Why I’m Going to Spend a Week Ripping “God’s Not Dead” to Pieces.

We’re about to take a quick break from our other projects to talk about this movie I blogged about watching last week, God’s Not Dead, which is a horrible movie in every single respect. There is a long list of movies that it is more horrible than, starting with my go-to benchmark of painfully unpleasant-to-watch bad movies, Absolute Zero.

Now, sometimes I really love bad movies that are fun to watch anyway, like Xanadu. There’s a lot of fun to be had in watching movies that are so bad they circle back around to enjoyable again.

This was not one of those sorts of movies, and let me explain why. It took me a few days to work out exactly why this movie torqued me beyond all recognition, but I got there eventually.

See, a long time ago I had this friend named Darcy who wanted to be an author. (I’ve briefly mentioned this anecdote in the past, but this is how it specifically went down.) She apparently took “write what you know” to mean “write what you wish you knew.” She wrote a novel based around the misadventures of a married couple whose names just happened to be almost identical to my name and Biff’s and who looked and acted like us in every respect. The woman–a career gal–adamantly didn’t want children, like I don’t, but her very traditional husband really wanted them, like Biff did. She got pregnant, and OMG IT WAS TWINS. Except the doctor told “Bill” that it was really quadruplets, don’t tell her or she’ll freak out and get an abortion or selectively winnow them down or something evil and feminist like that! So they had this absolutely deranged deception going on around keeping “Casey” from learning the truth–for her own good, of course.

After a lot of drama, emotional manipulation, and buckets of outright lies–all of it done for laughs, like it was all zany misadventures–the novel’s “Casey” delivered not two babies but four. Naturally she was upset that everybody had fibbed to her, but after a short while she discovered that she really and truly did “love it once it gets here,” just like the cliché–amazing, isn’t it? (Sorta like shooting an arrow into a wall, drawing a bulls-eye around it, and acting shocked about how accurate the shot was. And yes, that is exactly how all those New Testament prophecies can seem so strangely accurate to those who don’t know how the New Testament got written.) “Casey” also realized that really, deep down, she totally wanted to be a housewife and stay-at-home mom and all that feminism and career stuff was for the birds. The novel ended with “Casey” blissfully happy and wishing that she and “Bill” had gotten started on the babymaking years earlier.

Darcy had this idea that this book of hers would be the first one in a series about various young women she knew, and it’d be a line of Christian romance novels of sorts about the stuff “God” did to alter people’s lives without them expecting it. (Ever notice how often Christians do or say stuff like this without thinking it through at all?)

I was naive enough to read Darcy’s novel at her request as an editing exercise; I had no idea what it was about before turning the first page. To say I was beyond appalled when the storyline finally sank in would be an understatement. It was like she’d tidily rearranged my entire life to punish me with something that I’d frankly consider to be a fate worse than death, and used her power as the author of the story to force me–a very real person, someone she personally knew quite well–into a storyline that I hadn’t consented to star in, and forced me to endure virtual violations of my body and mind that I’d never have tolerated in reality. And in her universe, she could force me to be happy about it all, eventually.

She never understood why I was offended and creeped out, which is why we didn’t maintain a friendship afterwards. Not only had she gone to the trouble of writing an entire novel about pushing me into boxes I knew I’d hate, but since her inspiration were Christian glurge stories and urban legends, she didn’t see why I was so upset when I “knew” that this stuff really happened all the time, like, OMG. Every time I saw her after giving her back her awful novel (which wasn’t even good on a technical level, as if you needed me to clarify that point), I had this awful feeling like she was thinking about how wonderful it’d be if I just had a totally unexpected pregnancy, like that’s all I needed to calm my tits down and get into line. My entire church had the same opinion about young women, that they just needed a few babies to deal with and that’d settle them down tout suite, and moreover that it wasn’t a question of if but when this joyous event occurred, but Darcy didn’t actually belong to my church; she was an evangelical from another denomination, one that allowed female preachers and didn’t go for “holiness standards” of dress and hair. Hell, most of the people in that denomination thought I was crazy for staying in something as outright and obviously sexist as Pentecostalism.

