By James Wilson
The
filmed version of Noah is a produced version of the Biblical story of the Great
Flood, well acted and well written. And
it tears the very heart from the reality portrayed in the Word of God. Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously declared
everyone is entitled to his own opinion but nobody is entitled to his own
facts. If a film producer wants to tell
a story – any story – he is welcome to any way that seems good to him. But he is not welcome to tell his story and
claim it is really some other story on which the copyright was established
millenia ago. Such a producer is a
cinematic fraud.
The
Genesis account of the Flood depicts a God who tells Noah in great detail how
to build the ark; the cinematic Noah tries to contact God repeatedly and receives
only silence. Noah’s three sons are all
married and planning future generations in Genesis; God actually commands them
to multiply in Genesis 9. But the movie
Noah believes God intends humanity to end with the deaths of his own family; he
lets one fiancé die and threatens to kill the offspring of the only married son. The most serious about-face in the film is
having Noah and his family worship the serpent.
In the Genesis account the serpent in the garden is the enemy of all
life and the usurper who would steal God’s throne out from under Him if he
could. In other words the film presents
nothing original in itself. It is merely
a darkside rendering of the antithesis of the Biblical story. And I will say again the producer is welcome
to tell his own original story if he will, but to simply counterfeit the Bible
is nothing less than fraud and nothing more than lying under cover of the art
form.
My purpose here is not to make a case for the
truth of the Bible; that case has been made.
But I would make a case for letting the Bible – or any literary work –
speak for itself without people who do not believe it presuming to re-write it
to suit themselves or their need for self-justification. This is a matter of integrity – artistic or
otherwise.
“But”
– some would argue – “how much difference does it make, these details of the
story you cite in your second paragraph.”
It makes the difference between a God who loves and a God who hates,
between a God who makes provision for the continuation of humanity despite the
trainwreck they have made of His creation and a God who apparently wants all
human life destroyed. (God never does
tell Noah to show mercy to his grandchild; Noah is simply unable to complete
the killing.) It is the difference
between a God who longs to communicate and have intimacy with His people – and
has provided a means to that end – and a God who broods in silence over the men
and women scurrying about trying to avoid His wrath like some gigantic spider
contemplating the next meal of its helpless prey below.
Do
we want a God who loves and reaches out to us despite our persistence in
provoking Him by our treatment of each other?
Or would we prefer a God who obviously hates the very people He has
made, giving us first the silent treatment and then a cosmic waterboarding? More to the point – for this piece – will we let
the competing versions of God’s story stand against one another that the better
prevail in the marketplace of ideas, or do we honor the one that masquerades as
the other?
Of
course the ultimately guilty parties are not the film producers but credulous people
who – for the most part – claim to be Christian, but are so Biblically
illiterate they have no idea whether they see truth or fiction when God is
depicted on-screen. The solution is
simple enough: Read your Bible before
watching a movie that claims to tell you what it says.
The
Apostle Peter tells us to be always ready to account for our faith. That is for the sake of those who have none,
but equally for those who believe we do.
Jesus says – Matthew 10 – those who acknowledge Him on this planet will
be acknowledged by Him in the presence of His Father; those who don’t, not so
much. This can be construed as a threat
to the unfaithful, but it is really a promise of never ending devotion. The Son says again – Matthew 28 – He will
never ever leave us behind or alone. But
it all kinda begins with a commitment to truth.
James A. Wilson is the author of Living
As Ambassadors of Relationships and The
Holy Spirit and the End Times – available at local bookstores or by
e-mailing him at
praynorthstate@charter.net
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