One of the blogs I read is Challies.com. And it is one of the better blogs on the internet. The author recently wrote a post about Evan Almighty that I thought was exceptionally well written. I’ve cut and pasted the last paragraph of his article from a week ago to get the main point he makes. You can read the whole article from the link above…
But I think my greatest and overarching concern is this: this movie, like the one before it, makes light of our faith. When people walked out of Bruce Almighty I don’t think they had a greater and deeper understanding of God. They did not have greater love for and respect for Him. The genre simply could not bring so serious and important and biblical a message. Amidst all of the laughs and vulgarity there would simply not have been opportunity to really help people understand God better, despite the filmmaker’s attempts. And when people walk away from Evan Almighty they will not love God more. I don’t think they will have a greater understanding of the Bible. In fact, I suspect they’ll see the biblical story of the flood as being as fictional as this movie–a quaint plot but completely unrealistic and implausible. Mere fiction. This movie will not and cannot bring anyone closer to God. Rather, it will necessarily project a false image of God, a false understanding of Him. And we’re being told to watch this, to enjoy this, and to bring our families to see it so they can laugh with us.
What was it Paul wrote several hundred years ago??? “Everything is permissable for me, but not everything is profitable!” (1 Corinthians 6:12) I think that applies here…
Going to the movie won’t make you the most horrible reprobate sinner in need of deep spiritual cleansing… but it very well might lead you into an attitude toward the faith that is less that appropriate. So for me, there are better ways to spend my money, time, and energy than to be amused (Which means “not to think” by the way) by Evan Almighty.
Hi Ron,
Nice piece. Personally I suspect that the movie is mostly an exercise in silly comedy designed primarily to part bored people from their money, but I admit that I average one trip to the theater per year (or so)…
Your quote of I Cor. 6:12 reminds me of a conclusion I drew during my time overseas. As Christians from a Western European cultural background we tend to want to reduce all moral choices to good vs. bad, right vs. wrong. We love morality, but we limit our way of thinking about it. Those limits are cultural, and not really Biblical (as this passage shows). And the desire to divide things up into binary “yes or no” categories comes from our pre-Christian philosophical roots, from Aristotle (not Paul or Moses).
I’ve lived in places where Muslims made up the largest portion of the population and I’ve worked with Muslim college students in an ESL setting. It struck me some years ago that for all the problems that a legalistic religion like Islam presents, their moral categories seemed more Biblical to me than those of my own culture.
In Islam there are four main moral categories:
Some things are commanded, or required in their moral framework. You simply must pray, for example.
Some things are encouraged, like charity.
Some things are allowed, or permissible. The Arabic word is halal and it means much the same think as “kosher.” You don’t have to do it, but you can it you want to.
Some things are forbidden, or impermissible. The Arabic word is haram.
So, you must pray, you should give to the poor, you can eat beef (or be a vegetarian if you’d prefer), and you cannot eat pork (because the Qur’an teaches that it is unclean).
I think American Christians would do well to reconsider what moral categories they use and examine whether the Bible or the Ancient Greeks have more influence on their thinking…
(And a note… if you type “hspace=7” inside your image tags when you use a picture it will keep your words from running right up to the very edge of your pictures…)
Ron,
Thanks for this review. We haven’t seen the movie yet and did not plan on going because we thought it would be more of the same from Bruce Almighty. We never saw Bruce Almighty and did not want to based on the commercials and the trailer on the movie. However, some friends from our Sunday School Class told us that they saw Evan Almighty and liked it. We also saw a very positive review of the movie at Christianitytoday.com — http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/reviews/2007/evanalmighty.html — and then decided to go see the movie. The review, in a nutshell, said that while Bruce Almighty was an adult comedy, Evan Almighty took a totally different direction and is a good, family friendly movie that maintains Christian themes. We will keep your comments in mind as we make a final decision.
All the best,
Mark