Because Darcy belonged to a denomination that didn’t normally treat women the way she’d treated “Casey,” at first this drafted novel felt like it was an assault coming out of left field. But I don’t think any part of this story was accidental, in retrospect. I knew she was crushing on my then-husband (most of our female friends were) and was peeved that I was resisting Biff’s efforts to convince me to be a proper little Christian wife, so maybe that’s why the way she treated her “Casey” character seemed so hostile and cruel.

God’s Not Dead reminds me of Darcy’s novel. 

Just as Darcy did long ago, this movie creates these shadow-puppets of those it wants to control but can’t, then abuses them and slaps them around for 113 minutes, doling out punishments appropriate to what its creators think are these people’s crimes.

See, in the real world, there’s no cosmic justice at all. Non-Christians must look downright annoyingly happy and fulfilled to Christians. Gay people are getting married and they’re generally perfectly happy, just like straight people who get married tend to be. Christians deconvert and no horrible disasters immediately befall them as if on cue, like the proverbial bolt from the blue. Atheists never cooperate with the accusation that they “just hate God.” Women have unapproved sex and aren’t being punished for it–and they’re choosing not to get married at all in a lot of cases, or to skip having kids, and they still turn out content and not even a little regretful.

It’s almost as if there’s no god up there paying attention to any of it. And that runs totally contrary to Christian mythology, that states that gay people are secretly (despite their fabulous moniker) miserable, that childfree women are desolate, that women who have unapproved sex are always devastated, disobedient Christians always get punished, and atheists are always non-believers because they’re angry at “god” or haven’t yet heard some all-important apologetics contortion–and in fact every human alive believes in Jesus, but some don’t want to admit it.

So in the filmmakers’ fevered fantasies, they can make this movie and have total control of its universe, and in that universe, finally they can see non-Christians get what’s coming to them and finally see a world that looks like Christianity says it should look like.

That revelation isn’t the shocking realization I came to last night. I’d already noted that this movie is nothing but an escapist fantasy, a compensation for an indifferent reality, a year ago when the trailer came out. Trust me, I knew going into this piece of shit that it was going to be evangelicals’ vision of what the world would look like if their religion’s claims were true.

What’s new is the sheer extent to which this movie punishes every single person in it who doesn’t hew to the party line–and that includes Christians and non-Christians alike. That I had not expected to quite this extent. Nor had I quite expected this level of projection upon non-believers.

Most especially, I hadn’t counted on how this movie explicitly leaps from the fantasy of movie-land into reality-land.

Neil Carter wrote about Christians’ habit of projecting onto non-believers their own shortcomings, and this movie is one of the best illustrations of that concept that we could ever find.

There is literally not a single person in this live-action reenactment of the Chick Tract “Big Daddy?” except maybe the truest of the TRUE CHRISTIANS™ who isn’t completely in keeping with evangelical Christians’ stereotypes about them, and not a single one of those stereotypes escapes damage and harm–with it implied throughout by the movie that much of this damage and harm is supernaturally-caused to either punish or “woo” (egad, I hate that word; it’s a common one in fundagelical parlance, but it always sounds so abusive and creepy–and they never understand why that word, used to describe a form of courtship defined in this context by predation and deliberate harm, backfires so much with non-believers).

As for the few TRUE CHRISTIANS™ represented in this movie, they all come out looking dishonest or totally lacking in human empathy and cognition, if not nonsensically so.

I understand this movie is supposed to be a proselytization tool; one of the Duck Dynasty fauxbillies is in it, and I’d heard numerous ads and interviews about it back when it came out about how its creators hoped it’d “save souls,” with Christians encouraged to drag non-believing friends into the cinemas, as well as told to annoy their friends with fundie text messages about “God” that I suppose the target audience will take as magically effective (more on this later).

So I’m left with the impression that the people involved in making and promoting this movie really think that they’re creating some kind of persuasive case for atheists in particular to consider. But when I watched this movie, one thought kept running through my head: Why would anybody want to join a religion that thinks of outsiders in such a hateful way and abuses them this much?


