Film "Preacher with a machine gun". The real story of Sam Childers
Sam Childers does not hide the fact that since childhood he was addicted to drugs and by his adulthood was one of the famous drug dealers in Pennsylvania.
One night, after taking another dose, Sam and a friend decide to give a ride to some vagrant. He, threatening with a knife, is planning to steal from the guys. Sam's blood quickly boils, and he almost to death beats the night passenger, leaving him to die on the sidelines. According to the script of the film, it is this event that shocks Childers, after which he himself goes to church in complete repentance …
The film project "The Preacher with a Machine Gun" is the life story of Sam Childers, whose fate may seem somewhat fantastic, far from reality and rather contradictory, like the title of the film itself. From an inveterate bandit and drug addict, Sam turns into a hero-liberator, selflessly fighting for the lives of African children.
What made him change so dramatically? Why did he not even value his own life before, and then began to fight for the lives of hundreds of defenseless people? The system-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan will help to reveal the motives of his actions and look at this biographical story, based on the book of Sam himself.
Sam Childers does not hide the fact that since childhood he was addicted to drugs and by his adulthood was one of the famous drug dealers in Pennsylvania. Having become a member of a biker gang, he spent his life day after day, roaming the vastness of America. On one of his tours, he met his future wife, stripper Lynn, while continuing to lead the bad boy lifestyle.
In the movie "The Preacher with a Machine Gun," the main character (his prototype is Sam himself) ends up in prison, after leaving which he returns to the criminal life of a biker addict. But his wife Lynn has changed and now looks at him with completely different eyes. She gains faith, quits her job at the club and becomes an exemplary parishioner of the local church.
One night, after taking another dose, Sam and a friend decide to give a ride to some vagrant. He, threatening with a knife, is planning to steal from the guys. Sam's blood quickly boils, and he almost to death beats the night passenger, leaving him to die on the sidelines. According to the script of the film, it is this event that shocks Childers, after which he himself goes to church in complete repentance.
Search for the meaning of life. Drugs or Religion?
With the help of system-vector psychology, we understand why the drug addict and rowdy Sam “suddenly” turns to religion. Our hero is the bearer of the sound vector. He does not attach special value to material, simple everyday things, and even life itself. Because the main innate desire of a sound engineer is to find the meaning of life, to understand where we came from and where we are going.
Often, sound engineers fail, for various reasons. For unrealized or psychologically traumatized sound professionals, drug addiction often becomes a kind of escape from reality in which they do not see any sense. In this state, they do not see any value in life, neither their own nor anyone else's. Although the desire to concentrate and cognize the meaning of being, which is often not realized by them at all, does not disappear anywhere.
Seeing his wife's sincere passion for religion, he unconsciously reached for faith, feeling an irresistible need to find answers to sound questions. After all, a woman always sets the tone in a relationship and leads her man. And the sound man needs exactly the idea that he will bring to life. All missionaries and people preaching this or that idea necessarily have a sound vector. In Western countries with a skin mentality, where a strong church and puritanical rules of morality that children absorb with their mother's milk, spiritual search, as a rule, brings sound specialists to church. They find there God and the answers to their inner questions, completely filling their sound desires.
Life is not for yourself. "By your actions you serve the Lord"
Sam chooses for himself the mission of rebuilding life and fulfills it to this day - not for himself, but for hundreds of other people. After all, life for oneself is limited by one's own body, one's own needs, and life for others helps to go beyond one's own I and reveals to the sound engineer what he is unconsciously looking for - infinity.
Starting a small construction business, he first builds a church for people just as lost and lost as he was. Not finding a pastor, he himself reads sermons to the parishioners, sincerely calling them to faith. And a little later, he leaves for another continent in South Sudan, where, joining a charity construction campaign, he is building a shelter for local African children.
Having planned to first stay in Uganda for only five weeks, Sam has been in Africa for many years. Seeing how militants burn local villages, kill people and take thousands of innocent children into slavery, he becomes obsessed with the desire to help. Others' children become his own for him. After all, he feels his responsibility for others, he feels that his mission on earth is to help them.
After his first visit to Uganda, Sam returns to America as a different person. Now his sermons are only about the horror of the ethnic war that reigns in Sudan. About how financial resources are needed to build a children's village where little African residents can finally find safety. But not finding support from the local wealthy, Sam does not think long and sells his construction business, spending all the money on the foundation of the "Angels of East Africa" shelter. After all, for a sound engineer, the idea is above all. Above the skin desire for material success, above the anal desire for a stable and quiet family life.
In the film, his dialogue with his daughter, who asks her father for money in order to order a limousine for the prom, is very striking. Sam is furious when he sees how far away even his family is from other people's problems. What money is there for a limousine when hundreds of children without a roof over their heads are trying to survive far overseas in the most difficult conditions!
Without fear of death, for the sake of an idea, a person with a sound vector will readily take up arms and fight for the lives of others. This is what Sam Childers does. He periodically organizes armed raids on the militant base, freeing African children from captivity, from whom they forcibly make murderers of their own mothers.
“If we let hate fill us, they will win. Don't let them take our hearts."
There are people who are realized through the manifestation of feelings: love and compassion for others. Charity work and volunteering brings together developed people with a visual vector who sincerely help the poor, the sick and just people in trouble.
It is the sound idea and visual compassion that propel Sam to self-sacrifice, in which he sees the meaning of his life. Sam himself says in his interviews that he did not save a single child in Sudan, they saved him.
At some point, his faith is severely tested. The shelter is burned by GAZ militants. Then he does not have time to save several dozen children captured by GAZ: when he and his assistants arrive at the place where the children were hiding, they find only a bunch of charred bones. His childhood friend dies of an overdose. "Where have you been, God?" Sam yells.
He blames himself, God, for breaking ties with his family, for the fact that innocent children have died and continue to die. Sam becomes angry, withdrawn. He sounds like he is looking for death in a battle with militants, and then he decides altogether, or almost decides, to put a bullet in his forehead.
He is saved by one of the African pupils. The boy tells Sam the story of his life, when the rebels, threatening the child to kill his younger brother, forced the boy to kill his own mother. Someone else's pain makes Sam leave the vicious circle of his own resentments, fears and feelings of guilt. The boy reminds him that there is more than himself, than his feelings and suffering. This is the suffering and lives of other people.
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The film "Preacher with a Machine Gun" was released in 2011. Sam agreed to film his book in order to draw attention to the ethnic crisis in African countries and find funding for the construction of new shelters. To date, he has six camps, and he began building each with a zero budget. And now nothing can stop him, he will definitely reach Somalia and open a shelter there for the disadvantaged and needy.
In 2013, Sam Childers received the Mother Teresa International Social Justice Award.
The plan is clear - life is clear
In the film, the role of Sam Childers was splendidly played by Gerard Butler. He is very similar to the main character in the vector set and admits that he understands the main character in many ways and often plays himself.
The director of the film, Mark Forster, did not just shoot another film about a man who saves African children. The sound director's message goes much deeper. It's an idea to show viewers that there is no need to despair, even if you are at the very bottom or at a dead end. There is always a chance to change your life, helping other people, to get out of your own crisis, saying to yourself: "Who else, if not me!"
