With its initial project, The Good Confession, Confessio Films commends Jesus in order to both attach and attract people to him. It is our raison d’être.
The producers behind Confessio Films and the interviewees featured in the Good Confession series are learners and apprentices of Jesus: We pledge allegiance to him and his kingdom. With his help, we are trying to develop his character and put into practice all of his commands and teachings. Jesus is our Master and Teacher. We are his apprentices.
Capturing stories is what we do — stories of who we were and had done without Christ, and what has happened to us with him. To extol God is why we do what we do: “Whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Col 3:17).
Our message, briefly stated, is the simple and earliest Christian affirmation: “Jesus is Lord.” The “good confession” was Jesus’ own self-admission that he is indeed divine lord and king (Jn 18:36, 37). The virtue of his life and, especially, victory over death in resurrection was his eternal vindication. The “good confession” was believed by the first Christians and reminded them to pursue and persevere in the ‘God-life’ (Rom 10:9, 10; 2 Ti 6:11-16).
The stories are inspired by, and based on, the knowledge and belief that every person was created for an unceasing, unique destiny under his earthly and cosmic beneficence. That existence is the great knowledge, truth, and expectation that he himself has given to every generation of his followers — and, through them, to message to the world. Supernatural participation with him is possible here and now as a foretaste of his greatness and his goodness in us throughout eternity. It is a glimpse of his cosmic grandeur.
That message is the sine qua non to the world in a morass of messaging. Messaging is everywhere. We are inundated with it.
We message text to each other’s cell phones, use any number of “Instant Message” applications such as Snapchat and WhatsApp, or communicate through social media platforms including Facebook “Messenger” or via “Direct Message” on Twitter. Messaging is common vocabulary.
Road signs are simple messages that we ignore at potential peril. Tattoos are certainly also ‘messages,’ at least to the bearer if not also to viewers. With logos, slogans, and sales pitches, businesses advertise their goods and services.
As the conveyance of information, messaging is, in fact, indispensable to human life: We depend on it and need it. Everyone, in fact, has been informed by a certain education or ‘message.’ From our earliest stages, we are schooled by the formative institution of family and perhaps also church that both inculcate their mores and values which include our duty to God. Information is necessary to physical health; indeed, if we resist or are ignorant of what constitutes proper nutrition and adequate exercise, we will eventually suffer adverse consequences. The education system was created to instruct us in knowledge, acquaint us in its acquisition, and train us in its applications. We also, by imperceptible degrees, throughout our daily interactions and observations, imbibe messaging from icons of news media, entertainment, sports, and other purveyors. The life that one lives is simply a process of the kind of lifelong messaging that he or she has received and has come to accept or assumed to be true, or will allow oneself to consider.
The retort of Jesus to the devil that “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mt 4:4) was not a mere religious platitude. It is, instead, a perceptive understanding about human life, and a prescription for our well-being. Jesus realized that Homo sapiens needs messaging to live above an only physically-functional level. We need education, knowledge, and truth — the conveyance of words — to form us into stable, productive, healthy individual adults and, corporately, into civilizations. It begins in the cradle and continues toward our coffins.
More significantly, Jesus emphasized that Homo sapiens was created to heed God’s message in order to fully thrive as he intended. Jesus surely recalled that God gave the primeval human pair an essential command — a word — to ensure the fulfillment of their God-given enterprise and interaction with God himself (Gn. 2:4). “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die,” God told the man (Gn. 2:17). Sometime later, the man must have delivered God’s message to his wife, for the woman herself more or less repeated it (Gn. 3:3). Available to them, however, to which God did grant access to eat, was the tree of unending life (Gn 2:9, 16; 3:22) The tempter, in presenting a deceptive message, led the progenitors of the human race into error (Gn 3:1-6), and, as a consequence, likewise their descendants to greater or lesser degrees. From God and each other, human nature is characterized by dearth, distance, and death.
There is a life-giving message that leads to him and in him — as God intends — and there is a message that leads away from him in a living death. We are ‘branded,’ and each one of us has a unique ‘brand’ or stamp. It is inescapable and inevitable. We have all been formed, for good or ill, by various messages, the most consequential being those about God.
When Jesus arrived on the scene of human history, he came with a message of great anticipation: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.” The reign and realm of God (his power and presence) was acting in, through, and around wherever Jesus was and whatever he was doing (Mt 4:18). Not only so, but Jesus was the kind of person who had internalized the message (word) of God. At the outset of Jesus’ public ministry, the tempter tried to deceive him, but Jesus instinctively, as it were, relied on Scripture (which he had obviously learned, memorized, and contemplated, and had readied himself to apply).
At another time, Jesus said that the Scriptures testified about himself and rebuked his detractors for not seeking him for eternal life (Jn 5:39, 40). Peter later told Jesus: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We believe and know you are the Holy One of God” (Jn 6:68, 69).
To fellow Christians, Confessio Films aims to encourage each other to remain steadfast in allegiance and attachment to Jesus. We must not neglect or abandon him. The Good Confession series presents the life stories of Christians from various backgrounds who discovered and adhered to Christ, sometimes in great difficulties and discouragements, or even after serious doubts.
To those who are not yet persuaded to become an apprentice of Jesus, we strive to attract them to him. If you are one of them, we pray you will join us. Listen and watch our stories. Each one has a message that points to Christ and the kingdom of God. This supernatural life is ours for the seeking it and continuing in it.
Give Jesus a hearing and heed him. The merit of his life, the wisdom of his words, and his power to transform people demand attention.
As Jesus was wont to say, “if anyone has ears to hear, let him hear,” and perhaps he would add “if anyone has eyes to see, let her see.”