The drawbridge video is not the Gospel

I suppose most of us have seen the online video about the drawbridge keeper.  It’s a moving story in which a father is faced with a horrific choice. He receives a signal to lower the bridge for an oncoming train but at that same moment he realizes his son has fallen into a hole in an attempt to pull the bridge’s lever.

If the father refuses to lower the bridge, the people on the train die. If he chooses to lower the bridge, his son dies. What does he do?

He opts to save the people as the people pass by unwittingly on the train. And then John 3:16 appears on the screen: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son so that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life”.

The video sure gets a lot of tears flowing; but that doesn’t make it theologically accurate. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that the drawbridge message has nothing whatsoever to do with the Gospel of God.

There are so many things wrong with the video’s content. Where do I start?

1.- Firstly, God the Father didn’t sacrifice His Son because He was forced into a real tight spot. He wasn’t somehow pushed into a corner to decide whether or not He should save a train packed with people or the life of His Son. The message of the Bible (and of John 3:16 for that matter) is that God deliberately sent His Son to Earth with the purpose of dying for sin and sinners. It was no spur of the moment thing. It was planned from before the foundation of the world. Jesus’ expiatory death was planned by Almighty God. The Lord was not caught by surprise. The Gospel is no Plan B.

2.- Secondly, God the Son didn’t offer Himself involuntarily. He willingly laid down His life. Jesus didn’t fall helplessly into some hole unable to get Himself out. He determined to go to Jerusalem to be crucified by the Romans. No one took Jesus’ life from Him. He laid it down (John 10:18).

3.- Thirdly, the people on the train were completely unaware of what was going on. They weren’t to blame for the accident. Nobody had any idea about the drawbridge keeper’s existential crisis. Once again this is not faithful to the Gospel message. The biblical diagnosis of mankind is that they are sunk in sin. They deliberately and obstinately refuse to bow their knees before the Most High God. Rather than unconsciously crushing the Son of God underfoot, they joyfully nailed Him to the cross due to their love for sin. Humankind hates God. 

4.- Fourthly, the video plays on our sympathy towards the drawbridge father. The God of the Good News is not to be pitied. This is just another pathetic misrepresentation of the Lord. As Arthur Pink put it last century, “The conception of Deity which prevails most widely today, even among those who profess to give heed to the Scriptures, is a miserable caricature, a blasphemous travesty of the truth. The God of the 20th century is a helpless, effeminate being who commands the respect of no thoughtful man. The God of the popular mind is the creation of maudlin sentimentality. The God of many a present-day pulpit is an object of pity rather than of awe-inspiring reverence”. The father of the drawbridge is not the God of the Bible.

Wrapping up

So they are some ways in which we may how the drawbridge video is not the Gospel.

This doesn’t mean that we can’t watch it and feel touched by it. But we would be wrong to let our theology be determined by our feelings. Rather, our feelings should be subject to the truth of the true Gospel, not the drawbridge Gospel.