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Goodbye Jesus

God Awful Movies


Fweethawt

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I put myself through the second half of God's Not Dead after trying to watch it a couple times before and only making it halfway, which I decided to do partly out of curiosity about all the attention it got and partly hoping it would be funny in a stupid way. It was painful. Besides the obvious pushing of Christianity and being marketed to a Christian audience that everyone says, the plot was unbelievable and just ridiculous. In case anyone doesn't know, it's about a Christian college guy who decides to challenge his professor when he tries to make the students say God is dead, and the professor has him defend his belief to the class.

 

Josh still wants to date his girlfriend even when she's an obnoxious jerk to him: demanding he give up his crusade against Radisson to make her happy, knocking his book away from him when he's reading so he'll pay attention to her, and a bunch of other stuff I forgot. And he still wants to be with her. Yeah, right. The only reason I can see for this is so that Josh can be the ever-forgiving and gracious Christian guy.

 

A Muslim woman turns out to be a secret Christian and hiding it from her dad. >.> This was so condescending. Oh look, we have someone of another faith in our Christian movie - lol she's actually given up her pagan ways for the right religion. And her Muslim brother is a prying brat who steals her iPod, sees she's listening to Franklin Graham read 1 Corinthians, and she immediately starts screaming at him not to tell their dad. Because somehow, a ten-year-old Muslim kid would know about either Franklin Graham or 1 Corinthians. When her Muslim dad finds out - because he also mysteriously knows about Christian culture - he beats her and throws her out. Moral: Muslims suck. Unless they've converted to our religion, in which case they're OK.

 

When the secret Christian girl is walking around on campus, before she takes off her hijab, a girl walks up to her and tells her she's beautiful. My first thought was lesbian subtext, but nope: the girl says she wishes secret Christian girl didn't have to wear the hijab. It isn't even clear whether this other girl is a Christian; she just decided to assume that a woman who appears to be Muslim isn't making her own decision to wear it, and belittle her religious beliefs. Moral: It's totally fine to put down people's religion to their face, if you think you're being nice and giving them a compliment.

 

Radisson, the evil atheist, is utterly unconvincing as a professor. One of the first things he announces to the class is that they will "bypass senseless debate" and assume that God is "dead": no longer relevant. This would never happen in a real classroom. The point of academics is to learn, which you can do by challenging your own beliefs, and one way to do so is TO DEBATE. After the first class, Radisson follows Josh, grabs him to make him turn around, and tells Josh that he won't be defeated, that there is only one god and that in his classroom, Radisson is god. Radisson also gets no repercussions for his behavior (I assume because Josh is the forgiving Christian, again). Professors don't get away with assaulting and threatening students. This would never, ever happen. God, have these people ever been to a university? Given their intellectual dishonesty and terrible filmmaking skills, probably not.

 

Unsurprisingly, Radisson treats his wife horribly. They were together while she was in one of his classes - evil assaulting atheist is now creepy as well - but this one is weird because she's a Christian, and you would think a Christian in this movie would see a moral problem with dating your professor. Anyway, he's giving a dinner party for his colleagues, and while he and the guests are talking about Josh, Radisson says something in his wife's presence about how stupid Christianity is. Before the dinner party, the wife tells him she got the wine he had asked her to pick up, but says she left it in the car. When she serves it to his guests - because she's the maid at a party she isn't invited to for some mysterious reason - no one drinks it and another of the evil atheists comments it tastes terrible, as does Radisson. Because if you're an atheist, being rude to the person serving you/your host's wife is fine. Radisson makes some mean comment to his wife, who starts to cry and sarcastically says the help is leaving. This part explains why she couldn't just have gotten the wine out of the car - she had to leave it there so that it would taste bad, providing an opportunity for the atheists to show that they like to humiliate people, especially Christians.

 

Then there's the liberal journalist, who has a "Meat is Murder" sticker on her car (really??) and prides herself in going after Christians. She hounds Willie Robertson from Duck Dynasty as he's heading into church, asking rude questions about why he's Christian or something like that, and of course as the ever-gracious Christian, he's really nice to her. He does get a bit annoyed eventually, but still follows the patient and kind formula in this movie. When she meets the Newsboys band and is immediately aggressive towards them, they also smile and politely answer her questions. And pray for her when she tearfully admits she was a jerk because she has no peace in her heart, and is dying of cancer. So, liberals as well as Muslims and atheists are a stereotype, are rude in response to Christians' courtesy, and just hate Christians.

 

Bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked Josh becomes unlikable towards the end, but clearly he's supposed to be a martyr defending Jesus. Radisson decides to debate Josh in class (thought we were bypassing senseless debate?) and when he still doesn't accept god's existence after all Josh's arguments in god's favor, Josh actually yells at him that he doesn't believe because he hates god, asking him "WHY - DO YOU - HATE - GOD?!?" Radisson cracks and admits that he really does hate god, because god let him down. Turns out in another scene that when he was a kid he asked god to save his Christian mom from cancer, but she died. *sigh* Non-Christians aren't Christian because they're "mad at god," and also it's OK to yell at your professor in front of the class if you're standing up for Jesus.

 

I don't really know what else to say about this. It was just awful. I hope I've satisfied some people's curiosity about how terrible this is, so now you don't have to subject yourself to the self-aggrandizing pile of prejudice against anyone who isn't Christian that this is. If anything, this movie makes you feel better about yourself because at least you haven't produced something like this rubbish.

 

Anyone seen God's Not Dead 2? I had thought about watching it at some point, but not if it's as entertaining as this one.

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If you go here: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/godlessindixie/

 

Neil live tweeted and wrote a short and to the point review of God's Not Dead 2. I would suggest reading his review and tweets rather than going through the agony of watching the whole thing. Do something more productive like watching grass grow or if you're in the midwest like me, waiting for the cicada infestation to happen.

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  • 3 weeks later...

God's not dead is by far one of the worst Christian movies I have seen (even worse than movies like the blind side or flywheel). My parents took me to see it when my mom sensed I was "drifting".

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What made them decide a cheesy circle-jerk that villainizes non-Christians would make you want to be a Christian? GONZ9729CustomImage1539775.gif

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Regarding God's Not Dead: the trailer for both movies features the same song. I thought that demonstrates quite clearly how lame they are.

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  • 3 weeks later...

What made them decide a cheesy circle-jerk that villainizes non-Christians would make you want to be a Christian? GONZ9729CustomImage1539775.gif

 

But... but don't you want not to be a bad person? :P

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