The Christmas Candle (2013) is a regrettably lame Christian movie in which thirty afflicted people, most of them born-again, in an English village receive exactly the miraculous gifts they were longing for, and then the movie ends. A man on his deathbed is thoroughly healed, a mute boy gets his voice back, a chap hopelessly in debt receives a job, a spinster who has long wanted a husband is provided with one, etc.—all at the same time. I, too, believe in God-given miracles but this is profoundly silly. Why does such a picture, an adaptation of a Max Lucado novel, get made? (There are other Christian films similar to it.) What is the thinking behind it?
It’s evangelical thinking, to be sure, and it may well be that today’s evangelicals believe that what occurs in this movie is indeed the reality that surrounds us. Never mind that constant miracles, or the greatest miracles (other than salvation), do not take place in their own lives. God is a miracle-working God, and this is what He does. But only up to a point is the truth being told, and yet this is how these people try to persuade the heathen that the Gospel is sound and right. It’s folly, especially since, in point of fact, it is God Himself Who does the persuading. Read your Bible carefully.
Such actors as Hans Matheson and Lesley Manville turn out fine performances in The Christmas Candle, but this is not how theological meaning should be conveyed.