What the Film ‘Fjord’ Says About Christianity, Parenting, and Government

There are films that entertain, films that disturb, and films that force us to reconsider the assumptions beneath the society we have constructed. Cristian Mungiu’s Fjord belongs to the third category. The film is deliberately slow, emotionally restrained, and at times almost anesthetizing in its presentation of Scandinavian life. Yet beneath its quiet atmosphere is a deeply unsettling theological question: Who ultimately possesses the authority to determine what is good for a child?

The story centers on a Christian family living in Norway whose five children are taken from them after authorities become concerned about injuries observed on one of the children. What initially appears to be a question of child safety gradually becomes something much larger. The film introduces circumstances that provide alternative explanations for the injuries, including physical activities and conflicts among children, yet the authorities increasingly interpret the family through a particular cultural and ideological framework. As the story unfolds, the viewer is forced to consider whether the state is simply protecting vulnerable children or whether it has begun to exercise a much broader authority over the family.

This is what makes Fjord more than a story about one troubled family. At its deepest level, the film is concerned with authority. It asks what happens when a secular society that considers itself tolerant and progressive encounters a religious family whose convictions do not comfortably fit within the dominant cultural consensus. The issue is therefore not merely whether the parents are good or bad, nor whether government intervention is justified in a particular case. The deeper question is whether a society committed to tolerance can genuinely tolerate a way of life that challenges its understanding of what constitutes a healthy family, a healthy childhood, and ultimately a good human life.

Christian theology approaches this question from a fundamentally different starting point than modern individualism. Contemporary Western culture frequently assumes that the autonomous individual is the basic unit of society. The individual determines his identity, establishes his values, defines his desires, and increasingly determines his own understanding of the good life. When this philosophy enters the family, the question naturally follows: Who should decide what is best for children, the parents, the state, or the children themselves?

The Christian doctrine of creation provides a radically different answer. Human beings are not autonomous creatures who belong ultimately to themselves. We are creatures, and therefore we belong ultimately to our Creator. Scripture begins not with humanity’s freedom to define reality but with God’s authority over reality: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). This doctrine of creation is foundational to any Christian understanding of authority because authority is ultimately received from God rather than invented by human beings.

This means that human institutions possess real authority, but none possesses absolute authority. Parents have genuine authority because God has entrusted them with the responsibility of raising and forming their children. Government possesses legitimate authority because God has established civil authority for the preservation of justice and social order. The Church possesses spiritual authority because Christ is its Lord and has entrusted it with the proclamation of the gospel and the formation of disciples. Yet none of these authorities is God, and therefore none can legitimately claim the authority that belongs to God alone.

This distinction is crucial to understanding Fjord. The film can certainly be read as a critique of secular progressivism and the expanding authority of the modern state, but Christians should be careful not to make the film say more than it actually does. The story also raises uncomfortable questions for Christians themselves. How should Christian parents exercise authority? How should Christians respond when people outside the Church disagree with their understanding of family life? How do we defend parental authority without providing a theological excuse for abuse? And can Christians defend religious liberty without demanding that society adopt Christianity by force?

These questions matter because Christianity does not give parents unlimited authority. Parental authority is real, but it is delegated authority. Children ultimately belong to God. Parents are therefore stewards rather than owners. Scripture commands fathers not to provoke their children to anger but to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Ephesians 6:4). Christian parenting is consequently not a license for domination. It is a responsibility exercised under the authority of God and for the good of the child.

This also means that Christians cannot dismiss legitimate concerns about child abuse simply because those concerns come from secular institutions. The protection of children is a legitimate responsibility of society, and Scripture repeatedly demonstrates God’s concern for the vulnerable and oppressed. A Christian defense of the family cannot become a defense of parents who genuinely harm their children. Where abuse exists, justice requires intervention.

The theological difficulty arises when legitimate protection becomes something more expansive. There is a significant difference between protecting children from genuine abuse and assuming that the state possesses a superior understanding of what every child needs, what every family should look like, and what moral or religious convictions ought to govern the home. The danger is that concern can become suspicion, suspicion can become institutional certainty, and institutional certainty can eventually become coercive power.

At that point, the question changes. It is no longer simply whether children are safe. It becomes a question of who gets to define safety. And beneath that question lies an even deeper one: Who gets to define the good life?

This is where Fjord becomes especially significant from a theological perspective. Modern secular societies frequently present themselves as neutral arbiters of human flourishing, but no society is genuinely neutral about the nature of the good life. Every society possesses moral assumptions. Every educational system communicates values. Every legal system embodies judgments about justice and human dignity. Every family operates according to some understanding of what makes a human being flourish.

Christianity does not attempt to escape this reality. Instead, it openly confesses that human flourishing must ultimately be understood in relation to God. Human beings flourish not merely when they are free to pursue whatever desires they possess, but when their desires, relationships, and lives are ordered toward the purpose for which they were created. Augustine captured this truth in his famous observation that the human heart remains restless until it finds its rest in God. From a Christian perspective, the good life is therefore not fundamentally a life of unrestricted autonomy but a life rightly ordered toward God.

