There were also plenty of blessings. Teaching middle-school physical education, freshmen Bible, sophomore world literature, and junior and senior English allowed me to follow certain students through three years of schooling. Familiarity translated into relationship and, in some cases, friendships that have lasted to this day. I ate lunch with my students, produced talent shows with them, taught piano lessons to a few, and traded Star Wars cards with a few sci-fi geeks like myself.

And I prayed with them. At the beginning of every class period, one of my students would cover the coming hour of instruction and discussion with spoken supplication and thanksgiving. (You’ve no what a difference this can make until you’ve taught in classrooms with and without this kind of prayer support.) And when students approached me after school or during the lunch hour to talk about personal stuff, it was understood that the Lord would be invited into our tête-à-tête.

And it made a real difference. Sure, there were a number of non-Christians who graduated with little apparent change in their attitude towards the Bible, and we even had—like the school in Brian Dannelly’s Saved! (2004)—a few proud rebels and (far more disturbing) a handful of hypocrites who practiced little of what they rehearsed in the classroom or sang in worship. There were also, however, a good number whose faith really came alive at Great Hills Christian School. I’ve some invaluable letters sent me by former students that talk about life-changing, spiritual growth—a product, in part, of Christian teachers compassionate enough about their students to be concerned with their spiritual health as much as their academic performance.

Unfortunately, nothing of the sort appears in Saved!--no diamonds emerge from the rough. The closest thing we find to real belief is in the headmaster’s son, who delivers a single, vague line about God giving us all free will. Yes, the movie says some familiar, important things about the importance of acceptance, diversity, and honesty, but these thematic threads do little to separate this teen movie from any other. No one speaks truth about the love of God, the example of Jesus, or the working of the Holy Spirit. Do I think it useful for Christians to be confronted with their hypocrisy and failings? Yes. Do I think parody an appropriate means of commentary? Sure. What troubles me is this kind of single-minded polemic that purports to be about the church and yet admits absolutely nothing about the power of the Cross, that highlights no success stories to complement its tragic-comic portraits of failure.

This movie conveys only a half-truth, and a pallid half-truth at that.