Monday, November 03, 2014
"Believe Me": when pimping faith-based "charity" is done for fraud
“Believe Me”, a new comedy by Will Bakke, sounds cynical
enough. Four college seniors, out of
tuition money and apparently off scholarships at a Texas college, set up a fake
charity and manipulate the simple faiths of people. Sam (Alex Russell) is the ringleader. Will he or anyone else become redeemed in
faith by their own penance? Maybe that’s
possible.
The inspiration for the scam comes from a girl who wants to
get her mission trip funded – to Hawaii.
Oh, she’ll go on fasts to prove her pound.
But soon the kids get shown the idea, from a flim flam
“cross country” man, of “Get Wells Soon”, of saving kids in Africa with clean
water. They go on a speaking tour
throughout the South, throwing all the typical punchlines. They sound sickening. They include references to the “God Squad”,
the question, “Do Christians have any hobbies other than God?”, “cross
dressing” (pun), “God would pick up the phone and tell me what to do?” and
finally “Give in a way that reflects the faith you claim.”
Eventually, the scheme will unravel (a singer played by
Zachary Knighton figures in). Sam,
repentant, determined to stay out of jail by finding a real charity to give the
ill-gotten cash to, tells the parable of The Rich Young Ruler. But the problem there is that the Ruler
hadn’t scammed anybody, and had lived righteously enough. He just hadn’t learned to love real people. (Remember, Jesus says, “don’t pander me. Why do you call me good?”)
Churches that I have attended do send people (including
youth) on missions in summer, to Belize and Nicaragua. They also participate in faith-based programs
to send recent college graduates to engineering projects overseas, including
water projects. Matt Damon has been
active in the water issue.
I’ve also had people “pander” God to me in the past
(particularly when I lived in Dallas) and it could get very personal. Consider the LDS church, which makes a lot of
its almost mandatory missions for college-age adults as “doing something for
someone else” but it amounts to proselytizing.
I have developed a certain distaste for high-pressure
selling, including weekend sales seminars, and groupie pep talk. Remember the 2002 movie “100 Mile Rule” where
the mantra was “Always Be Closing”.
The official site for this new film is here from Riot
Studios (Austin TX).
The film is
distributed by Headline and by Gravitas Ventures, which has recently emphasized
films with moral dilemmas. I rented it
on Amazon Instant play. It’s also on
iTunes.
Picture: downtown Austin, TX, my visit, November 2011.
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