Considering Fury

Fury, the newest war movie to hit the theaters, is an excellent film in many ways reminiscent of Spielberg’s classic Saving Private Ryan. There are many points of contact between the movie, and some major points of departure as well.

The time frame for Fury is a few months before VE Day. The U.S. forces have pushed into Germany and Germany has resorted to extreme methods like drafting women and children into the battle. This affects the plot, but does not drive the plot like D-Day does SPR. The plot of SPR has to do with saving the last remaining son of a widow in the aftermath of D-Day. Here we see a few instances of the cruelty and desperation of the SS, and the response of the main characters to the SS. In one scene, an SS officer is not allowed to surrender with the rest of the German “troops” (including teenaged girls).

Points of Contact:

Both movies focus on one unit. In SPR is is a Ranger unit sent to find Private Ryan. Here it is a tank crew. They don’t receive their mission until at least the mid-point of the movie.

Both units have a highly competent yet mysterious leader: Capt. Miller and Sgt. “Wardaddy” Collier (Brad Pitt in his best movie in years). Yes, every crew member has a nickname. In SPR they keep guessing what his vocation in pre-war life was. Here there is no such game but they all wonder why he knows German. Late in the movie the mystery deepens when they discover his familiarity with Scripture.

While both leaders are highly effective, they are also secretly damaged. Miller’s hand would increasingly shake during downtime. In a rare moment of self-disclosure he admits “every time I kill someone I feel farther from home.” In the opening sequence, Fury is the only tank to have survived a battle in which they lost the assistant driver. Back in the camp, Collier finds an isolated spot for a “moment”. He hates the war and what it does to him but there is no escape.

Enter the newbie. In both cases it is a man who was not prepared for combat. In SPR he is Corporal Upham, a translator since they will be going behind the current lines to retrieve Ryan who was a paratrooper. Here it is a typist named Norman. He is not prepared for life in a tank or for combat. Much of the movie is about his struggle with the realities of war with which the other crew members are all too familiar. In his first two encounters there is failure that costs the lives of others. His sense of right and wrong have him ill-equipped for combat. But, as “Bible” Swan guesses, Norman is a “Mainliner” or liberal, nominal Christian.

In both movies the action scenes strive for authenticity. This means they are intense and graphic. They accurately convey the horror of war, and deepen your appreciation for the men who endured these circumstances.

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Considering Implications and Applications of the Explicit Gospel

The final section of The Explicit Gospel has to do with implications and applications. The majority of the section has to do with what happens if you stay on the ground or in the air too long.

“The explicit gospel holds the gospel on the ground and the gospel in the air as complementary, two views of the same redemptive plan God has for the world in the work of his Son.”

Think of it as a cross country trip. If you drive it you easily get lost in the details. Especially in west Texas. Monotony can set in. The hours grind by and you lose sight of the big picture- why you are going there. You just want to get there.

If you fly, let’s say a small private plan like my friend Steve, you can’t stay in the air too long or you’ll run out of fuel. You see the big picture, but you miss out on the details. You see the expanse of canyons and mountains. But you miss the nuances of those same places.

Not the best illustration, but hopefully it helps. Unfortunately it does break down because the two modes of transportation are not as obviously complementary. They are often mutually exclusive. Too often people treat the gospel on the ground and the air as mutually exclusive instead of complementary. These are the dangers that Chandler wants to make explicit.

He begins with a discussion of slippery slopes. Most theological errors are the result of over-emphasizing something that is true at the expense of something else that is true. In trying to protect one thing, we go too far and deny something else. His goal is to encourage us to avoid this by holding both together.

“So it is not usually in the affirmation of a truth that someone goes down the slippery slope, but in the denial of corresponding truths.”

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