Movie Review: The Drop Box

They’re not the unnecessary ones in the world. God sent them to the earth to use them.

Pastor Lee Jong-rak

Many years ago Pastor Lee's son, Eun-man, was born with crippling cerebral palsy. He and his wife cared for their baby at home, which is so unusual in Seoul, South Korea, that it led a frightened mother to abandon her disabled infant on his doorstep one cold night. Luckily he found the baby before it froze but this prompted him to build The Drop Box. On any given night the "doorbell" may sound in the Lee home signaling that another desperate, anonymous mother has chosen to surrender her baby.

Too often, in a society like South Korea there is only one answer to the social stigma attached to unwed motherhood and aversion to any child born with disabilities. Babies are abandoned and often die before they are discovered. Pastor Lee and his wife and their Christian community care for about 18 disabled children. He has rescued hundreds of babies thanks to the drop box.

The Drop Box is told in a straight forward way but it is not a simple film.

Not only do we see Pastor Lee's ministry but the value of life becomes the central theme of the film. This is only to be expected but what I didn't expect was that the drop box ministry has opponents. Here is where the director's patient story telling pays off. The presentation of both sides of the arguments is handled delicately but compellingly.

Perhaps the most powerful statement about the film is that it changed the film director's own life.

Ivie said, "These kids are not mistakes. They are important." He went on to say, "I became a Christian while making this movie. When I started to make it and I saw all these kids come through the drop box – it was like a flash from heaven, just like these kids with disabilities had crooked bodies, I have a crooked soul. And God loves me still. When it comes to this sanctity of life issue, we must realize that that faith in God is the only refuge for people who are deemed unnecessary. This world is so much about self-reliance, self-worth, and self-esteem. It's a total illusion that we can be self-sufficient. Christ is the only thing that enables us."

This documentary is a wonderful look at a Christian who is changing the world the only way he knows how: through actively loving those around him. Pastor Lee lives in the best tradition of the first-century Christians who bore witness to the pagans around them by taking in abandoned infants, caring for widows, and staying with the sick when everyone else was fleeing.

It's a movie that stuck with me long afterward and had me reexamining parts of my own life.

This film will be in theaters March 3-5.

Don't miss it.