By Jim Nichols

When I was a boy and a movie or television story was obviously frightening me, my mother would consistently say, “Remember, it is just a movie or tv show.” That helped move me from such a deep involvement in the scary situation to a more objective one. 

We have all learned that what we see on the screen is not real life; it is fictional to at least some extent. Saying that, however, does not omit the fact that we learn important truths from the screen on occasion; we ought not to dismiss that entirely.

“It is just a movie” fits the 1995 production The American President. Starring Michael Douglas and Annette Bening, this political romantic comedy-drama follows a widowed United States president running for re-election. He and a lobbyist fall in love and the movie revolves around those complications. It is just a movie.

Viewing it today thirty years from the movie’s origin, it is stunning that the three political topics central to the story are directly from today’s news. Those three are arguments about assault weapons, climate change, and the character of the president. In ways it is odd, comforting, and even disturbing to see the same three topics then and now. 

Language is fluid. I have begrudgingly accepted that words change their meaning over time. Language “dates” you a bit. My teenage granddaughter received a text recently that, though written in English, was undecipherable to a non-teenager. Within a year, that language will probably have changed again. 

Occasionally, there is more significance to word usage changes. I used to know what the word “evangelical” meant. It was a positive word reflecting Christ’s clear teaching of spreading the Good News to as many others as possible. Numerous sermons were based on that word and, I suspect, you heard many of them also.

To many Americans today, the word “evangelical” no longer has that connotation. I sense that, largely, “evangelical” is translated “Trump supporter.” You may argue against that but listen to the way people speak and act. If you and I both believe that the word concerns the Great Commission, why do we flinch when we try to describe ourselves as “evangelistic?” The word has been highjacked. We should consider this seriously disturbing—a wonderful and important word now usable only in a narrow fashion. Russell Moore, editor in chief of the quite conservative journal Christianity Today, notes that “. . . almost no evangelical under the age of forty wants to use the word ‘evangelical’ at all.”

To smooth my class responsibilities in my senior year of high school, I opted to take an American history class in the preceding summer. This was going to be fine, especially since the teacher was one of my favorite track coaches. To my dismay, the class over-enrolled and was split with me assigned to another teacher brought in just for the summer. I was unhappy, but it ended up being one of my favorite classes with one of my best teachers.

She was terrific. During the school year she was a law student, and she was teaching my high school class in the summer for a bit of income. She especially liked the American Presidency and organized the class around the sequence of those leaders.

She was the kind of teacher who would get on a roll; her voice would get louder and her speech faster. You had a few like that, right? Her speech pattern was to ask rhetorical questions about the presidency. “You think the White House is fancy? Don’t you want your president to have a nice house? Don’t you want your president to have nice clothes? Don’t you want your president to smile often and seem kind and understanding? Don’t you want your president to be polite?”

It would be interesting to hear her now. “Don’t you want your president to respect women? Don’t you want your president to avoid bragging and calling people names? Don’t you want your president to tell the truth? Don’t you want your president to obey laws? Don’t you want your president to have high integrity?”

It was just a movie, but the climax scene is the press conference in which Michael Douglas says, “Being president of this country is entirely about character.”

Yes, we can occasionally see truth in a movie.

Jim Nichols is a retired Abilene Christian University biology professor and current hospital chaplain