How the Bible Inspires WHEN CALLS THE HEART’s Creator
By Movieguide® Contributor
Writer and producer Brian Bird explained why he incorporates Biblical themes into all of his stories, whether they are made for a Christian audience or not.
“Story is food. God’s story is food. It’s the cure for everything in the universe. It’s this giant love story from heaven to earth, and is the only thing that fixes anything,” Bird told Bible Gateway. “Politics won’t fix it, activism won’t fix it, protesting in the street won’t fix it; this giant love story of impossible forgiveness is the only thing that will fix anything in our culture, in our world.”
“The opposite of [God’s story] is the result of the biggest feud in history which divides hundreds and hundreds of millions of people. The inability to forgive — eye for an eye, that doesn’t get resolved in ‘you’ve heard it said, love your enemy,’” he continued. “And [the Bible] has been sitting there for us. Sitting there for the whole world. It’s been 2,000 years, and in some ways, I despair because it’s farther away than ever from us. It’s sitting there, but we don’t embrace it. It’s like we’re blind.”
Bird attributes the mass falling away from scripture to its absence in pop culture and media. While some believe the world is too far gone, and Christians should isolate themselves in their own bubble, Bird is adamant that Christians need to get faith back into the world, and he is doing that through the stories he tells.
“The media has become the entertainment and media saturation, 24/7 we’re watching on our phones. Even right now, we’re consuming the content all day long. That’s the biggest conversation in the world right now,” Bird said. “If that’s where the conversation is…we need to be in that conversation, not in our own little bubble having our own little talk, our own little echo chamber…We need to take this, the greatest story ever told, into that conversation and make sure that everybody has a chance to hear it.”
“Truth is always going to rise to the top, so don’t be afraid of the marketplace [of ideas],” he added. “Growing up in the Christian church and in the Christian context, you know, there’s a lot of believers who are afraid of the marketplace…we shouldn’t be.”
“God wasn’t,” Bird continued. “He put up with all kinds of existential doubt in the Bible, all kinds of questions and panic and existential crises that people were having. And He wasn’t afraid of the questions, so we shouldn’t be afraid of questions either. We should be open to other people’s discussions and quietly present our truth in the midst of that and if it’s going to work, it’s going to work; that’s God’s business.”
The work of Bird and others like him in the industry who have committed to infusing their stories with biblical principles has begun to have a massive payoff. Faith-based movies saw massive success in 2023 through SOUND OF FREEDOM and JESUS REVOLUTION while THE CHOSEN continued to rise in popularity and Great American Family became the fastest-growing network on television.
This success became impossible for studios to ignore, and at the beginning of 2024, Sony launched a faith-based leg to its entertainment business, while Prime Video began a partnership with Jon Erwin to deliver faith-based content. More top actors are also becoming bold in their faith, such as Alan Ritchson who sees his secular roles as opportunities to spread the Gospel.
Movieguide® previously reported:
After facing backlash for playing the titular character in REACHER, Alan Ritchson explains how he takes on non-Christian roles to spread the Gospel.
“I love playing Reacher. I love telling this story. I love playing a character who creates a kind of moral ambiguity that we should struggle against as we consider whether or not what he’s doing is good all the time or morally right,” Ritchson said in a YouTube video.
“A lot of people, supposed Christians especially, criticize me for playing Reacher as if the only TV that should exist is seeing people silently folding their hands in the pew of a church. I mean, what kinds of stories are we supposed to tell?” he continued. “If we look at scripture, what do you find? You see a thousand years of an infinitely holy God holding tension with human beings as He tells the story of who He is.”
“[God] reveals who He is through an imperfect people, so we get stories of paganism and war and bloodshed and ghost stories, mysticism,” he explained. “We see miracles and magic; we see life and resurrection and death; and we see this incredible canvas where God is completely unafraid to tell the story of who He is through less than morally ambiguous characters: through pure evil sometimes.”
“I think it’s laughable when people criticize me for playing characters that are not saintly, you know. That’s not my job, and I don’t think God cares about only telling those kinds of stories,” Ritchson added.
