I wasn’t going to discuss War Room, but after its unexpected popularity and actually seeing it, I felt the need to say something. We all know that films are fiction, but I think it bears repeating: War Room is fiction.
On the surface, War Room seems to have a good message for Christians and those who practice similar religions: pray and have faith, and anything is possible. Indeed, there is nothing wrong with the message itself, but in this case, it can dangerous.
The whole premise of War Room is there’s this marriage that’s on the brink of dissolution. All the couple does is fight. They ignore their daughter. But that is all taken care of when a mystical old lady comes in and fixes their marriage with the power of prayer.
There are a couple of things wrong with this. Instead of working on her marriage, the main character takes a passive role and leaves it up to prayer, neglecting to work on herself or holding her husband responsible.
Speaking of her husband, there was a good chance that this relationship was going to turn into an abusive one, if it hadn’t already. There seemed to be some emotional abuse already, with even the daughter feeling the effects. So, logically the couple should’ve gotten a divorce. You would never advise someone to stay in such a negative environment.
I would be willing to overlook all of this if everyone saw this as just a film. But I personally saw that this was not the case. I was in a packed theater where most of the people acted like they were in church, and applauded how everything turned out.
Again, I must stress that War Room is just a film. Sure, if you’re of a particular faith, you’re supposed to believe that anything can happen. But just because something can happen, doesn’t mean it will. This is not an attack on anyone’s faith, but if you find yourself in this type of situation, you should not resign yourself to it and let it out of your hands. Happy endings in films don’t correlate to happy endings in real life.
