My thoughts on God's Not Dead and the critics.

I just read a review of the movie “God’s not dead”, a movie I went to see this past weekend.  Actually I read several, but I will address one in particular, because it stood out among the set.  It was an okay review.  The writer assumed that the total audience for this movie was Christian and mostly Christians who have a grudge against our world and assumed mistreatment of Christians, which he denied as a possibility in our country and our age.  I guess he forgot to read the credits at the end of the movie. 

The review was mostly a sorting of perplexities and only had two or three bad comments about the movie.  One was an editing snafu that pitted daylight and dark in a supposed same time frame.  I usually catch things like that and yet the only one I remember seemed to fit in place.  One complaint was the frequency of the ‘propaganda’ of Christian conversion and the third was the use of a Muslim girl who converted to Christian faith being mistreated by her father, as if it were the only group that rejects Christianity.  I have to disagree with the last comment because the Chinese student’s father also reacted strongly.  I don’t think the film had time to deal with all those who would be angry about their family converting to faith in Christ.  My own thought on that was that the film was acknowledging that some people will face that.

The main concern of the writer seemed to be that the film, which opened this weekend, had grossed enough to be named the 5th leading film of the weekend though it was marketed to a limited number of screens.  His belief was that the fluke of its success was due to a Christian audience that has been drawn out by the recent success of ‘religious’ based films and he gave several examples –two of which have not even hit the screen yet.  So that was a poorly designed argument thread. 

Another possible reason for success that he argued was the modern setting and technology references that would draw the crowd into the movie.  Frankly I think most of the people who grabbed their phones to ‘text’ at one point, had no idea that was going to happen at all.  I don’t think that had anything to do with the success of the film this weekend.  I think it was a reaction to an attractively placed statement in the movie.

He also referred to the pre-sold tickets, marketed by Christian websites and churches, responsible for about a third of the first weekend’s revenue, which he claimed gave a false picture of how well the movie actually performed.  That means 2/3rds of the people who went to that poorly advertised, low budget movie, bought tickets at the box office as we did.  That also means if you discount the tickets sold by Christian organizations online or in churches, the movie was still very successful.

It seemed like a frantic attempt to give reason and bring logic to what the writer considered the unreasonable success of an unappealing subject in a low budget movie.  I wondered why he bothered, frankly.  The truth is, there are ‘Christians’ who would not be caught dead at that movie, pun intended, because it is a Christian movie and they really have a problem with that. 

He referred to the audience cheering and clapping as though it proved the argument that only Christians supporting their own propaganda would attend and show support for this movie.  Frankly I clapped because the boy made his point so well after facing a lot of opposition to make it.  Would I have clapped if it had been a position I didn’t agree with?  Probably not.  Would I have clapped if it had been a position I agreed with that was not faith based?  Probably so.  Would the critic have had an issue with that?  Probably not.

Yet some of the statements he made reinforced an inward thought process that was already growing in my mind.  This weekend I watched 2 other very strongly evangelistic movies on television that I didn’t expect to be so.  We have purchased several movies in the past year that have had strong evangelistic messages that we didn’t really know would.  We have seen other movies that have strong allegorical ties to redemption and Christian thought.  My question is “Why?”  I’m not offended as the film critic was, yet I am perplexed that suddenly within the Christian community and outside the Christian community alike there is a calling to redemption, an exposing of grace and an offer of salvation and love.

Could this be the critical curtain call?  Could it be the final harvest?  Could it be the last hard push before the world changes?  I don’t know the answer to that.  But I’m feeling a climatic rise in the world about me and though I’ve been through so many prophets that cried the “End is coming now!” my heart wonders.  I shall pull into the Father through Christ and wait while I continue living my daily life with perhaps a heightened expectation and caution.  And I shall continue to pray for redemption and understanding for those I love and for myself.

As for the movie, I’ll buy it.  I would encourage others to see it.  I’m sure some would be uncomfortable with it, but maybe it will make them think a bit if they happen to go.  I may go to see it again before it’s put onto DVD just so I can think about it more clearly.  Regardless, it is a good movie and I would encourage people to ‘think for themselves’ and not just react to the critics -pro or con.