Embed from Getty Images

The answer that this movie wants to give to that question is, “Because its claims are true!” and the whole movie is devoted, ostensibly, to demonstrating that point–in between punishing non-believers and making believers look inhumanly evil. But those demonstrations aren’t in the least persuasive to anybody sitting outside the pews. The talking points used are tired and debunked six thousand ways from Sunday, which means that Christianity gets considered in the same manner as every other religion: not based upon the veracity of its claims, because they’re not true, but by what kind of people result from following its precepts.

Christians themselves don’t understand that this movie is a symptom of their disease–the disease being that their religion is based upon, at best, metaphorical and culture-contextual “truths” rather than absolutely true facts, but that most of its adherents can’t accept that simple fact and simply must have a sourcebook that is objectively true in at least some respects. The more of those respects they want true, the worse the disease manifests. Because they can’t have any of those respects be really true, though, we get movies like this instead of any genuine attempts to persuade. But is this movie really meant to persuade? As I’ve mentioned on this blog many times, let’s ignore the stated and implied goals and look only at what this movie actually does.

The movie is presented 100% as a factual movie, as a movie that represents what its target audience Christians really want and really value. The moviegoers are told to translate its demands into real-world actions. It is not just a fantasy like The Last Starfighter, whose premise certainly has its shaky aspects but which doesn’t actually pretend that video game proficiency translates to a new career as a space-faring dogfighter. People who love The Princess Bride may seem a little obsessive about reciting lines from it (ahem), but they don’t seriously try to live life as if the six-fingered man is out there menacing anybody. But God’s Not Dead sends Christians off to do real-life things, implying that they will greatly please their real-world Savior by annoying people they actually really know with their smug, unfounded, baseless fantasy assertions. I’ve already got a post planned about this super-cheap form of devotion, believe you me.

By stepping from the silver screen into reality, this movie marks a watershed moment in Christian propaganda efforts. That’s why I’m saying this movie isn’t just some Christian compensation fantasy; its treatment of people is also implied to be how things should work in reality and how its target audience genuinely thinks their god’s universe should look. This movie is actually evangelicals’ way of punishing and smacking non-Christians around in a universe where they can actually win for a change–where non-Christians can’t fight back, and where the rules always work exactly like the creators always want.

Sound familiar?

If that’s the kind of universe they think their god operates, then little wonder their religion is failing as hard as it is.

This week, we’re going to look at what those rules are and take a look at what this movie’s target Christians would love for the universe to look like, by way of examining what this movie tells us about Christians, Muslims, atheists, science, philosophy and education in general, women, relationships, and other such stuff. We’ll examine how closely this movie hews to a standard-issue fundagelical worldview, why it’s baffling that it’d do so, and how well it agrees with other movies that push the same worldview. I’m definitely looking forward to next week, and I hope to see you there.

About Captain Cassidy

I blog over at Roll to Disbelieve about religion, culture, cats, and tabletop RPGs.
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46 Responses to Why I’m Going to Spend a Week Ripping “God’s Not Dead” to Pieces.

  1. My wife has been saying we should watch this damned movie for laughs since it got added to Netflix. I’m not sure I can stand the pain it sounds so bad, but I might agree just so I can watch her face as it unfolds.

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  2. here'stothesecondhalfofmylife says:

    How to explain all that to my little proselytizing 12 yr old daughter from whom iIregularly receive texts saying “God’s not dead “…

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    • Yikes… that poor little girl, under such a monstrous fear. I remember being a teenager and doing the same thing. That is one of the worst parts of religion, really, and when I start seriously snarling about it. That sucks so bad. I really don’t know what to say except I hope you find a way somehow to assuage her concern.

