Ordinary Angels Star Alan Ritchson Urges Christians to Be the ‘Light of the World’

In Ordinary Angels (PG), Ritchson portrays the father of a young girl who is suffering from a deadly illness and needs an organ transplant. Two-time Oscar nominee Hillary Swank portrays the hairdresser who steps into the father’s life and helps. The film is based on a true story and opens Friday.

“It will inspire you,” he said of the film on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “It will give us hope in humanity again, and it’s a call to action to dive into your community and just help.”

Community is the theme of Ritchson’s latest video on his InstaChurch channel, which he launched in 2022.

“I’ve been working with a psychiatrist,” Ritchson said. “And there’s one thing that has emerged as one of the most important things that I can do for myself to find a more fulfilling life. And that is to plug into community more, which is very hard for me because I’m always on the road. [It’s] very difficult to have friends or community when you’re traveling so much.”

Ritchson read from a recent story in The Atlantic, which reported that Americans are having fewer face-to-face interactions than they have in the past.

“From 2003 to 2022, American men reduced their average hours of face-to-face socializing by about 30 percent,” the story said. “For unmarried Americans, the decline was even bigger — more than 35 percent. For teenagers, it was more than 45 percent. Boys and girls ages 15 to 19 reduced their weekly social hangouts by more than three hours a week. In short, there is no statistical record of any other period in U.S. history when people have spent more time on their own.”

The Bible, Ritchson said, has the solution to a lack of community. Jesus “gives us the path toward fulfillment in our life, our high calling in the Sermon on the Mount, where our blessing would be found, and then goes on to call us salt, light, a town on the hill. We are the City of God.”

Ritchson examined passages from the Old Testament and the New Testament about the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem, he said, is where “heaven and earth meet.”

“And so that brings us back to this article in The Atlantic where we no longer hang out with each other,” he said. “We were no longer light in people’s lives. And we have to call into question if our way is better than the way Christ called us to. We have to consider if Christ is the Messiah and a place where heaven and earth meet, where we fit into that equation, and what that means for us in other people’s lives as the new city of God.”

RELATED: Hear from the film’s producer! 

Photo credit: ©Lionsgate; used with permission.

Michael Foust has covered the intersection of faith and news for 20 years. His stories have appeared in Baptist Press, Christianity Today, The Christian Post, the Leaf-Chronicle, the Toronto Star and the Knoxville News-Sentinel.