You know how people sometimes say, you just gotta see this film; it reminds me exactly of the time I got fired … (okay but we got numerous bulletins from that real-life event… Not that we say that to him, of course… ).
By contrast, friend Thomas Woodward writes to say,
After being told by a half dozen people this past week, “You HAVE to see ‘God’s Not Dead’ — they use arguments and even quote lines from your lectures!”…. my wife and I went tonight out of curiosity, and I’ll say I was very, very pleasantly surprised. Probably the most shockingly enlightened Christian film featuring threads of apologetics I have ever seen (or ever will see) along with fine writing that interweaves story threads… and skilled acting. I was just dumfounded to be sitting in a packed theater (jammed!) enjoying the back and forth between key lines from John Lennox and Stephen Hawking in relation to the claims in “Grand Design”…and between Darwin’s “Natura non facit saltum” quote and the suddenness of the Cambrian explosion. All in all, a stunning achievement to get this kind of film into theaters.
As noted earlier, ignore “Rotten Tomatoes” reviews from people who feel threatened by intelligent films that do not confirm their worldview. Observe that 17% of the critics liked it but 87% of the audience. If the sheer size of that spread doesn’t tell us something, nothing will.
We could also drop from the “take seriously” list reviews from people who wish to tell Christian apologists their business. As if they really wanted them to succeed.
Then there’s the fun of listening to critics huff that they can’t imagine why Christians might feel stigmatized on campus. The critic needs a GPS. Or maybe he should inhale fresh air for once?
Anyway, God’s Not Dead grossed $5,800,000 April 11-13, 2014, which is quite good for a film about serious ideas that don’t interest the current entertainment industry and its expected fans.
Heck, a film that introduces fundamental physics as something other than a vehicle for crackpot cosmology must have something going for it.
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See also: Oxford’s Vince Vitale on how God is not dead.