This theological understanding also exposes a weakness in the assumption that government can function as a completely neutral institution. Governments must make judgments about what constitutes harm, justice, dignity, responsibility, and human flourishing. The question is not whether government will possess a moral vision, but whether that vision will acknowledge the limits of governmental authority.

The Christian tradition has historically recognized a distinction between different spheres of authority. The family has responsibilities that belong to the family. The Church has responsibilities that belong to the Church. Government has responsibilities that belong to government. When these spheres are properly ordered, authority can serve human flourishing without becoming absolute. When one institution attempts to absorb the authority belonging to all the others, society becomes vulnerable to coercion.

This is one of the most compelling tensions within Fjord. The parents believe they know what is best for their children. The authorities believe they know what is best for the children. The children themselves are caught between these competing claims. The film therefore refuses to make the conflict entirely simple. Instead, it presents a collision between different understandings of authority, responsibility, family, and childhood.

The film also raises an important question about the meaning of tolerance. A society may celebrate diversity in ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, lifestyle, and personal identity while becoming considerably less comfortable with religious convictions that make competing moral claims. Tolerance is easiest when differences are merely preferences. It becomes much more difficult when someone claims that certain beliefs are actually true and that those beliefs should shape how a person lives.

That tension is particularly important for Christians living in increasingly secular societies. Christians should not respond to cultural change with paranoia, nor should every government intervention be interpreted as persecution. Christians must be willing to examine themselves honestly. We must ask whether our parenting genuinely reflects Scripture, whether our churches exercise authority faithfully, and whether our convictions are being expressed with the humility, truthfulness, and love demanded by Christ.

At the same time, Christians should resist the opposite temptation of assuming that the state is morally neutral or morally infallible. Government has a legitimate responsibility to protect children and administer justice, but legitimate governmental authority does not imply unlimited governmental authority. The state does not become the ultimate parent simply because it possesses institutional power. It cannot claim the authority that belongs to God, and it should not automatically displace the legitimate responsibilities of parents simply because parents hold religious convictions that differ from the cultural majority.

Religious liberty therefore matters not simply because Christians want to be left alone. It matters because human beings possess consciences that ultimately answer to God. Christianity cannot consistently demand religious freedom for Christians while denying that same freedom to people with whom Christians disagree. Jesus did not establish His kingdom through coercion. The Christian faith advances through proclamation, persuasion, conversion, discipleship, and faithful witness.

For that reason, Fjord should also cause Christians to examine the way we respond to people who disagree with us. Can Christians defend religious liberty for people whose beliefs we consider false? Can we distinguish between Christian conviction and Christian coercion? Can we defend parental authority without defending parental abuse? Can we recognize the legitimate authority of government without treating government as morally ultimate? These are not merely political questions. They are questions of Christian discipleship.

The symbolic setting of the film reinforces these themes. A fjord is beautiful, expansive, and apparently open, yet its massive surrounding mountains create a profound sense of enclosure. The landscape can therefore function as an appropriate metaphor for the society portrayed in the film. There is an appearance of openness and freedom, but every society possesses boundaries. The important question is not whether those boundaries exist but who establishes them and upon what authority they are established.

This is ultimately why Fjord is worth considering theologically. Its deepest conflict is not simply between Christianity and secularism, parents and government, or individual freedom and social responsibility. It is a conflict between competing visions of the human person. Is the human being fundamentally autonomous, belonging ultimately to himself? Is the human being primarily a citizen whose identity and formation belong to the state? Or is the human being a creature made in the image of God, possessing dignity because he belongs ultimately to his Creator?

Christian theology answers with the third position. Human beings are made in the image of God, and therefore their dignity does not come from the state, the family, society, or even the individual self. It comes from God. That conviction places boundaries around every form of human authority. Parents cannot become gods over their children. Governments cannot become gods over their citizens. Church leaders cannot become gods over their congregations. And individuals cannot become gods over themselves.

The final act of Fjord may feel somewhat uneven. The film takes considerable time establishing its tensions before moving relatively quickly toward its resolution. Its deliberately restrained style will also not appeal to every viewer. Yet the film’s slowness serves an important purpose. Rather than providing an easy moral conclusion, it forces the viewer to sit with the competing claims and consider what kind of society is being constructed beneath them.

That may ultimately be the film’s greatest strength. Fjord does not simply tell us what to think. It forces us to ask deeper questions about authority, freedom, family, religion, government, and human flourishing. For Christians, those questions should lead beyond political arguments toward theology.

Whenever a human institution claims authority over another human being, Christians should ask where that authority comes from, what its limits are, and to whom it is ultimately accountable. The answer cannot be the individual self, the government, the family, or even the Church considered independently from Christ. All legitimate authority is derivative. It is accountable to the One who created humanity and who alone possesses absolute authority.

Ultimately, Fjord is a film about authority, and beneath the question of authority lies the most fundamental theological question of all: Who has the right to tell us what is good?

Christian theology has a clear answer. The Creator does. And if that is true, then human flourishing cannot be defined simply by what we want, what the culture approves, or what the state permits. The good life must finally be understood in relation to God, because we were created by Him, for Him, and ultimately for His glory.