Neil Carter

Guest columnist

The movie God's Not Dead recently came out on DVD, which means that churchgoers will soon be watching it in groups, praising the way it demonstrates the triumph of the Christian message over the defiant narcissism of those who reject the gospel. As a former Christian who now identifies as a non-believer, I have been encouraged to watch this movie more times than I can count. In order to speak from knowledge rather than from ignorance, I forced myself to watch the movie a few days ago, and I found it nearly insufferable. I wasn't put off by the movie simply because it celebrated the Evangelical variety of the Christian faith, for that's my own cultural heritage; I know it like I know the back of my own hand. And I wasn't put off simply because the quality of the writing and directing was so very bad (although, believe me, it was). What upset me most was how routinely terrible they made the atheists in the movie, and how badly they misrepresented a people group which the makers of the movie clearly have never tried to understand.

Because some people around me will view me through the lens of this movie (shudder), I feel the need to respond to its portrayal of atheists in order to explain just how much of an injustice I found this cinematic train wreck to be. First, I'll list 10 things I "learned" about atheists from watching this movie, then I'll explain what I think is the chief offense of this film (and of those who unscrupulously praise and recommend it).

God's Not Dead portrays three or four primary atheist characters: The pompous, bombastic university professor (surrounded by a supportive gang of snickering atheist colleagues), a self-absorbed businessman, his snarky, condescending journalist girlfriend, and a stern Chinese father of an exchange student. Observing their behavior, I learn the following:

1. Atheist professors are predatory, and they are out to convert everyone into ideological clones of themselves. Clearly the concept of people committed to "free thought" and "liberal arts" is utterly foreign to the writers of this flick. Ironically, while no secular university I've ever heard of would hesitate to fire a professor who demands a signed renunciation of religion from his students, I have heard of Christian schools which demand written statements of belief from both their students and faculty. In real life only one of these two cultures threatens people with everlasting torment for not believing the right things, and it's not the group being caricatured in the movie.

2. Atheists are selfish, self-absorbed, greedy jerks. Dean Cain's ambitious acquisitions shark is cold-hearted and callous to everyone he knows including his girlfriend, his sister, and even his own aging mother. He won't lift a finger for anyone who won't first offer him something in return, and when his girlfriend discloses that she is dying of cancer, he brushes her off as an inconvenience. His behavior is as despicable as the professor's and clearly he has no heart at all.

3. Atheists are cocky, self-sure, and totally enamored with their own superiority. Professor Radisson openly mocks the brave, young Christian hero to his face in front of the class and in front of his colleagues. But he doesn't just do it to the poor freshman kid; he also mocks his own girlfriend (Do atheists marry at all in this alternate reality?) to her face at a dinner party while his atheist cohorts sip Merlot and laugh condescendingly at her. Truly cringe-worthy.

4. Atheists will openly threaten you, bow up, get in your face, stare you down, and even chase you down a hallway and grab you to force you to listen to their angry diatribes because your faith makes them so angry!

5. Atheists are clearly incapable of love. If you're hurting or sick they'll abandon you. They cannot be inconvenienced with other people's problems because as we learned in No. 2, they are only interested in themselves and what they can get from you.

6. Atheists lack ethical boundaries, so they'll date students against virtually every university's rules and then later remind them that the reason they liked them in the first place was just because they were hot (see #5).

7. They disbelieve in God because something bad happened to them. See, since everyone is supposed to subscribe specifically to Abrahamic monotheism by factory default, the only reason anyone could wind up thinking there is no God is because of personal trauma and disillusionment leaving them damaged and spiteful. And really, deep down they don't disbelieve in God at all, but rather…

8. Atheists are angry at God. You can just hear it in all of their voices. They're all so constantly angry (unless they've got an alcoholic beverage in their hands). They only say they disbelieve, but what do they know? Poor deluded empty soulless people! They only think they don't believe but in reality they're just angry at a God they really know exists. Never mind if they say they don't believe. You know better than they do. Bless their cold, empty deluded hearts.

