God's Not Dead- Whether I Believe It or Not

I finally got to watch the movie,"God's Not Dead."  I was going into it with my best efforts at not being cynical, but as the movie ended I was in tears and shaking with anger. So, I'm super sorry to all my amazing friends who loved this movie, but I'm afraid it has hurt our fellow Christians more than helped them. There were several stumbling blocks I found tucked away in the film, but I'll just mention one. Several times in the film when Christian characters spoke plainly about their faith in God, they used language such as "To me, He's not dead, He's alive" or "I think of Jesus as my friend." Now, maybe this is a simple case of poor writing, but those little words "to me" and "I think of" are cop outs and kinda just plain wimpy. 

When I talk about my husband, I don't say "To me, he's a 34-year-old man and he's not dead." Nope, rather I'll just introduce you to Joshua without any mention of his state of aliveness or how I feel about his existence. His existence does not depend on how I see him nor does His relationship to me. He just is alive and married to me- whether I believe it or not. And so it is with God. I do not claim that "to me" He is God. He simply is God- whether I believe it or not. And He is my friend. This truth is outside of myself and independent of me.

When our fellow humans who are atheists hear Christians talk like this, I can't imagine they are very impressed with our faith. It seems to me that they would rather hear us speak strongly like we actually believe this stuff we're talking about. (My dear atheist friends, I don't want to speak for you so feel free to chime in if you're so inclined.) Wouldn't it be better to be bold and declare that God is who He is without adding in the bits about He is who He is because I feel like it's true?

Yes, I'm being harsh with this movie. If something is going to bear the name I proudly claim then it had better be ready to withstand some scrutiny. The movie itself was sloppily written, but I could have forgiven it a thousand wrongs if only it had displayed Jesus' name boldly without cheapening our faith. I'm not saying we should toss this film out, but we do need to be discerning in the movies (and music) that we support. Just because something has a Christian label, doesn't mean it's making God happy.

My beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, please don't be content with "art" of this caliber. Don't be content to watch movies that make you feel good about being a Christian. Let's strive for excellence in our stories because these stories help shape the way we live our lives. And be careful with the words we use to display our faith. The tiniest word can have tremendous implications. We have power in our words and in our art- let's use them wisely.