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      • The thing I hate miost about that phrase is that it reminds me of what I hate most about this movie. Not only did they use the standard old “atheist philosophy professor” thing, when I find a lot of my philosophy profs have been devout christians. But that it shows they misunderstand Nietzsche so goddamn completely that all they can focus on is the words “god is dead” without even bothering to take half a second to check if saying “GOD IS NOT DEAD” wont make them sound like an immature two year old to anyone even vaguely familiar with philosophy

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  3. charles says:

    Remember the book “This Present Darkness”? Real life does not line up with the Bible… No problem, just write books and make movies that pretend it does. After that book, “spiritual warfare” became all the rage. Suddenly, something people had no reason to think was going on became something everyone was totally convinced was going on (a behind the scenes battle between angels and demons, which Christians could influence with their prayers). It’s FICTION! It’s desperation. They so want it to be true that they believe the stories they themselves make up.

    Liked by 2 people

    • sjl1701 says:

      Gads, Charles.
      So sorry you tortured yourself with that one.

      I read that poor excuse to put ink on a page in a way that it might resemble an actual book. The line I remember, and it’s been many years, was somewhere near the end, the good guy was pointing a gun at one of the bad guys and says, “Do something wrong and I’ll fire.” The line of description that follows is: “She did something wrong.” That’s it. No enlightenment needed apparently.

      When I see the “Christian Fiction” section in the bookstore, I keep thinking it needs correcting as the phrase is redundant.

      Scott

      Liked by 1 person

      • charles says:

        I was a young Christian when I read it, so I liked it. But as I got older and experienced life more, the more I realized how made up it all was. While so many I know still swear there is this great battle going on, proved by their daily confirmation bias.

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  4. Ugh, I cringed in sympathy when you talked about people trying to re-write your life as a favor to you. I’ve never had anyone write a novel about me (that I know of) so I got off easy in that respect. On the other hand, having my parents and sister say “I know god will bring you back to us… I’m not worried about it” and “I just would rather you come back sooner rather than later so you can avoid some of the pain you’ll have to deal with” is just incredibly creepy and painful. I don’t WANT to break up with my wife and come crawling back to god and my emotionally abusive under some mortifying and humbling circumstances. I know they think that would be “good for me” but it feels like it’s erasing my own will and autonomy for them to tell me it WILL happen and I should just accept it before I have to “suffer” more for it (because being in a relationship with a woman and being transgender clearly means I’m suffering…). My needs, my desires, and my reality is meaningless to them and it feels gross!

    I never really had words to explain why my stomach would twist up in knots whenever my sister would say “there will be no condemnation from us when you come back to us.” It’s because she was telling me that I WILL fall in line. I WILL obey and I WILL realize that my choices are stupid and worthless and my life is miserable and I am wrong and they are right and I WILL be sorry for ever trying to have my own life and make my own choices. It doesn’t help that she’d add onto that “but I would rather you come back soon, because the trust that you have broken is just going to keep getting worse.” Right, because making my own adult decisions is a breach of YOUR trust. And that’s also not manipulative at all.

    Well, I guess this hit a nerve, haha!

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    • Emotionally abusive *family. Apparently I can’t edit my comment. :P

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    • That’s astonishingly cruel and nasty of them to say and do toward you. I don’t even know what to say. I’m glad you’re not listening to them. The life they want for you is not the one that would make you happy. How cruel that they’d rather you comply than be happy. It’s going to be interesting to see what they do in 20 or 30 years when you remain curiously unrepentant. I find myself hoping you have the most wonderful life ever–not only just because you deserve it and have taken pains to get it, but maybe also a little because it’d confuse the hell out of your family. Best wishes to you and your wife. :)

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      • Haha, yes, I hope I do confuse the hell out of them… at least confuse the hell out of my sister. I’m pretty sure they are convinced that, deep down, I really do know I’m wrong and they’re right and I’m just too proud to admit it. My parents, I think, have decided that I will return to the fold, but it might be after they’re dead (which just depresses me because I’d hate to never hear from them again until I get that call). My sister, though, has no reason not to see me come around, so I intend to confuse the hell out of her for the rest of my life. I have a great life ahead of me, I’m going to live it to the fullest and try to enrich other lives with it, and they can just stand there in their bigotry and scratch their heads.

