God’s Not Dead is a new film that looks at one young man’s struggle against the machine of Godless college liberals.
Persecution plays a big part in the Christian origin story. Jesus was persecuted for his beliefs and actions and was tortured and hung on the cross; though it turned out he was actually having the best week ever. The modern day incarnation of that is the persecution that evangelicals talk about in their daily lives. The world around them has become more secular and they are faced with non-believers who say the meanest things and won’t let perform their rituals in all the places they want to.
To shelter their children from that secular persecution there have existed for a long time institutions where you can send your kids to school that they won’t be brainwashed by non-Christians with worldly ideas and pagan traditions. But those places cost a fortune so some good Christian kids end up at local state universities where liberal elite professors (played by Kevin Sorbo) will browbeat your kids into trying to admit in writing that God is dead when you’ve spent the last 18 years telling them that God is a living God.
God’s Not Dead is the exploration of one brave Christian (from High School Musical 2) who will not be forced to give up his ideals just to pass a class. Because your eternal soul is more important than college credit.
Josh must defend his position that “God is alive” in a series of debates with him in order to stay in the class. If he loses, he flunks. When Josh accepts the challenge, he gets more than he bargained for — jeopardizing his faith, his relationships and even his future.
Will Josh prevail? Will Hercules use his might to crush him? I think we all know how movies like this end and it’s not with the good Christian kid signing his name to a piece of paper that says “God is dead.”
If it sounds like I’m making light of these struggles it’s because they are entirely made up and are the imaginary version of how modern evangelicals see themselves. Sure some college professors are going to say things to your kids that go against your religion, but your kid will hear the same message from television, radio, the internet, social media, other religions who knock on your door, friends, relatives, coworkers…
The entire premise of some big bad college professor forcing a kid to write that God is dead or fail is awful. The idea of some kid having to defend his beliefs is a bit more reasonable since that actually does happen. Pinning it on the boogey man of college authority figures just feeds into the false persecution narrative and makes an unbelievable film. A more realistic approach would be having college kids sitting around getting stoned in their dorm room talking about the existence of God and the meaning of life.
Stop making bad Christian feel good movies. If you want to get your message across make the message believable.
In theaters Spring 2014.
Also, Dean Cain is in this move for some reason.
