Monumental mistakes, understandable motives

So Kirk Cameron's film Monumental, is out now, and you can find a lot of positive reviews through Google. I first heard about it, however, through Brannon Howse and Chris Pinto and Ed Decker who see some important problems with it. For one thing the movie apparently treats Glenn Beck as a Christian, and accepts David Barton's view of American history, both serious problems for a movie that is supposed to be Christian in inspiration. For a second thing, apparently Cameron chose as a symbol for his message a statue known as "Monument to the Forefathers" which celebrates the Pilgrim settlers of America, but does it with Masonic pagan imagery, which in fact negates the Pilgrim mentality it purports to represent. That's a pretty big error too.

But in defense of Kirk Cameron's take on the monument, I have to wonder why anyone would expect him to have thought of doing research on a monument which so clearly expresses the values that a Christian would hope to see celebrated as foundational to America. Very few Americans would have any idea that this monument was anything but the celebration of the original Pilgrim settlers it purports to be.

Wikipedia has:

On the main pedestal stands the heroic figure of "Faith" with her right hand pointing toward heaven and her left hand clutching the Bible. Upon the four buttresses also are seated figures emblematical of the principles upon which the Pilgrims founded their Commonwealth, each having a symbol referring to the Bible that "Faith" possesses; counter-clockwise from the east are Freedom, Morality, Law and Education.

Who is going to argue with Faith, Freedom, Morality, Law and Education? Justice and Mercy? Who is going to recognize these as PAGAN ideals rather than Christian ideals? Who is going to recognize these as MASONIC ideals rather than Christian ideals? Who is going to recognize the design of the monument itself as "Greco-Roman" and pagan and Masonic?

Answer: Only those who have as carefully studied these things as have Chris Pinto and Ed Decker and Brannon Howse. NOT the average American Christian.

I understand that those in the know want to head off a bad mistake, an embarrassing mistake, for Kirk Cameron, but also a mistake on the order of choosing a representative of the exact opposite of what he wants to celebrate, in fact the very mistake that most of us have been making for decades about the supposed Christian foundations of America. If there's one thing I have learned from both Pinto and Howse over the last month or two it's that Americans have been deceived by a Masonic conspiracy into mistaking their pagan values for Christian values. The discovery of the depth of this deception has been for me, as I've said, breathtaking, or more graphically, like a punch in the stomach.

I can hardly look at anything American any more -- pictures of the Founders, pictures of national architecture, the American flag, the dollar bill, without a sick feeling that I am looking at something alien, representative not of the nation I once loved but of an enemy. That's how I must now also look at the monument to the Pilgrim forefathers that Kirk Cameron makes the emblem of his film. Not what he found in it and hoped to give to his audiences, something they could embrace as representing the Christian beginnings of America, but instead a chilling reminder that America was stolen from the Christians by evil conspirators.

Something in me wishes I didn't know what I now know about all these things. But of course that is simply a momentary irrational feeling, and truly I am grateful that I know it. But again, I remember Charles Thomson (did I get that right?) at the beginning of Hidden Faith of the Founding Fathers and I understand his decision to allow the American people to believe in the heroic qualities of the generation of the Revolutionary War, instead of burdening them with the truth about their character as he knew them, and I wonder if maybe that isn't the nobler concern, the better and more generous mindset. I can't wonder too long, though, before coming to my senses again. We need this knowledge and we need it particularly now as all the secret undercurrents that I've been learning about are right on the verge of exploding over the world, and if we remain in ignorance about them we will only be the victims of exactly what the plotters have been designing for us down the centuries.

But perhaps simply by having that wish I may understand something of the power of Kirk Cameron's naive take on that monument, such that he is not going to be easily persuaded to see it according to its true historical significance. When he first discovered it he fully embraced it as the embodiment of the Christian nation he desires to see restored. It sounds like he fell in love with it in some sense. Faith as its crowning figure, pointing to God, holding the Bible. Why would it occur to him at all that it has a "real" meaning that utterly opposes what he first saw in it? Why would he want to consider giving up its first impact on him since it makes the point he wants to make in his film, and since 99% of his film's audience isn't going to have any more of a clue about its meaning than he had anyway?

It's even possible that the explanations given by those in the know couldn't quite penetrate his mind because his initial impression was so strong and so interwoven with the message of his film. You can explain to him that the figure of Faith is *really* the embodiment of a Masonic notion, or that they could just as well have put a Koran in her hand as a Bible -- but he reads the word "faith" in a Christian context and sees the Bible in her hand and your words are just going to sound too hypothetical to take seriously.

I feel for him. I hope he does eventually open his mind to the truth, but for now I understand why he prefers the message of his film that holds out hope that America could possibly be brought back to a Christian perspective. Let's not get too down on him for having a moralistic perspective. Being salt and light in the world does allow for an emphasis on morality. It isn't going to work in the present context, we're too far gone, but I don't see anything in principle opposed to a Christian mindset in that emphasis. True, it's the gospel, or really, it's the Holy Spirit empowering the gospel, or in other words revival, that is the only way the changes he wants could be brought about, but there's nothing wrong with his desire to see the nation turned around. Perhaps he should change his focus to praying for revival.

He's wrong about the monument but it takes a sophistication to see what's wrong in it that we can't expect him to have had, or even now to want to acquire. As I said, this knowledge is a punch in the stomach, an icy hand gripping the heart. Some take longer than others to accept such a jolt to the system. Meanwhile I don't see anything terribly wrong with allowing him to imagine Christian meanings into those words on that statue. But maybe I'm going too far trying to see things from his point of view.

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Update: Listening to Chris Pinto today the 29th in which he's responding to some emails he received on this film, it becomes clear that the problems with the film are way beyond the meaning of the monument itself. I would still argue that Cameron should be given some slack about his take on the monument at least for now, but there's no way his apparent endorsement of the Mormon Glenn Beck's religious opinions can be accepted.

It is positively scary how many formerly apparently solid Christians have been either turning in the direction of apostasy or simply showing their true colors as their apostate views are coming out. Some formerly trustworthy Christian's allowing a false gospel to be blurred with the true as in the case of Glenn Beck's Mormon religiosity, or embracing Catholicism, is becoming all too common. It's startling.

THAT's the big problem with Kirk Cameron's film from what I know about it. Even his wrongheaded endorsement of David Barton's false history of the founders as Christians is somewhat tolerable because we could assume he could be educated out of that, just as he could be educated out of his rapture over this monument he misinterprets. But you don't align with a Mormon as if his religious views are the equivalent of the Christian gospel.

Glenn Beck has got to be one of the devil's most ingenious creations.