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  5. Beth Caplin says:

    I have a shirt that says “Be careful or I’ll put you in my novel,” but that policy only applies to people who aren’t in my life anymore (and with good reason). She had to name her character “Casey”?? Good grief. That sure was low.

    I’m tempted to watch it too now that it’s on Netflix, but I barely got through Fireproof. Someone tell me it’s marginally better than Fireproof???

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    • Haven’t seen Fireproof, but I’m not holding out hope here. It’s Kirk Cameron, who if anything is probably more grating and annoying than the star of this honker. On the other hand, Fireproof is about defeating evil evil computer porn, isn’t it? So it might be more funny than this movie.

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      • Beth Caplin says:

        Not necessarily. The couple has communication issues, and what’s unfortunate is that it had the potential to be a halfway decent film, minus the sloppy sermonizing and the wooden acting. And Kirk Cameron.

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        • You almost didn’t need to add that last bit. Anything he’s in will involve sermonizing and wooden acting.

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          • SirWill says:

            I am fairly sure that’s an insult to trees everywhere. Least they’re alive!

            Reminds me of this joke:

            A fellow is at a bar, drowning his sorrows after losing a court case. Fed up, he vents. “Lawyers are all scumbags!”

            A man at the end of the bar turns. “Hey! I take offense to that!”

            With a grimace, the drunk man says. “Why, you a lawyer?”

            “No sir. I am a scumbag.”

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    • sjl1701 says:

      I’d go with it’s switching from waterboarding to electric cattle prods. It’s painful in a different way.

      My spouse and I were in a marriage encounter group and we watched “Fireproof”. Not only did I NOT believe Kirk and the actress playing his wife were married, their on screen interactions were almost painful to watch.

      When we were done with the discussion, we gave the copy we bought to one of the other couples, I was thrilled that it was out of the house. I might have had to use one a friends excuses for a kids book he hated, “It accidently jumped into the garbage and left the house.”

      Scott

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      • The whole “Fireproof” premise sounds so painful to me in general. I’m not sure fundagelical pastors/personalities are a whole lot better than Catholic priests when it comes to doling out advice for having a healthy marriage. They’re warped and skewed in different directions maybe, but still don’t line up with reality or human nature very well because dogma and ideology matter more than the very real lives potentially getting messed up by their bad advice.

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      • WereBear says:

        (Sorry I’m all over the map with my comment logins… iTouch works differently from my laptop)

        What I recall from Fireproof was that the husband (Kirk Cameron) kept being told by his friends that he had to “suffer” to make her happy, like fuss over her FEELINGS and give her flowers and all that GIRLY stuff because women were “that way” and the wife (Mrs. Cameron) was told she had to make him the BOSS OF HER because men were “that way” being all kingly and and in charge, and both of them got told this was the way God wanted it and they’d be so happy once they’d just “shut up and get with the program.” (As I saw it.)

        In so many words the couple was told “fake it ’till you make it” with the implication that this Stepford version of their relationship was what God wanted and they weren’t happy solely because they weren’t running things in this bizarre way. Once they started letting God pull their strings they would LOVE it.

        Yeah. Right.

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        • Yikes. It’d really suck if someone said he or she had tried to do that and it’d failed dramatically. (ahem cough) I’m so sick of that “Men are from Mars/Women are Probably Not Actually Human at All” essentialist BS that Christians have bought into.

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  6. Glandu says:

    Having children is cool, but it’s a hellish amount of work. We wanted a second child, which didn’t come(and we’re getting past 40), and I’m not really unhappy to stay at 1, to be honest.

    Even if my daughter is just badass. I just love her.

    I’ve met a lot of people who wanted plenty of children. When N°1 is 6 month old, and you ask them about N°2, the answer is usually “mmmh, well, we’re not in a hurry, isn’t it”. twins were my nightmare, when my wife was pregnant. Quadruplets? That’s a malediction. You’ve got so much work than the good moments, well, you just don’t see them. With one single child at a time, you can enjoy, and have a well-deserved fun.

