The trailer for the upcoming movie "God's Not Dead" has been making the rounds on social media. Check it out below. I guess I should not be amazed at the number of cliches in this movie, but I am.
The cliches I thought were dead, but are clearly still alive, in no particular order:
1. The dreaded atheist philosophy professor.
There are plenty of atheist philosophers. But I feel like this trope is old and worn out. I assume this has been around at least since the Scopes trial. We're really still doing this? And of course he's an arrogant jerk. Thankfully, no Christians have ever been arrogant jerks, thereby undermining the credibility of their philosophical position on God's existence. Whew!
2. People disagreeing with my Christian beliefs = "persecution"
A student in the trailer likens the philosophy class to the Roman Colosseum. Yeah, dealing with a vitriolic atheist is pretty much just like dealing with wild animals who are literally trying to rip you limb from limb. Hey American Christians, how about we save the term persecution for the many Christians all over the world who are actually experiencing persecution?
3. Evidentialist apologetics
We see numerous screen shots of the main character poring over books, striving to prove that God exists. At one point, the main character declares, "Science supports his existence! You know the truth!" Really? Science definitively proves or disproves God? Good evangelicals and Richard Dawkins apparently agree about the science's all-encompassing claims to prove or disprove anything and everything. Have evangelicals never heard of Gadamer and Wittgenstein? Of Nicholas Wolterstorff and Alvin Plantinga? I guess when you've got Josh McDowell you don't need anything else. But of course on the flip side of this, there is...
4. "God's not dead, he's living inside me..."
Great lyrics, Newsboys. What would you expect from a tradition that has songs with words like, "You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart." Really? I'm not denying the need for the work of the Spirit to produce faith in us. But when the New Testament writers talk about how they know Jesus is alive, it's not reducible to "he's living inside me." Rather than a 'faith seeking understanding' model, this movie trailer somehow manages to pull off both a rationalistic evidentialism and an individualistic fideism.
5. The girlfriend trying to distract the Christian Man from Doing His Duty
C'mon girlfriends/wives, we all know that God created men for 3 main purposes: 1) defeat atheist philosophers, 2) wrestle mountain lions with our bare hands, and 3) disrupt John MacArthur conferences. Stop using your feminine wiles to distract us from our studying/disputing, wrestling, and tweeting/lying about what may or may not have happened at the Strange Fire conference.
My biggest problem? This movie will make atheists out of evangelicals.
How? As Alan Noble writes, "Stories like this can also give believers a false sense of security and superiority. We feel like atheism is obviously stupid and evolution is a fairy-tale for unthinking adults. We become sure in ourselves and our abilities to refute the unbeliever and in the unbeliever’s stupidity. We come to think that we have specific knowledge of the atheist’s perspective and can expose it easily. But what happens when a evangelical meets an atheist with really good questions? False confidence in a straw-man vision of atheism does nothing to build up the faith. If we are honest and humble, we ought to recognize that there are many difficult, troubling, and complex aspects of our faith. This honest recognition may mean the difference between a faith that weathers the storms of life and one which sinks under sudden and unexpected doubts."
If Christians depict atheists as angry, irrational, and mean-spirited, then when we encounter atheists who are compassionate, slow to speak and quick to listen, and gracious, there's a good chance we're going to realize that there may be something compelling there. But it looks like this movie just doesn't get it. Both atheist professor and Christian student are bad models for dialogue. Both begin with the assumption that the other is irrational and that there's nothing to be gained from authentic listening. Neither begin with good faith toward their antagonist. Both seem to resort to psychoanalysis rather than careful philosophy.
This movie appears to be more about standing up for what you believe rather than actually articulating what you believe. And it also misses the point that it is not simply what you say but how you say it that bears witness to the Gospel. And in my experience, it's often the how rather than the what that makes evangelicals so unbelievable.
If Christians depict atheists as angry, irrational, and mean-spirited, then when we encounter atheists who are compassionate, slow to speak and quick to listen, and gracious, there's a good chance we're going to realize that there may be something compelling there. But it looks like this movie just doesn't get it. Both atheist professor and Christian student are bad models for dialogue. Both begin with the assumption that the other is irrational and that there's nothing to be gained from authentic listening. Neither begin with good faith toward their antagonist. Both seem to resort to psychoanalysis rather than careful philosophy.
This movie appears to be more about standing up for what you believe rather than actually articulating what you believe. And it also misses the point that it is not simply what you say but how you say it that bears witness to the Gospel. And in my experience, it's often the how rather than the what that makes evangelicals so unbelievable.
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