by Dan Jones
I recently had the opportunity (blizzard warnings, roads closed) to watch the movie I’m Not Ashamed, which is the story of Rachel Joy Scott, who was the first person killed at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999.
I considered it a very good movie, and one of the things I liked best about it is that it does not portray Scott as a “goody-two-shoes” Christian. I also like that Rachel kept extensive journals, so knowing who she is in her heart and soul is something that is documented by her own words.
Rachel is shown as a normal teenage girl who struggles with relationships with boys, friends, and her parents. She struggles with temptations and fails sometimes, but ultimate decides to truly commit her life to Christ.
In many ways, and despite her failings, Rachel comes off as a better Christian than many of us. She stands up for the weak and the ostracized. She takes risks to bring someone to Christ that many of us would avoid, and she forgives even when it hurts a lot to do so. She resolves that she would die for Jesus if it came to that.
But when I started doing research on the movie, I found that it had received some very poor reviews, and it didn’t do very well at the box office. I found that odd, given the success of recent movies like War Room, God’s Not Dead, Courageous, and many others.
And, oddly, You Tube blocked the official trailer of the film for eleven months before it was released.
When I started looking deeper into the reviews I found they were incredibly polarized. For the most part, Christians who reviewed this film liked it a lot, but non-Christians absolutely hated it. You can find numerous articles online about atheists “slamming” and “trashing” this film.
An October 21, 2016, an online review of the film by The Hollywood Reporter says it,”turned one of the most horrific events in American history into a mere plot device, using it to add prefabricated gravitas to an otherwise ordinary story of a teen’s struggle to live according to her Christian beliefs.
An “ordinary story?” Without spoiling the film, that’s hardly an accurate depiction of what went on in Rachel’s life.
Meanwhile, “The Friendly Atheist” goes to great pains to claim that there is no evidence that Klebold and Harris (the Columbine perpetrators) were atheists or that they killed Rachel Scott or anyone else because they were Christians–this despite numerous eyewitness accounts from survivors that both Klebold and Harris not only mocked God but those who believed in Him during their crimes. Of course, I guess it’s not altogether odd that a website called “The Friendly Atheist” would want to distance itself from atheists who were as decidedly unfriendly as Klebold and Harris.
The negative reviews almost without exception object to this movie on the basis that these were random killings and indiscriminate acts of hate. What they desperately want to avoid is anyone coming to the conclusion that Rachel Joy Scott was a Christian martyr.
But she is.
Rachel Joy Scott was killed because she was a Christian. Period.
And like all Christian martyrs, she did not die in vain. Since her death, a school outreach program based on a two-page essay she wrote just two weeks before she was murdered entitled My Ethics: My Code of Life has become the most popular school assembly program in the nation. It is based on Christian compassion and millions and millions of lives have been touched by it.
And she continues to bring glory to God to this day.
Today’s Praise
