A Flood of Opinions

“From #hotjesus to Russell Crowe in Noah, Hollywood mines scriptures for scripts” reads the headline of an article on theStar.com. Many have talked about how 2014 is the year for biblical movies. From The Son of God all the way to Exodus premiering in December, the year is packed full of the Bible.

Many people would come to believe that, in general, Christians would enjoy this and love how biblical stories and themes are becoming major films with big names, but that may not be the case. As we have talked much about in class, and especially during our study of The Color of Christ, there are multiple depictions of religions and their stories. As one can see, with differing depictions come differing opinions – some modest and some not so much. This weekend the new movie Noah released and as one can imagine, the opinions of this movie span the spectrum.

In a Fox News video, Jonathan Morris comments on how the Noah Movie doesn’t mention the word “God” at all and instead uses the word “creator.” This has been a fairly large debate on Fox News recently. In a separate interview Director Darren Aronofsky talks about how this was a different time entirely in history where it is a “magical and fantastical world” which would produce different choices in many areas including language.

After the beginning of the backlash, some Christians began bringing up the other side saying that it’s a Hollywood adaption and that people should not be so uptight about it. In an article on Christian Post entitled “Noah Movie: Why Christians Should Stop Complaining About Biblical Movies and Watch Them,” Marty Duren writes about how the movie was never intended to be direct adaption of the story in the Bible. He says that instead of fighting it, Christians should be glad the that “cultural bridges” are being built for the gospel. He writes, “Why destroy the bridge rather than walking over it? The gospel travels more easily over a bridge than over a chasm.”

While we are in the midst of controversy and people getting angry, why not throw in some satire, right? From the Christian Post Phil Cooke writes, “The Noah Movie Opened This Weekend. Christians: Run For the Hills.” This article includes quotes such as, “After Friday’s opening, be ready for millions of Christians to turn away from the faith,” and, “This movie will be the most catastrophic event since the crucifixion.” Again, obviously satire, but one individuals commented “Amen!” There is also a twitter account @FakeJDGreear which pokes fun at issues like this.

Should a Christian, Jew, or Muslim look at this film and be appalled by its inaccuracy to the text? Should they be excited about the text being mentioned at all and take every ounce as a step towards others being enlightened? Or should they look at this film as a film and nothing else? Who knows?! All one can do is understand that the choice made by people will be determined by many different facets – religious background, views of his or her family, geographic location, etc.

People think differently. People see differently. People choose differently. And as we have seen in our studies of American Religion, this is not something new.