God’s Children Aren’t for Sale

𝑆𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝐹𝑟𝑒𝑒𝑑𝑜𝑚 turns an unblinking and unfiltered camera into the abyss of the unregenerate human heart where even God’s common grace seems to grow faint.

Jul 22, 2023

Dear friends and supporters:

Sound of Freedom (hereafter SoF) is 2023’s surprise summer blockbuster. As I write these lines, its box office receipts exceed $100 million — not half bad for a “faith-based” movie from “faith-based” Utah distributor Angel Studios, whose two founders are Mormons, though the movie exhibits no LDS distinctives. It is clearly, though generically, Christian.

This is a Christian indie film, but don’t be put off by visions of third-rate Christian cinema past. Actually, the quality of movies produced by independent, conservative and/or Christian or Christian-influenced studios has improved dramatically over the last 15 years. In production quality, acting, musical score, plot, and photography, they’re often every bit the equal of many Hollywood blockbusters. Christian/conservative movies have “arrived.” Now if we can just get more people into theater seats to watch them. SoF’s smashing box-office success has contributed to that vital objective.

Plot

SoF, based loosely on actual events, stars Jim Caviezel, who memorably played Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson’s blockbuster The Passion of the Christ. In SoF, Caviezel more modestly depicts Tim Ballard, heroic federal agent in the sex crimes division who first rescues an eight-year-old Hispanic boy from the clutches of depraved sex-trafficking pedophiles at the Mexican border, only to discover that his slightly older sister has also been enslaved. When Homeland Security won’t sanction his relentless interest in this family’s horror-inducing case, he quits his job to look full-time for the sister in central America, and in the process works with local law enforcement to break up a large pedophile ring.

When asked by a potential ally in his rescue operation why he’s taking on this daunting, near-impossible task, Ballard replies, “Because God’s children aren’t for sale”; and when his co-rescuers counsel him to quit, he quips, “What if it was your daughter?” (Enough spoilers.)

Evaluation

Despite the debauched sexual theme, there’s no sex or nudity, nor gratuitous violence, and only limited profanity. One reason for the restraint is Caviezel as a Christian is committed not to do explicit sex scenes, or participate in gratuitous cinematic violence. But these omissions in no way mitigate the power of the movie. In fact, they enhance it. The depraved acts are left to the imagination, and imagination is always more vivid than reality.

SoF is surprisingly, sometimes excruciatingly, snail-paced for an action movie. In fact, it might be more accurate to label this a straightforward drama that includes several action scenes. The pacing also contributes to its mesmerizing weightiness. It wouldn’t be quite correct to describe the palpable suspense as riveting. Rather, it’s downright horrifying. The viewer isn’t attentive because he wants to see what will happen next; he’s glued because he doesn’t want to see what happens next — but feels he must.

Controversy

In our hyper-politicized climate, the movie has been identified by mainstream “progressivism” as an ultra-right wing propaganda flick. This might sound counterintuitive, because publicizing sex trafficking has been largely the self-appointed task of Leftists, committed as they are to ideological feminism (most sex trafficking is in women). The main bone of contention is Jim Caviezel’s and Tim Ballard’s public flirtation with the bizarre right-wing QAnon conspiracy theory. It’s an entirely unsubstantiated and silly notion often linked to Donald Trump’s administration and personality cult. Caviezel has allegedly suggested “that a shadowy international cabal is kidnapping children to consume their organs.” But nothing remotely resembling this outlandish idea or anything else QAnon appears explicitly or implicitly in the movie. SoF must stand or fall on its own merits. It stands. Towers, in fact.

