What Hollywood Believes-Matt Dillon

“He who does not take the step of faith, and so enter upon the road to heaven, will perish. It will be an awful thing to die just outside the gate of life. Almost saved, but altogether lost! This is the most terrible of positions. A man just outside Noah’s ark would have been drowned; a manslayer close to the wall of the city of refuge, but yet outside of it, would be slain; and the man who is within a yard of Christ, and yet has not trusted him, will be lost.” Charles Spurgeon

When working on a movie about Buddhism, Matt Dillon was given a Buddhist “amulet” by two people working on the film. He said he used the amulet to protect him from fear, and he still wears it. “It reminds me, whenever I’m afraid, to replace it with a faith that things will work out.” He was raised as a Roman Catholic but said he appreciates Buddhism’s “rational, informal quality. Coming from my experience of growing up a Catholic, I found Buddhism to be refreshingly easygoing and forgiving.” It is interesting to note that Matt Dillon struggled with the miraculous side of the Bible. He said, “I find myself immediately put off by magical realism...miracles just happening, people walking on water. I struggle with that. I’m convinced that Jesus was a great holy man. He had a great message, but I question the walking on water.” He went on to say, “I pray every day. I don’t pray to any specific deity, but that’s my thing. That’s important.”

If Jesus was indeed “a great holy man,” then what He said was true. If He lied about Himself even once, then He is neither great nor holy. He instead was a deceiver, and there is therefore nothing “holy” about Him. C. S. Lewis stated it this way: “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said wouldn’t be a great moral teacher. He’d either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he’s a poached egg—or else he’d be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But don’t let us come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He hasn’t left that open to us. He didn’t intend to.”