God's smuggler

I came across the following quote by movie director Danny Boyle at http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/interviews/dannyboyle.html:

"... you've got to be, like Scorsese says, 'cunning.' You've got to smuggle good ideas into something that attracts that person to the Friday or Saturday night film. That way they get a bigger kick out of it than they do from those films you're talking about. That's the job. It's not like you've got to ban the bad films. You've just got to make better films more entertaining."

Danny Boyle (Danny Boy? Hmm) is referring to all of the junk movies that are tossed out there all the time. And he says that they're OK because they give people who need a laugh to make it through the day something to laugh at. Because people will always need to be entertained, those movies will always be around. But we need to "smuggle good ideas into something that attracts" as well.

It makes me wonder if this has something to do with the proclamation of the gospel.

Part of me says, "Absolutely!" and another part says, "Never!" Is this compromise or is it, in the words of Eugene Peterson, "telling it slant," telling the gospel in a way that it doesn't get rejected out of hand but gets inside of people by being "smuggled" around their barriers?

There is a time and a place for direct speech. Sermons are those (though not always, since people need to have ideas "smuggled" into them in sermons as well). In our info-glut society, there's a need for speech that is recognizably true and to the point. But there's also a need for speech that it parable-like, that sneaks its way into us by not activating our defense shields. And in our info-glut, we've got pretty good at activating those shields.

So, actually, I think that Boyle's comment is almost always true, but with occasional exceptions. We've got to be God's smugglers, importing the gospel into people's lives without their even knowing it.