Chuck Colson on the new movie The Help:
“Sometimes we Christians don’t see the sin right in front of our faces; our culture, upbringing, or personal attitudes seem to block it. And that’s where the arts can help us — whether the sin is deep in the past, or very much in the present.
Last week a film opened that beautifully illustrates my point. It’s called The Help, and it’s based on the bestselling novel by Kathryn Stockett. The story is set in the early 1960s, in Jackson, Mississippi, when the fight for civil rights was gaining international attention. The film tells the story of a young, socially prominent white girl named Skeeter who’s just graduated from college. Skeeter wants to be a writer, and comes up with a dangerous idea: To secretly interview the black maids who raise the white children of Jackson, Mississippi, and find out how they really feel about their employers.
Their answers are a revelation. Skeeter’s eyes are opened to the irony of white employers who depend on their maids to raise their children — and yet won’t allow them to use the same bathrooms. If a piece of silver goes missing, a maid can be blamed, based on no evidence whatsoever, and arrested. When a maid named Yule May asks her employer for a loan to help her sons attend college, she’s….(more)“
