I was very disappointed in the first
God's Not Dead movie, as I felt like it spent more time perpetuating
myths about non-Christians than thinking carefully about apologetics.
After a lot of wavering, I decided to watch the second movie, because
religious liberty is a topic of interest to me. The premise of the
movie is that a Christian high school teacher ends up on trial for
quoting the words of Jesus in a history class. I almost turned it off
after the first third or so of the movie, after what passed for a
Christian movie had mostly been a lot of Constitution thumping and
Christamerican rhetoric. But then the movie takes a turn as the
teacher points out to her lawyer that she was answering a question
about a historical figure and the effect of his thought on history in
a history class.
The movie then gets really good,
because they end the political nonsense, and start examining simple
truths. They defend the historical reality of Jesus. They defend the
historical reliability of the gospels. In a court of law, they bring
the evidence of the life and death of Jesus, and treat him as a
historical figure whose voice can be heard alongside any other
historical figure.
I'm not completely sure what the movie
was trying to do with the first bit. They never really address
whether or not the political route that they try to take at the
beginning of the movie was a good idea. They just sort of drop it and
walk away. It could be that they wanted to demonstrate that both are
valid. What I really hope is that they were actually trying to
encourage people to stop getting so caught up in the fusion of
patriotism and Christianity, and focus on the simple truths: the
reality of the life of the man Jesus, the coherence of scripture, and
the power of lives lived quietly and courageously for the glory of
Jesus and Jesus alone.
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