I’m getting irritated with religion…the world…politics…and
people who argue vehemently and viciously for their own position blaming others
for their problems and never seeing fault in themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a good discussion
and I don’t like to lose, it’s a matter of pride…but then pride is a sin.
I watched “God’s Not Dead” this morning and it was a decent
movie. There were a lot of “convenient”
plot lines that merged together to form a pleasantly dramatic story entirely
centered around the age old debate regarding the existence of God. It struck me about half way through the movie
that the antagonists (or villains, though I think that word is too extreme)
were always portrayed as angry,
Christian-God haters, while the faithful confessing Christ-followers were
innocent victims of cruelty. Granted
that approach helps us to like the hero and hate the bad guys, but it’s so
unrealistic!
Christians DO NOT always act like Christ and evildoers don’t
always have a maniacal laugh and wear a black Stetson. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who the good guys
really are. More often than not we find
ourselves rooting for the underdog because at the end of the day we want freedom
and justice for the little guy more than right-ness in the situation. It makes me wonder why we have to be so
callous in the first place?
Take the movie for example.
The climax…spoiler alert!!!...happens when the student shows the
professor and his classmates that faith is simply a matter of choice. That’s all it’s ever been and that’s all it
can ever be. No one can prove or
disprove God…and to a very limited degree any attempt to disprove God is an
admission that He exists in the first place.
So if it all boils down to a choice, then why does it matter
to you what choice I make? Why should I
have a problem with the choice you make?
And why should either of us be offended when we’re asked to talk about
why we made our choice the way we did? I
guess the conflict comes when I make a choice that has an undesired impact on
you and that is the heart of the issue: when a person makes a choice that
extends beyond their allotted sphere of influence.
Yes, I recall learning that lesson. I had to be taught how my actions might have
consequences on others and I had to learn how to give up something I might want
because it wasn’t mine to have. Yes,
these were the lessons of sharing and most of us had them mastered back in
kindergarten. So what happened along the
way that we forgot the fundamentals? Did
we never learn the lesson properly in the first place? Maybe we should blame our kindergarten
teachers…but then I think that’s what irritates me most.
