Religulous: Lee Strobel, John Walton and Compassion International needed

I went with my friend Tim to see the new movie "Religulous" today. Religulous is the Bill Maher film that is about Bill traveling around the world and interviewing leaders and average people about religion. I am guessing that 75% of it focused on Christianity, but he also covers Judaism, Scientology, Mormonism and Islam.

We went to the matinee and it was fairly crowded for a matinee show on a weekday (Friday). At the end of the film people even applauded, which is unusual also. It wasn't because the film was over and they were glad it ended. They applauded out of appreciation and agreement.

The film was really well done, and it went by very fast. Bill Maher is trying to show how "religion" in general is messed up and even very damaging (which it can be). He tries to make his point in a very, very humorous way. But it also was very predictable in what it covered. I have either listened to or read most of the arguments he made in the film, so what was in the film itself wasn't really new information.

The movie was basically Bill painting Christianity and Christians as what I would call the extreme broad-brushed examples within Christianity. From showing de-frocked television evangelist Robert Tilton speaking in tongues, to Ted Haggard clips talking about sex, to going to the Holyland Experience in Orlando (which I blogged about my time there here), to some church leader who feels he is a blood ancestor of Jesus and he is the Messiah. He interviewed various average and not so average Christians who for the most part came across rather silly and not able to answer his questions with intelligent answers. Often it felt like Bill knew the Bible and church history better than they did. I understand that we don't see the full interviews and edits can make anyone look silly. But Bill raised good and legitimate questions but he didn't get good answers from the people he interviewed (again, at least how they edited the film). People in the theater laughed (including me) at how the responses generally came across from Christians to his questions.

Although it was a humorous film, and although it raised great questions which need to be asked - it only showed a very one-sided perspective. Thus, to me it was a poor film journalistically as it misrepresented Christianity by only showing the extremes of it.

For instance, he kept talking about how crazy it is to believe that Christians believe that a snake talked in a garden, or that Christians believe that the earth is 6,000 years old (or whatever he said) and that human beings and dinosaurs co-existed. So he went to the Creation Museum in Kentucky which strongly holds a literal six day creation and thus has big displays of humans living alongside of dinosaurs (and of course the film showed the Triceratops dinosaur which had a saddle on it which is in the museum).

What Bill didn't do was also talk to a biblical scholar like John Walton from Wheaton College who has written some excellent commentaries on Genesis and is a scholar on the Ancient Near East. John is an evangelical Christian who could have given a historical and intelligent discussion about the biblical narrative of the creation account. By no means does every Christian feel that humans and dinosaurs must have existed together as the only way of understanding the creation story. I wish that would have been portrayed and John interviewed in the film.

There was a time when Bill got an explanation from the Jesus character from the Holyland Experience. It was about the Trinity and he gave the illustration of H2O being ice/steam/water. Bill seemed caught off guard hearing something that he never heard before in trying to give an explanation of the Trinity. Talking while he left that interview, he still said he feels Christians are crazy, but it was interesting when he was surprised that there was any form of a reasonable answer. I wish that Bill would have included some interviews with apologists like William Lane Craig or New Testament scholars like Scot McKnight or Dan Wallace. It felt as though Bill had not heard rational and intelligent arguments and explanations of the faith or about the credibility and formation of the Bible or life of Jesus. When he heard even a small example of one, he seemed a little caught off-guard (at least it seemed like it in the film).

Bill went and raised the issues of the Jesus story simply being a duplication of other pre-Jesus virgin birth stories, resurrection stories etc. going back to ancient Egypt and the god Horus and the Persian and Roman god Mithra. He was trying to show how this debunks Christianity as being something to take serious. I wish Bill would have interviewed Lee Strobel who addressed this very thing in his latest book, The Case for The Real Jesus. Or interviewed other scholars who have written on this very topic already. There were many times when Bill was sharing what Christians believe about the Bible or asking questions of Christians who weren't able to answer his questions. I wish Lee was there and Bill interviewed him as part of this film.

But, I guess then the film wouldn't have been as funny, nor as interesting if it lost the hyper-caricatures it portrayed.

I do want to again say that there were great questions that Bill was asking. But what I believe is unlike Mormonism or Scientology as he portrayed those - there are rational and intelligent responses to the questions he raised. I wish more of the Christians he would have interviewed would have had some better responses. Or perhaps if they did give better responses in the interviews, they were edited out. I don't know. But what I do know is a movie theater full of people got yet  more reinforcement of what Christianity is, but really isn't. You could literally hear the responses from people when Bill was telling about Egyptian and Greek pre-Jesus virgin births and resurrections stories whom I imagine were thinking "those poor Christians don't even know about this and blindly have faith". Multiple times in the movie there were moments like that.

After I drove Tim home, we stopped outside his house and we prayed together for a few minutes in the car. We prayed for Bill Maher and we prayed for all the people who will be viewing this film. Not that I don't think people shouldn't see this film. I think Christians should see this film (*although---I want to warn anyone thinking of seeing it and say that there was a lot of coarse language and scenes in it). But it will cause Christians to ask themselves "how would I respond to the questions Bill raises?" In our culture and world today, the questions Bill raises are very valid. I just wish he interviewed people who could have responded better than what was at least shown in the film. There are reasonable and intelligent answers to about everything Bill Maher was raising.

I also wish that Bill would have shown the positive things Christianity and Christians have done throughout history. Yes, there are some very shameful things that have happened unfortunately that would be against what the Bible itself teaches. But because of the "faith" that Bill mocks, we have seen Christian organizations like Compassion International and World Vision help out thousands and thousands of people in need across the world. We have seen Christians and churches serving the needy and those hurting all across the world and give millions of dollars to those in need. We have seen marriages healed and lives changed for the better in all types of ways. So many things, you could go on and on about the good faith in Jesus has done in our world. But unfortunately, the focus is all on the negative and reinforcing the negative in the minds of those who see the film.

But... the bottom line for me, is that this film actually motivates me. It gives me energy to want to be more personally missional as well as in terms of rallying the church to be in the world and among people. It motivates me to want to be training and teaching Christians how to respond to these very things that are being asked today. I have a lot of hope and optimism, because I believe there are answers.

It motivates me to hopefully be encouraging others to remember to "be in the world" as Jesus taught (John 17:15), so that people get to experience that all Christians are not like Bill broadbrushed them. So even if someone views the film and thinks Bill is raising great questions, they know Christians they can go and talk to about what he is asking. They know that all Christians are not the war-loving, can't wait till Armageddon types he sort of hints they are among other things. So they may see the film, and think "hmmmm...? That's not like the Christians I know."

A somewhat tender moment in the film actually was in the beginning when he was interviewing some attending a truck stop chapel. As he left he thanked them for "not being Christian, but being Christ-like". That was the best moment in the film to me. Maybe one day someone will make a movie called "Jesusology" or something and it will be a film done as professionally as this one in quality. But it will highlight intelligent and thought-through responses to these types of question that Bill asked. And it will admit the bad the church has done at times, but also highlight the good and beautiful things that the church and Christians have done throughout history. It will show that yes, Christianity is about "faith", but it is not a blind and totally irrational and unintelligent faith - and it is a faith that does produce many wonderful things and many changed lives.