Actor Corbin Bernsen’s Christian film, “Rust” to be released next month

Corbin Bernsen, formerly of L.A. Law and currently with the USA Network’s TV show Psych, will be releasing a Christian film on DVD next month.

Bernsen, who produced, directed, wrote and acted in the faith film called “Rust,” told CBN News that the film in many ways reflects his personal journey and rediscovery of God. “Rust” will be released on October 5.

Christianbook.com says “Rust” is about a former minister, Jimmy Moore, who undergoes a crisis of faith. He goes back to his small hometown and discovers that it had just undergone an extreme tragedy. The website says the movie as a “unique story of friendship and calling,” and a “mystery that will leave you seeking the power of grace, the beauty in sacrifice, and the hope of faith renewed.”

Bernsen told CBN News that in writing “Rust” he was thinking about a midlife crisis that involved more than marriage, but focused on a parting of ways with God after having worked in ministry for one’s entire adult life.

“I wanted to create that story here with a guy who’s faced with this or a similar situation, but instead of a wife, he’s married his life to the service of God in Christ, and he needs to get on the road back to it,” Bernsen told CBN News.

In the film the main character says leaving God is “one heck of a messy divorce.” Bernsen told CBN News, “You can walk away from a wife and three kids, and I suppose you might find somebody new and create a new family and new experiences and at least have the surface appearance of ‘it’s all worked out OK.’ (But) when you walk away from God and you walk away from Christ, you’re basically uprooting the very foundations of being.”

Bernsen told CBN News that he personally started his journey back to God when his father died, and he held his ashes in a velvet bag. It was difficult for him to think of his father as just ash and bone, and so questions of heaven and of God came to mind.

He said that children have an innate notion of God and Christ, but unless they are educated about it, it remains simply a feeling. He told CBN News, “Either we forget about it over time, or we’re scared away from it.”

In “Rust” Bernsen also tackles the issue of the role that pain and suffering plays in life. Referring to the characters in the movie he told CBN News, “With that family there was a pain and a suffering, but look what came back and what James has become. What influence, because he’s restored his faith, could he have on the world? We don’t know what the plan is. We just have to have faith in the plan.”