I just watched Sunflower's 2006 production, Amazing Grace, featuring the life of William Wilberforce, starring Fantastic Four stretchy guy, Ioan Gruffudd.

The first time I saw this movie playing was while I was doing a book signing at a bookstore in Grand Rapids. I could see the picture but the audio was muted. Honestly, it looked more boring than watching a Microwave dish go round and round. If you're looking for special effects, bombs, and adrenaline-producing cliff hangers, this one might be dull.

But the script sells the film. You've seen films where the man brakes his leg and yells, "Ow! I broke my leg!" And we all go, "Really? We didn't know that." Ridiculous. Or the girl's running from the green monster and screams, "I'm scared!" That's like the man proposing to his sweetheart, "This is a diamond ring." To say what the eye already plainly sees is an insult to opthalmology.

But Amazing Grace never wastes a letter. A snippet example comes from the lips of Wilberforce's wife, "You two have been speaking politics with your eyes. You might as well do it with your mouths."

Another example happens when Wilberforce and his best friend, William Pitt, are catching their breath after a run:

"Why is it you only feel the thorns in your feet when you stop running?" wonders Pitt.

"Is that some sort of heavy-handed advice for me, Mr. Pitt?

"Yes. I suppose it is. You must keep going. Keep going fast."

The script is like a military MRE. You get more in one sentence than most books give in a paragraph. Punchy, brilliant, and often humorous, Steven Knight has schooled me in word-smithing.

The romance between Wilberforce and Barbara Spooner is witty and well, very English. But the rush to church bells (or was it bagpipes?) with so little development of their relationship is a bit jolting.

Most believers loved this film and you can't blame them. Anti-slavery, the amazing grace of God, standing up for principle even when no one stands by your side—these are virtues even the world will admire, especially the religious. Today it's a going thing in the states to be against slavery and this is wonderful.

But it's not hard to be against something that costs one nothing. Yet can you imagine if someone made a movie against abortion? The doctors buying Mercedes with the blood of the dismemebered unborn and moms unwilling to inconvenience their life with another one would probably react something like the members of parliament who seethed against Wilberforce's agenda. Speaking out against the murder of unborn babies is a much closer modern day parallel to what Wilberforce was up against in his century, than slavery.

My favorite quote in Amazing Grace comes from John Newton: "I'm a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior!" This quote is not artistic license. Newton really said that.

Everyone admires some form of grace. The pain-afflcting monk, the worker at Burger King, the woman selling sex for bread, even the man who has the gall to murder the woman who birthed him can't help but respect it. But we must not miss what the film so barely touched on: grace, the kind that forgives sins, only comes through one person, the Lord Jesus Christ, the only One who can set us free from the most brutal master of all: our sinfulness. Any other kind of grace is only temporary and won't touch our greatest need.

I admire Wilberforce's courage and boldness. Yet at the end of the day, he too will fall at the feet of Jesus and perhaps cry out using Newton's own words, "Thank you for setting free such a worm as I!"