Homeschool News & Views

Issue 90, October 12, 2008

From Homeschool Helpers

In association with Pass It On Ministries

By Dan L. White

Listen to this article.

This was a week of bad news economically. The credit crunch is now worldwide. Iceland is basically bankrupt, causing a run on its currency and fractious relations with England. Other countries thought to be on the brink are Hungary, Argentina, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. The markets are pricing in an 80% probability that Ukraine will default on its loans. When one goes, that affects a number of others.

The Telegraph of London says:

“For millions who have been toiling on the "hedonic treadmill" – a need for ever higher income merely to sustain wellbeing at a constant level – there will be the challenge of coming to terms with a sharp decline in living standards.

[One accounting firm said,] “Faced with the current crisis, it is impossible to predict the level of personal bankruptcies and home repossessions next year.”

In America, 16 per cent of homes are "under water", leaving about 12 million households owing more than the value of their properties.

…[A]s negative equity rises, so do the rates of mortgage arrears, defaults and repossessions. As bricks and mortar are dumped on the market, house prices fall further.

If all this seems gloomy, that's because it is… Trust in paper assets has been dissipated to the point that the cost of insuring a default on US Treasury bonds, ie, Uncle Sam going bust, has risen fourfold since the start of 2008. The unthinkable is being thought.”

It seems that the people I talk to don’t really believe the worst about this, in spite of the fact that the worst keeps happening. They assume they’re going to keep working at their jobs and everyday life will go on as normal. If this unprecedented collapse does not cause a worldwide depression, that will be a miracle.

One sign that people are spending less is that the sales of mackerel have gone up. Mackerel costs about half of other fish like tuna, salmon and cod, is oilier, and tastes a lot more fishy.

Speaking of stinky fish –

McDonald’s said they are going to quit preaching gay marriage.

You see, in all this bad news, there were a couple of areas of good news, too.

American Family Association is ending its boycott of McDonald’s.

I’m not saying that it’s good news that I can go to McDonald’s again. Their taste has definitely soured in my mouth. But it is good news that McDonald’s has agreed to stop promoting homosexuality and go back to selling hamburgers. Actually, I thought they were a hamburger chain, anyway.

The AFA web site says:

“The American Family Association (AFA) is ending its boycott of McDonald's.

Mississippi-based AFA called for the boycott in May after the fast food giant joined the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. McDonald's has notified the pro-homosexual organization that McDonald's vice president Richard Ellis resigned from the board of directors of NGLCC and his seat on the board will not be replaced.

In a press release on Thursday morning, AFA reports that in an email from McDonald's to its franchise owners the company stated its policy is "to not be involved in political and social issues."

Randy Sharp is director of special projects with AFA. He says McDonald's has pledged to remain neutral in the culture war surrounding homosexual marriage.

"The franchise owners understood very early that this was an issue that McDonald's did not need to be involved in from a corporate level, and [that] they needed to stick with serving good food products in a convenient way, at a good price."

McDonald's officials also said the company has no plans to renew its membership in the NGLCC when it expires in December.”

That was fast. The boycott had only been in place for five months. I noticed that as soon as the boycott began, McDonald’s sales and earnings went up, not down. Up until very recently, when most other stocks were going down, MCD was going up. Its same store sales had good increases, not only in the US but particularly in other countries where McDonald’s has not saturated the market. The CEO of McDonald’s was so adamant about homosexual evangelization, combined with their good sales results, that I thought they would ignore the boycott for a long time. When the financial crisis really hit, though, I guess they decided they needed all the help they can get, so they have agreed not to be a homosexual promotion organization.

AFA is not demanding that they promote Christianity, only that they don’t actively oppose Christianity. Mickey D has now agreed to that, at least outwardly. But we do know where their heart is, don’t we?

More good news –

The movie Fireproof, which we discussed last week, has been a big success commercially.

I think that’s good news because most of the movies that are produced are rated R, for repulsive, repugnant and ‘retched. Almost no movies have a Christian theme at all. Fireproof does, and a lot of people have gone to see it, so I find that encouraging.

It was produced by folks from a Georgia church, who got tired of the sick media and set out to do something about it besides criticize. Their first movie Flywheel cost $20,000 to make, just a widow’s mite in movie expenses, which they gathered by donations. That movie was somewhat successful, so they produced a second movie, Facing the Giants, for $100,000. That was even more successful. Their next movie Fireproof cost them $500,000 to make, as they keep trying to up the quality of the videography. Now that movie has quickly earned 13.6 million dollars, 27 times what it cost to produce.

That shows us the depth of the dedication of the normal Hollywood perversity producers. The success of the movies Flywheel, Facing the Giants and Fireproof is partly because there is almost nothing of that type. If you want to watch Christian movies, there’s basically nothing to choose from. Yet there are a lot of people who like to watch such movies, if they are at least moderately interesting. Those three movies that the Georgia folks have made are not Academy Award winners at all, not that the academy would deign to even discuss something Christian today. These three movies are good enough, so they have been very popular.

If these amateurs can produce Christian movies which make tons of money, why don’t the Hollywood talented professionals do that? Steven Spielberg did produce a cartoon, The Prince of Egypt about Moses, and that was successful. But mostly they keep cranking out the R rated stuff. Are they in business to make money or to promote their religious beliefs?

Well, they’re like McDonald’s. Their liberal religious beliefs come before profits.

McDonald’s decided last May that their prime mission was not to sell hamburgers but to preach homosexuality. If AFA hadn’t protested, they would still be doing that, and may still be doing it, anyway. It is obvious that there is a good market for good moral movies, and money can be made by doing that, but the moviemakers – on principle – refuse to make movies like that. They’re stuck with smut. They have made so much smut that almost everyone has gotten used to it. Anything beyond a PG rating contains a certain amount of filth, yet there are very few people who will not watch a movie that is rated worse than PG.

So it is good news when a moral movie is made and a lot of people pay to go see it.

In a scene towards the end of Fireproof, when lead actor Kirk Cameron's character kisses his wife, the kiss was shot in shadow. You can’t really see the two people, only their silhouettes. The lead actress was replaced there by Cameron's real-life wife. This was done because Cameron does not believe that as a Christian he should kiss any woman other than his wife.

That’s wonderful wisdom there. Can you imagine what ridicule that must create in normal Hollywood circles? Cameron was in the Left Behind movie, and after that, no one else had him in a movie. Now, after about seven years, he can be in a successful movie and still be a Christian.

What will the Georgia folks do now with the 13 ½ million dollars that they have from the success of their movies?

As I said, the cost of their movies went from $20,000 to $100,000 to $500,000. 13 million dollars seems like a lot of money to me. I’ve never actually had that much myself. Will they use all that money to up the production quality still further? A recent movie, Atonement, cost about $25 million to produce and took in about 5 times that amount, so they could spend all $13 million just making one movie. Or will they keep the production cost for their next movie relatively low, and use the rest of the money to sponsor other projects – perhaps sponsor somebody else making a Christian movie? That way they might multiply the effect of what they are doing.

There is one other thing in this phenomenal story. In Fireproof, the lead character is about to divorce. His father gives him a book, The Love Dare, and tells him to follow its 40 day challenge, to save his marriage.

There was no such book. It was just made up, to fit in the story of the movie. During production of the movie, people kept asking about that book. So the Kendrick brothers, who produced these movies, then wrote that book. Now the book The Love Dare is an Amazon best seller, at number 8 on their list.

Christian home school graduates tend to be good entrepreneurs. I hope that many of them will get involved in projects like this, not just to make a buck, but to make things better. The recent economic collapse shows that the value of making a buck has its limits. Working to do all you can for Christ is a job without limits.