Exploring the Social Imagination

Thursday, January 22, 2015

God is Not Dead

The film God is not Dead hit a nerve with many people. Those who choose to believe and those who don't.
In a previous blog, I stated that people believe what they want to. I apply this principle to all ideas/information including whatever 'science' says about who we are. People believe what they think will give them security, they believe in someone because they think they have some greater knowledge say that they can consume; better to say people believe what they hunger for. 
Some people's appetite for the Creator is less than others or non existent. The best thing about Christianity is that no one is force feeding anyone to eat. You have to choose. What is so amazing for me as a scholarly Christian is that God gave us free will. We can choose Him or not. After all, who wants to be chosen just because they were programmed that way or felt they had to conform to someone else's will. This is where most people go wrong when they hear the name "God". They think he is the one who wants us to conform to him. The Lord God our Father may ask but he does not insist... we don't have to believe. He wants us to believe, but we don't have to belive.

Some ask, well then what kind of God is He if just anyone can choose Him. He is an all loving and merciful God. If you believe, then He is yours completely. He is ours and is not just by faith. How? Faith alone does save. It saves us from continuing to sin, continuing down the wrong path of self destruction. In that respect, it is not just faith 'believing' because, having faith 'believing' moves us to act. How? It grows our hunger. It brings us closer to the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Creator of all things seen and unseen.

As for the film, I think that the writers and directors did a great job using the time they had. In a short visual venue, they captured the relationship that a person can choose to have with the Creator and how to defend that choice.

Kevin Sorbo who is a Christian played his role very convincingly. His character was the selfish prideful intellectual who was full of himself and wanted everyone to know it and jump on board with his ideas about life and happiness.  Ironically, most atheists don't want people to believe in God, they want people to believe in them... what for? Why believe in someone who believes only in him/herself? Because, they put themselves on a pedestal as if they are the creator of all things. They are the ones force feeding people which was the Keven Sorbo character in the film did.

The end of man ... is man. The beginning of man as a never ending man is through Jesus Christ. "No gets to the Father except by me".. John 14:6 Why? Because, Christ came to save us from this sinful fallen world, a program corrupted by bad information which will someday be put into the 'anti virus vault' for eternity, so that the true program can run free of corruption.  It is only through death that we can escape this corrupt program, Jesus came to show us that ... if He could, we can.

"I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me"  John 14:6.

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