Sophie's Choice Was Wrong

I found an app on my Roku device that I thought would be a safe bet for God-honoring movie nights. The app is Filmrise Faith and Inspiration. I have watched two very good movies on this channel which I would recommend: Ragamuffin, a biopic about Rich Mullins, a contemplative Christian music artist who relives the life of St. Francis of Assissi as best he can, and Tortured for Christ, the true story of the martyrs who stayed fast to their faiths in Christ during the Russian occupation of Romania.

Both of these movies inspired me. So I didn't have any questions about the content of Filmrise until I watched Sophie's Choice all the way through. It is not a movie of faith. It is a movie of lack of faith. It is a tragedy, based on an equally tragic book by William Styron. 

This review contains a major spoiler. 

The greatest conflict of the film is the choice which Sophie was forced to make, the choice of which of her children should live when she, her son, and her daughter are brought to Auschwitz. After watching the movie through, and being tempted by its sexual deviancy, I have this thought about the choice which Sophie made. 

She claims to be a Christian, and yet she does everything she can to convince the Nazis that she is one of them, that she is not a Jew and has in fact done work for the cause of anti-antisemitism. She does not do this because she hates Jews her self, but to save her own skin, and that of her children.

I thought, what would have made this film and book a victory instead of a tragedy? If Sophie had made a right choice. 

I think it may have been the belief of the author that there was no right choice to be made, but I believe that there was. She ought to have not made a choice, and if the Nazi guard took both of her children to die, so be it, she ought to have requested a moment to say goodbye, to pray with them, and to bolster their faith that they would meet again in Heaven soon if not on this earth. She ought to have had faith in the God she espoused, but she did not. She made a choice, in the heat of the moment, she chose her son, who we are led to believe probably died later anyway. She says, "Take my daughter, take my baby..." And that decision haunts her for the rest of her life.

There is always a right choice for Christ's followers, and staying true to Christ and his Promises is always the right choice. I do not condemn the Character of Sophie for making the choice that she did, because of course, she is a fictional character. But I do condemn the story, which would lead its viewer or reader to believe that there are times in life where there is never a right choice, where evil wins and we are stuck to deal with it the best that we can. But that is not true. We may always hold fast to Christ, and if we believe him when he says that he has prepared a place in Heaven for us, to dwell with him for eternity, we should believe him, and look past our current situation, no matter how dire it may be. Better for both of our children to die, with faith in Christ and confidence in their mother's faith, than for both of them to wonder about their life's value because of the choice their mother made.