    Psychological projection is one of the biggest discoveries of Sigmund Freud. It’s a very hard trap to avoid. But first, you shall know it exists & you are victim of it before trying to avoid. Really not easy.

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    • Around here, it’s common wisdom that Mormon women often bear multiples. A pair of very young Mormons of my work acquaintance got married–seriously it was like seeing two little puppies in a box playing with each other and trying to bite each others’ noses, to watch them together (there’s this weirdly asexual childlike quality about very young Christian couples that I perceive)–and immediately the woman got knocked up, like THAT. They’d been sorta-kinda been using contraception–didn’t specify what, but it was clear from her descriptions that they were neither being meticulous about it, nor caring if they were or not. So she got pregnant. Apparently they began to suspect twins, which their doctor confirmed. Then about midway through they discovered it wasn’t twins; it was triplets. She told me with a laugh later, recounting this story, that her husband literally fainted when he heard the news in the doctor’s office. I don’t think she realized what a burden he suddenly realized they were shouldering. She thought it was the neatest thing ever, tee-hee how awesome, but she was obviously not going to be working but saddling her husband–at like 19 years old–with sole financial responsibility for four other human beings in a few months, on a call-center slave’s wages.

      Funny thing is I don’t ever remember seeing her again after running into her and learning that story; the tiny young woman was already huge, so I don’t imagine she stayed at that job much longer. He did, but he didn’t seem really happy any time I ever saw him. I don’t think most folks really understand that no, it’s not just as easy to care for two or three or four as it is one. That friend of mine, Darcy, was definitely projecting onto me what she wished for herself–she wanted to get married and make babies, and yet she’d never even had a boyfriend. :( Not good for an author to lack that kind of self-awareness, is it? (PS: Glad to hear your daughter’s turning out so well!)

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      • Glandu says:

        just thougt about it :
        9 minutes of joy
        9 months of waiting
        9 hours of pain
        9 years of hard work
        9 years of various trouble & fears

        Worth it, but not to be taken lightly.

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        • Worth it to some… definitely not to be taken lightly by any, that is for sure. I’m glad we have a world now where people can decide if it’s for them. Also: 9 minutes?!? LOL!

          Reminds me of a joke from the movie Grease when the hero asserts that some women are only good for sex: “But what are you supposed to do with [women] the rest of the other 23 hours and 45 minutes of the day?”

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  7. SirWill says:

    You know…there’s a lot of things about these kinds of films that tick me off. Usually I can’t even watch the whole thing because they completely break my suspension of disbelief. That’s important to be able to sit back and enjoy a film.

    It’s the same reason the whole audience went ‘What the hell?’ when the slapstick elements in Superman 2 showed up, or when he threw the big plastic S-shield from his chest to catch Non. We’d already established what Kryptonians’ powers were, so breaking them for new things kicked everyone out of the film.

    In the case of THIS movie, though, it went bad for outsiders because they’re SO busy hitting their strawmen of outsiders they never actually made them into people first. What’s worse is they actually believe that atheists think the way Radisson does in this film. That we ‘hate god’ and that if they just managed to ask ‘Why do you hate god?’ enough and in just the right way, we’ll snap and go ‘Because he never got me a G.I. Joe for Christmas!’

    As if somehow, something bad happened, and therefore we hate him for it. Enough to….what? Deny the obvious?

    Let’s stretch this a bit. They call God ‘Our Heavenly Father’ and so we’ll put things together in such a way as if he was an actual father. This is a father who demands our love and obedience….in note form. Never actually showing up. Never spending time with us. Never letting us know if he’s alive or dead. We’ve never heard his voice, never seen a photograph, and never gotten anything more than stories, despite the fact all these stories took place and in times when we should have had all of the above.

    And since the notes have been printed, we don’t even know if it’s something that’s been written by the creepy old guy up the street or if Mom made it in an attempt to get us to stop stealing the cookies.

    So sooner or later, some of us are going to wonder..’Did this so-called wonderful guy ever exist, or is it a lie that’s been pressed on me for one reason or another?’ It’s only sane to think that, after a while.