The Left is nonetheless lathered. The review in Rolling Stone, perennial flagship of the cultural illuminati, is nothing short of scalding venom, oozing with condescension (Title: “‘Sound Of Freedom’ Is a Superhero Movie for Dads With Brainworms”), indignation (“It’s a stomach-turning experience, fetishizing the torture of its child victims and lingering over lush preludes to their sexual abuse”), and ageism (“the mostly white-haired audience around me could be relied on to gasp, moan in pity, mutter condemnations, applaud, and bellow ‘Amen!’ at moments of righteous fury”). But the most intriguing lines of the Stone review are these:

There is visible suffering all around us in America. There are poor and unhoused, and people brutalized or killed by police. There are mass shootings, lack of healthcare, climate disasters. And yet, over and over, the far right turns to these sordid fantasies about godless monsters hurting children.

Apparently poverty, homelessness, police brutality, mass shootings, healthcare deficits, and climate change trump practices of child sex trafficking, which must take back seat (as “sordid fantasies”) to the Real Problems as the Left perceives them.

I suggest a seamier motive is at play. The latest stage in the merciless march of the Sexual Revolution is the normalization of pedophilia. And since the Sexual Revolution is the province of the modern Left (with increasing gains on the Right), we might suspect part of Leftist fury at SoF is its implicit exposure of and intolerance toward their latest crusade. To the new sexual vanguard, sex with kids can be healthy, just as long as you don’t buy them. (For a more balanced mainstream review see Vanity Fair.)

Conclusion

SoF is a strange movie. Why? Because we have almost no thematic precedents for it in movie history. There are dozens of movies and documentaries about sex trafficking, but precious few about global child sex trafficking. It’s such a debauched act that it’s understandably a taboo subject, but since it’s a burgeoning international crime industry (fueled, of course, by almost instantaneously available child porn), it’s entirely fit for blazing, illuminated exposure — as agonizing as the viewing experience is.

Contrary to the Rolling Stone’s trivialization, child sex trafficking is not a sordid fantasy of right-wing boomers. A global report on human trafficking by the United Nations, hardly a haven for right-wing QAnon conspirators, states:

Worldwide, almost 20% of all trafficking victims are children. However, in some parts of Africa and the Mekong region, children are the majority (up to 100% in parts of West Africa).

SoF turns an unblinking and unfiltered camera into the abyss of the unregenerate human heart where even God’s common grace seems to grow faint. To squeamish Leftists (and others) who moralize against such cinematic depictions, we might say what courageous pro-lifers have said for decades about the filming of live aborticide: “If we’re disturbed by seeing such actions, maybe we shouldn’t be allowing them.”

Yet SoF concludes not with despair but hope. Caviezel (as himself, not Ballard) offers an impassioned postlude as the credits roll. He encourages the audience that the darkness of child sex trafficking can be combated by dragging it into blazing public exposure. To that end he urges theatergoers to “pay it forward” by purchasing seats to the movie so others can see the light dispelling the darkness. Exposure is the cure.

While creditable, there’s a more biblical remedy — the relentless advance of the kingdom of God by the gospel of Jesus Christ under the power of the Holy Spirit destined to eviscerate child sex trafficking and all other depravities.

The gospel is the eternal Good News. And the Good News is that the bad news is not the last news.

Will you consider a tax-deductible donation to CCL via PayPal or Venmo? Or mail a check to CCL, Box 100, Coulterville, CA 95311. God uses you to keep us going — and expanding.

Personal

I’ll be speaking three times next Saturday, July 29, at the Christian Worldview Conference in Charlotte. Here are the details.

Charlotte Marriott South Park

2200 Rexford Rd.

Charlotte, North Carolina

9:30 – Welcome and Opening Remarks

10:00 – “Classical and Cultural Marxism” – Sandlin

11:00 – “The Biblical Case for Christian Victory” – Sandlin

12:00 - 1:00 – Lunch

1:00 – “What Is All of This About Equity?” – Larry Ball

2:00 – “God’s Will for Your Life – You Can’t Improve on Creation” – Sandlin

3:00 – Q & A

For more information contact Rev. Larry Ball: larryeball1947[at]gmail[dot]com.

Please share this review, and pray for and support CCL if you can.

Yours for the King,

Founder & President, Center for Cultural Leadership

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