Friday, September 23, 2005

Colson on Rome

Chuck Colson writes about the new HBO mini-series, Rome. Here are his opening and closing paragraphs:

You’ve probably heard about the new HBO series Rome. Costing more than $100 million, it’s the most expensive television production ever. Whether the producers succeeded at re-creating ancient Rome for the viewers or not, they have succeeded in doing something else: making the case for Christianity.

... By depicting what Rome before Christianity was really like, Rome, the TV series, makes a powerful, albeit unintentional, case for faith in what the film calls the “prosaic God” who tells us “how to behave.” Now, I don’t recommend you watch Rome—it is violent and pornographic. But you ought to know about it, because when you hear people denounce Christianity as the chief source of oppression, tell them that HBO has spent $100 million to prove that’s not the case.