    It’s also -incredibly- infuriating to be told, over and over again, that you really believe something when you don’t, you really think that wrong is right when it isn’t, that you feel something you don’t, and that you don’t feel something that you actually do. Gaslighting is a new word in my vocabulary, but it describes a -lot- of the experiences I had as a kid. Not by my parents, but by well-meaning but BLOODY STUPID authority figures in middle school.

    Once after a fight in recess, I’d cut my finger and was bleeding a bit. Because of Terminator 2, I knew that if I kept pressure on the cut, the bleeding would stop. So I clenched my hand…only to get told to not clench my hand, because you’re angry and going to lash out. Excuse me? Yes, I’m angry, but I’ve got better control of myself than that. I’m out of the situation and I’M TRYING NOT TO BLEED HERE!

    Worst part there? I asked for a bandage or something to treat the cut. Got nothing. It gives me -great- pleasure to drive by that school these days and see it’s been replaced by a different setup entirely, even if it -is- now a Christian Academy.

    And the absolutely worst part in my view, is not just the sheer dishonesty about this movie. It’s that coupled with the hypocrisy about EVERY single point of view other than their own.

    For example, take the Muslim father and (to him) apostate daughter. I know what they’re trying to say. “In Islam, you are chained, forced to see the world through a veil, always suffocating. In Christ you are free.” Which, to be fair, is a good message. However, -Christianity- today is just as suffocating as Islam is, simply in different ways. Purity standards, anyone? And I just know the people who are lapping up the message of this film will nod, agree, then turn around and say to their daughters ‘Go back and change, I can still see your ankle with that skirt!’

    And how many times have we heard of gay kids being kicked out of their houses by their Christian parents? You know, if they just wanted to villify Islam, they just should have had the father do an honor killing on his daughter. But of course, because they need the cardboard hero get a new ‘Christly’ girlfriend as a reward for defending God (isn’t he supposed to be omnipotent and omnipresent? What kind of god -needs- defending by this schmuck?)

    You nailed it. Projection. They just can’t comprehend people really not believing because it doesn’t make sense to them. They have to be emotionally rejecting things for dumbass reasons. It’s a way to dismiss what we say without ever hearing us.

    And the very bottom of this problem….their intended audience will lap it up, because they’re so insular they think it’s actually real.

    Liked by 1 person

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  9. sjl1701 says:

    My best friend and his wife were aiming for two and ended up with 3. His quote from after the twins arrived was: “We had forgotten what true exhaustion really was.”

    Scott

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    • I’m guessing they relearned that lesson very quickly. My goodness. I can’t even imagine that level of tired. I’m sitting here just dazed after like four hours myself, trying not to just go back to bed for a few hours more because I know it’ll mess me up tonight if I do, but at least I can do that. It’s an (increasingly attractive) option. Twins? YIKES. Bet they were happy when those two kids became more portable (as a parent friend of mine used to put it to describe kids who grow old enough to sleep the night, to not need diapers, can travel without parents’ needing to drag a carload of gear along with them, and can amuse themselves to at least some extent).

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  10. OneSmallStep says:

    Ugh. My condolences on your former friend. It’s enough to make one want to ask her why she was friends with you if she wanted to change such a fundamental part of your personality. It’s like she just saw you as a blank slate, waiting for her “artistic genius.”

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  11. OneSmallStep says:

    Yeah … Do people even register as people in this belief system? Or are the ‘unsaved’ just video game characters and the belief system is desperately pushing buttons to unlock the Salvation Achievement?

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    • One of our atheist friends accused Biff of treating him like a notch on a Bible cover. It was awesome. His response: “You’re right. I’ll work on that.” (His standard response when backed into a corner.) I’ll let you guess what actually changed.

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  12. OneSmallStep says:

    Well, based on how you’ve described Biff, one could argue that he didn’t lie … he just got worse. So he worked on it in the opposite direction!

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  13. Pingback: The Unwashed Heathens and Foreigners of “God’s Not Dead.” | Roll to Disbelieve

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