Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

1More Film Blog

Home
Religious Music & Entertainment
God’s Not Dead (Cronk, 2014)

God’s Not Dead (Cronk, 2014)

Last updated on: January 30, 2016 at 8:53 am by Kenneth R. Morefield

God’s Not Dead (Cronk, 2014) 2016-01-30T08:53:56-05:00 Kenneth R. Morefield

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

My problems with God’s Not Dead are almost all ones of execution, not concept.

The story is of a humble college freshman who risks everything (okay a bad grade) by refusing to be bullied into signing a card affirming that God is dead, which is required by his Philosophy professor so that he can jump right to the atheist texts without wasting the class’ time on cosmology. The student, the allusively and unfortunately named Josh Wheaton (Shane Harper) is pressured by his girlfriend and registration adviser to drop the course. But when a pastor reminds him that this class may be the only chance his classmates have to hear about God (apparently Josh would be incapable of speaking to any of them socially unless they were a captive audience) he puts his future on the line to stand up for his beliefs.

I’m a big fan of standing up for your beliefs. Some famous philosopher in some book or other said something once about how Christians, especially, should be ready to give an answer when questioned about why they have faith. So I have no problem, in theory, with a narrative about a college student who researches arguments for and against theism. But…

The film’s depiction of college is just so…ridiculous. (I was going to say evangelically pornographic, but let’s give it the benefit of the doubt as to the intended use it hopes its audience will make of it.) The credits cite two dozen or so court cases of students who have allegedly been academically persecuted for their beliefs. Maybe they all were, but as someone who has spent nearly two decades teaching at various universities (not to mention another twelve acquiring my bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees)–both Christian and secular–I’ve learned through hard experience that claims of persecution, like arguments over cosmology, are rarely as clear cut as those preaching to the choir would have the choir believe.

Professor Radisson (Kevin Sorbo) is supposed to be an intellectual giant of sorts, yet his heckling rebuttals of Josh’s carefully considered arguments involve cherry picking pull quotes from Stephen Hawking and listing famous atheists. That there is no institutional means of redress for the professor’s openly capricious grade threatening would imply either that all Radisson’s colleagues are with him (i.e. that the entire university, indeed higher education in general, is godless and punitive) or that he has some antiquated form of tenure that only really persists at select institutions where he probably wouldn’t be teaching introductory classes to undergraduates anyway.

It is, of course, not enough that our professor be an academic bully. There is a side story about him pursuing and eventually marrying one of his former students, to show he’s unprofessional and a hypocrite to boot. He’s also a misogynist control freak, humiliating her in front of colleagues and dinner guests and directing her about what topics she is and isn’t allowed to speak about in his presence. The implication is clear. Atheists only really stand a chance against Christians if they can silence them by controlling the means of discourse. Any legitimate, open, exchange of ideas would clearly favor theism and persuade all but the intellectually dishonest. Late in the film it is revealed that Professor Radisson’s atheism was born more out of personal suffering than intellectual reasoning. I’ve certainly met an atheist or two who was more angry at God than generally dubious of His existence, but in a film about arguments, this seemed like card stacking of the worst kind.

I do believe God’s not dead. I just have a hard time swallowing that saying so is the act of profound spiritual courage that the film makes it out to be. I’ve long felt that American Christians sometimes mistake losing long held positions of power and special privileges with being persecuted and are too quick to conflate being forced to accept that those who have alternative views sometimes come to them sincerely with being forced to accept those views as true. When I was an undergraduate, the Christian students who wanted to use our Introduction to Religion course to proselytize were far more smug and closed minded than anyone else. I’m not sure that we convinced anyone of the superiority of our views and I’ve since found myself wishing more than once that I had listened better to the lectures on Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam–not so that I could better destroy their arguments but so that I could understand my neighbor, a necessary first step towards loving him.

That last paragraph is about me and my experiences and not the film, but it points to a broader cultural persecution complex that the film just kept presuming and pushing until I found myself grating my teeth, even when the individual Christians facing actual persecution in this made up world were acting far less obnoxious than most Christians I know who face made up persecutions in the actual world.

