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Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”
Job 1:8
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Cris “gone bush” near Alice Springs, Australia, December 1980
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What on earth was I doing reading the Book of Job? I was 28 years old and had gone Down Under to write a screenplay based on a true story in the book Fair Dinkum by Douglas Lockwood. The story’s main character was a Ukrainian immigrant named Feodor Cartchenko, a kind of enlightened “holy man,” who made newspaper headlines in Australia in the 1950s when he wandered off a train into the forbidding Simpson Desert.
Turned out that a vindictive policeman had forced Feodor onto the train, falsely labelling him a vagrant and menace to society. In reality, Feodor was a harmless sort, a friend of children and simple folk, who carried a message of peace for everyone he met. When he survived his desert ordeal in spite of the odds, miraculously living off the barren land, he was taken back to Alice Springs and held under arrest as a suspected “mental defective.”
Where did the truth lie? Was Feodor insane? Or was he too good for this world? I found myself on a mission to bring his story to life.
And the Book of Job? Where did that figure in? You might say it became part of my homework. I discovered, you see, in the process of research, that Feodor had been more than some vaguely mystical character. I learned he had been a devout Christian. So, I went to a Christian Science reading room and bought a Bible to read!
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Uluru / Ayers Rock, some 275 miles from Alice Springs
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I was no Christian. If anything, I subscribed to the philosophy of Taoism. But knowing that Feodor had sung Psalms of David in public, my intention was straightforward enough—I thought I’d neatly lift some verses from the Psalms and “create” song lyrics for the script! And so, I did.
Something about the Holy Bible, though. It might sit unopened on your bookshelf for decades, but open it up, and anything could happen! For several years previously, I had been reading the holy books of other religions… why not do the same with the Bible?
After perusing the Psalms for the reasons aforementioned, I began reading Ecclesiastes. I could relate to the Preacher who said, “All is vanity and a chasing after the wind.” That neatly summed up my existentialist view of life. After reading Ecclesiastes, I poked around in Proverbs (I’ve always liked pithy sayings), followed by the Sermon on the Mount, which frankly took my breath away and had me convinced that there was something profoundly beautiful about this Jesus.
And then, the Book of Job. Perhaps the heat was getting to me. It was December in Australia—summertime.
I’m not sure how much of it I understood (King James English and all), but one thing quickly became abundantly clear: Job suffered unimaginable loss. And when I finished reading the book that bears his name, I could almost hear a still, small voice whispering to me, “As Job suffered, you too will suffer.”
A curious thought at the time, maybe a little scary even, but it was back to work on the screenplay.
By 1980, the real-life Feodor had long disappeared from the scene. Nonetheless, I was able to interview a number of people in Alice Springs who had known him personally. And the more I learned about him, the more intriguing he became. I even began talking to pastors and the Catholic priest in town, asking them questions that related to Feodor’s Christian faith. More often than not, they were questions prompted from my own reading of the Bible.
I remember meeting an Aboriginal woman, just a little older than I was, who remembered Feodor as a small girl. “He came to our church sometimes,” she told me. “I remember him standing with us kids. We would hold hands and Feodor would tell us we were all God’s children.” And then she added a striking detail. “He was dressed all in white.” Really? Knowing how people dressed in Alice Springs in those days, especially working-class men, I rather doubted it. But how could I be sure?
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Sydney Opera House, February 1981
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Eventually, I finished my first draft of the script, giving it the title It’s a Beautiful Day. I met with people at the recently formed New South Wales Film Corporation in Sydney and pitched them on the project for government funding. For a while, it seemed there was some positive traction; an Australian producer got excited about the project and promised his involvement. In the end, however, the film didn’t get off the ground. I licked my wounds and made my way back to the States. Several months later, I would learn that the script was deemed “too religious” for state funding. I was incensed. How could it be “too religious”? I wasn’t even a Christian! Well, at least not yet. That fateful step was another six months away.
Rejection is never easy, but I can say it happened for the best in this case. After all, it was in doing the research on Feodor that I found my way to faith in Christ. Perhaps that’s the film that has been waiting to be made all this time—a story within a story… Feodor and Cris, and their intersecting lives. I’ve had a long time to think about it all.
I’ve also had a long time to think about the small voice that “spoke” to my heart in Alice Springs… that said to me, “One day, you will experience the sufferings of Job.” Those sufferings came. Not right away mind you, but in time I went from being a young man convinced of making a considerable difference in the world to finding himself alone on the ash heap, his family ravaged by severe dysfunction and mental illness, and him left to scrape the sores from his body with broken shards of pottery.
One night during those heart-rending, difficult years, I had a dream. I saw a man standing in a pool of light. Around him was utter darkness. I walked up to him and studied his face closely. He exuded evil, it seemed, from every pore of his body, but in a curiously unemotional way. Somehow, I knew that he had been practicing witchcraft and pronouncing curses on me and my family. I found myself praying loudly in tongues. Then I spoke in English. “Why have you tried to destroy me and my family?!” He gave no answer, just continued to stare at me coldly. Then I said these words, “Whoever you are, I forgive you.”
I awoke and realized it had been a dream. It had all felt so real. I knelt by my bed and prayed. And the years of suffering continued.
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Martin Luther at Wittenberg
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Make no mistake, my friends. We have an enemy of our souls. The Protestant reformer, Martin Luther, described him thus in that great hymn of the faith, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God:
For still our ancient foe
Doth seek to work us woe;
His craft and power are great,
And, armed with cruel hate,
On earth is not his equal.
That’s no reason to despair, of course. Like any good story, it is often when things appear at their worst that deliverance breaks through. I conclude with these words from Job 42:12—The LORD blessed Job’s latter days more than his first. Which leads me to think that if I have suffered like Job, I might be in line to be blessed like him, too. For I’m surely in my “latter days”! And Lord willing, I will go to Australia in 2024 (if not sooner) to pick up where I left off with It’s a Beautiful Day. It was Feodor’s story that led me to faith in Christ and, I believe, it will become my story of finding Christ through Feodor that will lead many more into the kingdom of God.
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Our premium pay-per-view window on Let Me Have My Son has fallen short of expectations. That’s disappointing to be sure. Worse, perhaps, is that the majority of you getting this newsletter have not watched the film. You have another few weeks to rectify that if you wish. In short order, Let Me Have My Son will move over to the more traditional streaming platforms and DVD sales. If you visit our movie website at letmehavemyson.com, you can read what others are saying about the film. You can also buy a ticket there.
I encourage you to be a patron of the arts and support Messenger Films as we create films of beauty, stories of hope! Will you help send me on my way to Australia? I hope so!
God’s peace to you, |
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