Why Sound of Freedom Is Worth Seeing
Great movies are rare, and Sound of Freedom is a rare, great movie.
It’s good on several levels.
The child actors, Lucás Ávila as Miguel and Cristal Aparicio as Rocio, are such preciously sweet siblings that your heart drops when they’re taken. The rest of the movie chronicles their story and the story of Tim Ballard, the real-life Homeland Security agent whose story inspired the movie. He quit his job to find and rescue children kidnapped by sex traffickers.
The plot is simple, the acting is good, the bad guys are bad, and the good guys are great. From square one, this movie hooks you in, not with Mission Impossible–type special effects, but with the simple premise: “What if it were your child? How far would you go?”
I strongly encourage everyone to see this movie.
Answering the Critics
Yes, there’s some controversy about Sound of Freedom. Some say the organization that Tim Ballard started to rescue trafficked children has exaggerated its impact and reach. But even if this is true, it shouldn’t keep anyone from making a difference by supporting solid organizations that rescue trafficked kids. Two ministries I would recommend are the International Justice Mission and Destiny Rescue. I’m sure there are more. As you would with any nonprofit ministry, do your research before giving.
Another criticism I’ve heard is that the movie plot is greatly exaggerated when compared to actual events. To me that doesn’t matter. Whenever I see a movie that begins with the words “Based on a true story” or “Inspired by actual events,” I immediately know it’s a movie, not a documentary. Those phrases are movie-speak for: “We took some liberty with the plot so you would enjoy the movie even more.”
Purely by film standards, this movie is worth watching. I’ve seen enough corny Christian movies to say that this is no sanctified version of a Hallmark movie. Instead, this one is on par with Jesus Revolution. It paints a powerful, heart-wrenching picture of a horrific, global problem: millions of children and teenagers being trafficked for sex.
This partially crowd-funded movie has blown the box-office expectations away. At the time of this writing, it had surpassed $100 million in sales.
How Can Christians Fight Sex Trafficking?
So, how should we, as Christians, react to the reality of sex trafficking? To be honest, my gut reaction to watching this movie was an impulse to watch Taken again, get on a plane, fly to who-knows-where, take out the bad guys, and rescue all the children!
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Perfectionism is expecting God to give me in this life what He has promised to give me only in the next. Perfectionists want to live in a world without sin, sickness, suffering, and Satan. The problem is, except for the first and last two chapters of the Bible, we find at least one of these four Ss on every page. It is not until the next life that those of us who know Christ as our Savior and Lord will be free of them.

The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Rom. 8:20–21 ESV)
Perhaps you’ve heard a perfectionist humorously described as “someone who takes great pains and gives them to others.” Today let’s look at a biblical definition of perfectionism: perfectionism is expecting God to give me in this life what He has promised to give me only in the next. Perfectionists want to live in a world without sin, sickness, suffering, and Satan. The problem is, except for the first and last two chapters of the Bible, we find at least one of these four Ss on every page. It is not until the next life that those of us who know Christ as our Savior and Lord will be free of them.
Have you come to grips with this reality? Or are you frustrated with God for forcing you to live in a corrupted environment? Because of the fall, we live no longer in the garden of Eden but in a world bereaved of its splendor. Perhaps you understand this on an intellectual basis, but do you live your life as though it is true?
Our passage reminds us that, as a part of God’s creation, we have been involuntarily subjected to futility. The world in which we live is broken and full of misery. Apart from Christ, and our belief in the new heavens and new earth, our world is a pretty miserable place to live. But Christians don’t live “under the sun,” as Solomon repeatedly declares in Ecclesiastes—we live “under the Son.” We live not for this life or for this world but for the world and the life that are to come.
The first step in learning to overcome your perfectionistic tendencies may be for you to reevaluate your thinking about the world in which God has placed you. You are living not in paradise but on a battlefield to which He has drafted you to serve as His soldier. To strive for perfection now is an exercise in futility.
Yesterday, we looked at the primary Old Testament word for repent. Today, I would like you to consider the New Testament Greek word for repentance. It is a compound word that combines a word for think with a word for again. In Greek, to repent means to “think again” or to “rethink” something.
To have any hope of losing your perfectionistic tendencies, you must change how you think and how you interpret the world in which you live. You will have to learn to think biblically about all of God’s creation—including yourself. And you will have to reset your affections from this life to the next one.
As you go through your upcoming day, why not meditate on specific ways you can begin to adjust your thoughts, motives, and especially your values in order to gain an eternal perspective on living as a fallen creature in a fallen world? Then give some thought to what it will be like to be free from sin, sickness, suffering, and Satan when the Lord Jesus Christ reveals His glory in you.
Reflect: What exactly do you have to rethink and reinterpret about living in a world that has been cursed by sin?
Act: Spend five or ten minutes today thinking about what it will be like to live in a world without sin, sickness, suffering, and Satan.
An excerpt from Perfectionism: Pursuing Excellence With Wisdom by Lou Priolo. Used with permission.

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A Christian repents murdering others with their attitude and sass and picks up the cleaver to begin murdering the sin that caused it. A Christian is the one who picks up the bayonet and goes to war, as Romans 8:13 says, not one who continually succumbs to their hostilities and rage. Here is what I am saying, dear Christian, the good and the sweet confidences of our Christian faith (the assurance of salvation) are not for the sluggard and slothful but for those who are waging an all-out war against their sin.

You shall not murder. – Exodus 20:13

The Murder of Disordered Passions
Embedded within the command “thou shalt not murder” is the understanding that it reaches far beyond the mere prohibition of physically taking another person’s life. The Westminster Larger Catechism in question 135 elaborates on this brilliantly, stating that

“the duties required in the sixth commandment are all careful studies, lawful endeavors, to preserve the life of ourselves and others by resisting all thoughts and purposes and by subduing all passions, which tend to the unjust taking away of any life.” – Westminster Larger Catechism Q135

This catechetical exposition highlights that murder is not just the bloody and homicidal result but actually begins before the knife is drawn, before the gun is aimed and before the bomb is thrown. As the catechism teaches, murder begins with disordered passions. Before a person will ever dream of performing a sinister coup de grâce, their heart will have executed that person a million times through anger, malice, bitterness, jealousy, envy, and even a million micro-annoyances.
We are All Serial- Killers
For this reason, the commandment not only calls us to be innocent of grabbing the Tommy gun and mowing down our adversaries and not only innocent of planting claymores in our enemy’s tomato garden; it also calls us to a life of inward purity of heart. We are called by God to mortify our sinful passions and to beat them into submission so that anger no longer walks unchecked within our serial-killing hearts.
In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gives us full license to speak, think, and interpret this commandment in this way. He intensifies the understanding of what murder is by exposing the pickled and festering root lying dormant underneath it. And that, Jesus tells us, is good old-fashioned anger.
For instance, in Matthew 5:21-22, Jesus says this:

“21 “You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘You shall not commit murder’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ 22 But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.” – Matthew 5:21-22

Contrary to many popular opinions of who Jesus is, He did not loosen the standard. In fact, he ratcheted it up so that even the sweetest, pillowy-handed grandmother can be considered (in some ways) on the same level as John Wayne Gacy and Jeffery Dahmer. Like those fiendish men, she has a pile of bodies that she has dismembered with a thousand glares, hacked with ten thousand razor-bladed comments, and buried with a million mental weapons like agitation, frustration, bitterness, and resentment.
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