That’s a shame, too, because there are places where the film gets out of argument mode long enough to recognize that Christians are generally judged by their friends and colleagues less by their arguments than their attitudes. For this reason Harper keeps the film afloat (and a notch above most evangelical Christian movies) by refusing to play the martyr or act smug and self-congratulatory. A subplot with Dean Cain as the professor’s wife’s brother brings the film’s one big surprise and packs the the strongest emotional impact. The celebrity cameos from Duck Dynasty members Willie and Korie Robertson and the Newsboys are low key object lessons in defusing conflict rather than escalating it.

God’s Not Dead isn’t horrible for a ninety minute evangelism tract. I’ve seen films that were better made and critically lauded that I hated more–I’m looking at you August: Osage County–but I’ve also seen secular films that were better arguments for God’s existence and the necessity of acknowledging it. It’s hard for me to knock a film whose sole reason for being is to tell young adults heading off to college that they needn’t be embarrassed by their faith, that the blustering teasing in some pockets of our culture is skin deep and not the serious refutation of Christianity they fear it is.

But I would have respected the film more if Josh’s victory hadn’t been so overwhelming and triumphal. The atheist must not just be answered, he must be annihilated. This suggests to me that the film is doing the cultural work of promoting tribalism more so than bolstering the faith. So too an ending that encourages everyone to stand up for their faith by … well I won’t spoil the ending (or the film’s inevitable marketing campaign). I will suggest to any high-schoolers or college freshman who feel peer pressure to play along at the end of the movie, that Brené Brown’s Ted Talk on “Listening to Shame” is well worth a listen while you have your smart phones out. Extra credit and a $20 prize to the best short essay on the connections between shaming and action calls in American evangelical culture.

I’ll also say to those of you getting ready to go to college in the fall that while the university is not the bogey man that Christian culture often makes it out to be, it can be scary. But the exact thing that makes it scary (to you and those who love you) is what makes it exciting: it is where your beliefs become your own. It isn’t, or doesn’t have to be, a place where you trade one source of indoctrination for another. There are teachers and institutions whose mission it is not to tell you what to think but to teach you how to think. I know, I work at one of them. One of my heroes in the faith, George MacDonald, said of education in one of his novels:

The upper hand of influence I had over [my friend], I attribute to the greater freedom of my training, and the enlarged ideas which had led my uncle to avoid enthralling me to his notions. He believed the truth could afford to wait until I was capable of seeing it for myself; and that the best embodiments of truth are but bonds and fetters to him who cannot accept them as such.

Here is another (I hope) encouraging thought. Truth is not some inert concept hidden in a mountain of false philosophies found only by intellectually panning for gold. It is incarnational. The truth is a living God, one who wants to be found by you because He wants to be in communion with you.

There’s nothing terribly wrong with fantasizing about winning an argument with an intellectual bully, of having just the right comeback at just the right moment to shut the mouth of the scoffers and jeerers. Just remember that the one called Jesus was patient with us when we were one of those scoffers and jeerers so that we could know Him who is the Truth.

Previous Post

January 19, 2014

Pandora's Promise (Stone, 2013)

Next Post

January 26, 2014 Spider-Man 2 (Raimi, 2004) -- 10 Years Later

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 10 Years Later 1999 Top 5 2007 Top 10 2008 Favorite Discoveries 2008 Top 10 2009 Favorite Discoveries 2009 Top 10 2010 Favorite Discoveries 2010 Top 10 2011 Top 10 2012 Top Ten 2013 Top Ten 2014 Top Ten Best Picture Winners Christian Spotlight on Entertainment Christianity Today Coming Soon Disclosure Disclosure--AS Disclosure--Book Disclosure--DVDS Disclosure--SEOL Disclosure--Travel Dissenting Opinion Elsewhere Emergenetics Essays Featured Film Fest DC--2014 Film Festivals Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2010 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2011 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2012 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2014 Headline Interviews Laura on the Oscar Winners Podcasts Quick Impressions Reviews RiverRun Film Festival 2014 Television The Criterion Collection The Thin Place To Stream or Not to Stream? Top 10s and Other Lists Toronto International Film Festival 2009 Toronto International Film Festival 2010 Toronto International Film Festival 2011 Toronto International Film Festival 2012 Toronto International Film Festival 2013 Toronto International Film Festival 2014 Uncategorized Video Virginia Film Festival 2011 Virginia Film Festival 2013 Women's Film Festival 2012

Select a Month February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which prophet's call included a vision of an almond branch and boiling pot?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Jeremiah Isaiah Ezekiel Daniel