Just finished watching the movie God's Not Dead. I have to admit the only reason I watched it was because Jesse Metcalfe is starring on the second one and he is so handsome that I just want to go see it. I thought the first movie gave some premise to the second one so I should watch it. In other words: his handsomeness made me do it...
For the purpose of this blog, I will just refer to the deity as God. The concept of God can have many different meanings and God to you can be female rather than male. For others it is a supreme being with both qualities, others like to think that their is not just one deity but many. Then there are those who don't want to refer to the deity as God but refer to it as Spirit, others call it the universe. All of which are perfectly fine because faith is a personal thing. You give meaning to whatever it is that you believe in. Unless we are going to discuss in order to learn more rather than try to convince the other person that they are wrong, then there is absolutely no reason why we should argue over belief systems. In this argument, neither point is right or wrong.
The movie started being pretty interesting; college students being told by a philosophy professor that God is dead and if everyone agrees to that then the semester will be pretty easy and time will not be spent arguing over a "fairy tale." Philosophy is the love of wisdom and it would be very hypocritical for a good Philosophy professor to not want to hear the arguments his/her students have over such controversial topic, but I get it.
The argument over the existence of God has been going on for centuries, neither side has been able to prove whether or not he exists. The arguments often used are either that he exists because this book says he does or that he does not exist because you cannot prove his existence.
I should not be surprised at the turn the movie took after a few minutes, I mean it is a "Christian" movie after all. However, if the intent of the movie was to convince people who are at the fence of either believing or not in God that God is really not dead, then they did a poor job. Using the Bible as an argument against some of the very weak arguments against the existence of God, does not really make your argument very effective.
As the movie went on, the more the Bible was used the more the movie was a turn off. All I kept thinking is that there are so many strong arguments for the existence of God, so many good philosophers who have argued that God does exist, that we don't just need the Bible to justify it. At some point in the movie a Muslim girl is introduced, she believes in the God of Christianity rather than Allah. Both of which can be compared to be the same deity but just using a different name. This girl's faith is found out by her father and she is thrown out of the house. I realized that the movie was not about whether God is dead or not dead, the movie is about whether or not Christianity is dead or not.
Is Christianity dead? We don't need Christianity to believe in God, that is for sure. However, Christianity is slowly dying. The Bible is not good enough to prove to people that God exists and that therefore we must follow a set of rules, or else we will find damnation. Christians argue that Jesus died in a cross for our sins so that we would be saved. But then they also say that if we don't follow what the Bible says we will be damned. Which one is it? Can we have it both ways? Can it be that we were saved but we also have to follow a set of rules in order to ensure that we are not damned once we die? It seems to me that and all knowing God would know that humans would have continued to commit sins, therefore asking us to follow the rules after sending his son to save us from damnation seems a little stupid, for someone who knows it all.
Maybe we are reading the Bible wrong, maybe it is not Jesus who saved us from damnation by dying on the cross but rather that we as people killed Jesus by committing acts of violence and betrayal, otherwise known as sins. So he died not for our sins but because of them. The story of how Jesus died just shows us how terrible mankind can be, and the way mankind is right now just show us that we have made very little progress to change and grow. Based on the story, why did Jesus die? He died because he thought different, he died because mankind did not have the courage to open their minds and think for themselves.
It is sad that society has still not changed. The movie was another way of trying to bring people into the Christian faith, not into the faith of God. It is another plot to say this way is right and your way is wrong, when the reality is that none of us really know the right way. Faith is just that, faith. Some people will have faith in scientific studies, while others will have faith in a supreme being with no name. Then others will have faith in the fact that they really don't know what the truth is and that is fine with them, while others will put all their faith into the teachings of the Bible. Are any of them right or wrong? The truth is none of them are either right or wrong.
This movie would have been a lot more powerful, had it used more than scripture to argue God's existence. It would have been more powerful, had it not just picked one religion over another. The movie would have been way more powerful to convince people to look into the existence of God had it not subtly tried to show that Christianity was the only way to find God. The movie would have been a lot more powerful had it focus on what the name of the movie is trying to convey, that God is not dead and not that Christianity is the way to God.
So is God dead? That depends on how you see what it means to be alive and what it means to be dead. One thing is for sure though, God must have been alive at one point, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about God so much right now. God has been causing controversy even before the Bible was written and I don't think a dead being that never existed could cause so much controversy. In my opinion, even if you don't believe in God, the mere thought of not being able to imagine that being exists gives life to that being. Being able to talk about God is enough for me to say God exists and that God is not dead, but that is just me. I don't think I am right for believing in God and you wrong for not believing in God; I think neither of us can prove the other one wrong, and that is perfectly fine and perfectly acceptable.
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