about religion is not the far-out beliefs, nor the rules and regulations and threat of damnation, nor the fantaticism that brings about religions of peace and love through insane violence, but rather the crappy attempt at getting "with it" secularly, like Christian Rock. Or Christian acting.

Take Kirk Cameron. He is starring in a new movie called "Fireproof" which is a Christianized version of Rescue Me, but without the hot MILFs, the dumb firemen, and Denis Leary pulling every cliche and/or crazy plot twist out of the book---well, maybe they'll have the last one, just less Denis Leary.

According to the AV Club, Kirk won't kiss any woman that is not his wife, so he refused to do a scene where he was supposed to kiss the actress playing his wife in the movie. So they got his wife on set, where they kissed in such a way as to make his real wife look like his fake wife in the movie.

I agree that we need more good wholesome entertainment, but if Kirk Cameron, Christian Actor, is balking at completely delving into the role of a God-fearing man who saves lives and has a wife that he now and then, when the moon is on the wane, will want to kiss and (it is implied) make good Christian babies with, then maybe the problem is with acting itself, rather than the things normally required of actors to do.

No less a Christian authority than St. Augustine himself decried theater and acting in his Confessions, Book III:

Stage-plays also carried me away, full of images of my miseries, and of fuel to my fire. Why is it, that man desires to be made sad, beholding doleful and tragical things, which yet himself would no means suffer? yet he desires as a spectator to feel sorrow at them, this very sorrow is his pleasure. What is this but a miserable madness? for a man is the more affected with these actions, the less free he is from such affections. Howsoever, when he suffers in his own person, it uses to be styled misery: when he compassionates others, then it is mercy. But what sort of compassion is this for feigned and scenical passions? for the auditor is not called on to relieve, but only to grieve: and he applauds the actor of these fictions the more, the more he grieves. And if the calamities of those persons (whether of old times, or mere fiction) be so acted, that the spectator is not moved to tears, he goes away disgusted and criticising; but if he be moved to passion, he stays intent, and weeps for joy.

So Kirk: Let's keep it real. Real with Christ. Just give up the dramedy altogether, m'kay?

Or maybe Kirk is just whipped, and his good Christian wife is punishing him for this unseemly touching of another woman (Publicity still from Left Behind II, Still Waiting For the Hell We Deserve):























But then again, Augustine was quite the horn dog in his day:

To love then, and to be beloved, was sweet to me; but more, when I obtained to enjoy the person I loved, I defiled, therefore, the spring of friendship with the filth of concupiscence, and I beclouded its brightness with the hell of lustfulness; and thus foul and unseemly, I would fain, through exceeding vanity, be fine and courtly. I fell headlong then into the love wherein I longed to be ensnared. My God, my Mercy, with how much gall didst Thou out of Thy great goodness besprinkle for me that sweetness? For I was both beloved, and secretly arrived at the bond of enjoying; and was with joy fettered with sorrow-bringing bonds, that I might be scourged with the iron burning rods of jealousy, and suspicions, and fears, and angers, and quarrels.

Translation: I got me some ass in Carthage, and it was good! I mean bad, but good at the time, I mean you shoulda seen this one concubine with the huge granaries and what i did to her with my Ionic column...bad bad bad! (whips penis with reeds)