'Letters to God' Deserves Our Support

Summer is the season of blockbuster action flicks, big budget epics and mad-cap comedies – the usual Hollywood fare. While I’m no encyclopedia of movie awareness, I find it unfortunate that Hollywood often goes out of its way to portray people of faith in a less-than-positive light on screen.

If you’re looking for that type of movie, then “Letters to God,” may not be your bag of popcorn. “Letters to God” makes no pretenses about its aim. It is a movie about faith in God – a movie that celebrates the value that faith can bring to life on earth.

The movie shares a story of a young boy named Tyler facing his personal storm — aggressive brain cancer – with pure trust in God, a dash of humor, and great hope. Not necessarily hope for himself and his own medical needs, but hope that everyone he loves will be granted a bright and happy future, even if he’s not there to see it. It’s a simple love for his family and friends that is shared in letters he writes to God, letters that are intercepted and read by a down-and-out mailman.

The mailman, early on, feeling like he’s not the right person to handle the letters, takes them to a church and tries to pass them off to a cleric. The cleric refuses to take them, telling the mailman that God has put the letters in his hands for some reason that he cannot explain, but that undoubtedly something good will come.

The story reminds us that there are few random moments in life. That there is a plan. That the plan is hard to understand. But that the plan will make sense – someday, somehow.

And we see that happen in Tyler’s world. Under tremendous stress, when Tyler’s mom is not sure she can handle all that she must endure, Tyler tells her that “God picked you to be my mom.” And it reminds us that whatever we face in life, God knows and has already prepared us to weather the storm with His help. Many of us have faced medical situations with those we love – and surely we can understand the mailman’s moment of sorrow, when he says, “It feels like everything I touch turns to dust.”

What could be considered a deeply sad movie is, in the end, a movie that will make you smile. You’ll smile because a sick boy named Tyler smiles, because he hopes, and dreams, and loves – and you walk away with the reminder that, with a little faith, you can do all of those things too.

The fact that this movie is well-written, well-acted and well-presented may come as news to the mainstream in Hollywood that routinely snubs movies that present faith in God as normal and positive. When you think about it, part of this movie’s allure may be that it is, in public relations lingo, “counterintuitive.” As I understand it, being counterintuitive is edgy in the media milieu.

Now I won’t predict that this movie will win an Oscar or rival “Avatar’s” box office records. However, in a medium that too often ridicules faith and the people who live by it, “Letters to God” offers a different view than the prevalent Hollywood fare. For once, the faithful are not presented as caricatures – ignorant, intolerant, and in the words of a famous politician, “clinging to God” — but as imperfect human beings struggling to understand and accept the life God has given them with its challenges, obstacles and triumphs. This movie portrays the faithful with the dignity they deserve but rarely get in Hollywood. (Note to my heroes Rush, Sean, Mark and other influential integrity-types in the media: get the message out).