9. Atheists are miserable because they believe life is meaningless. There's no point to life and nothing is of lasting value beyond their own lives, so you might as well just do what you wanna do and who cares about anyone else? Even as I type this I can hear the voices of at least a dozen people I know who have sincerely asked me how I can have any meaning to my life or reason to get up in the morning because they can't understand how I could have any. This movie totally validates that for them.

10. Atheists have no basis for morality. The brave young hero explained this for us toward the very end. If there's no God, then there can't be any good reason to follow rules or be honest or do anything moral. Come to think of it, it's a wonder these atheists aren't all murderers.Just as an added bonus, I also learned from this movie that Muslims beat their children while Christians show everyone endless patience, kindness, understanding, and empathy (excepting only the young hero's shallow girlfriend who inexplicably dumps him for being heroic I guess). I also learned that if a car won't start you can get it to run by praying for it, provided that you believe hard enough that your prayer will be answered. Furthermore, I learned that most difficult life decisions can be solved with a Bible citation.

Perhaps above all what we learn from God's Not Dead is that college is a threatening place. It's a scary place where the bad guys are the educators. Just let that sink in for a minute. Just like in that notoriously fabricated chain email, academia is a threatening place where you go to have your beliefs attacked by evil professors who want to force you to give up your cherished beliefs. Surely that is a healthy approach to higher learning which will help advance our common endeavors as a society, right?

In the end the central injustice of this movie is its failure to fairly represent a class of people whom Christians purport to love. But it's not loving people well to misrepresent them this badly. This movie caricatures, dehumanizes, and depersonalizes people like me, portraying us in the worst possible light. How could I not find this movie disgustingly offensive? Every single atheist in this film is a spineless, uncaring jerk. This is how you love someone like me? You made atheists the bad guys. And not even complex bad guys. You made us two-dimensional cartoon villains who rub our hands together menacingly, tweaking our pencil-thin mustaches above our sinister grins. Children should be afraid to come near us. Employers should think twice before hiring us. And clearly women should steer clear of dating us because obviously we lack hearts.

This is not love. You cannot love people while ignoring everything they tell you about themselves. You are not loving people when you refuse to listen to their stories. You are not loving them well when you decide before hearing them that you already know all that you need to know about them, overruling their own self-descriptions and self-identifications because you are convinced you know better than they do what's going on inside of them. When you continually speak of people in terms to which they cannot agree, you are not showing them respect or validating them as real people. This movie represents a grievous failure to love people like me. If you watch this and then beg me to go watch it as well, it tells me that in some way you accept its presentation of what I am like even though I'm telling you it's not accurate. If you say you are to be known by how you love, then this should upset you. The words may be there, but the thing your words promise is not.

So if you are a Christian and if you are able to make it through this film without cringing at the stereotypes and misrepresentations it presents, I cannot imagine you will be able to see me for who I really am or relate to me in any way that is based in reality. If you harbor such a grotesquely caricatured straw man picture of what I'm like, then I dare say you won't be able to hear a word I'm saying. If this movie doesn't irritate you the way I know it would have irritated me when I was a Christian, you need to spend some time getting to know real flesh-and-blood non-believers. I'll wager you wouldn't ordinarily have much motivation to do that (except in order to engage us in debate). But someone you love may be an atheist, and I'm trying to warn you that as long as this movie doesn't make you nauseous for all its misrepresentations and cliches, you aren't gonna love your loved one well. You're going to need some real conversations in which you ask some sincere questions and let your loved ones tell you about themselves and their own thought processes without trying to cram what they say into a preconceived doctrinal grid. Is loving them worth that to you? Are you secure enough in your faith to even have such a conversation with someone like me?

(The full version of this article originally appeared on Neil's blog, Godless in Dixie, on Patheos.com)

Neil Carter is a father, a writer, a coach, and a teacher in the Jackson area. He is also a member of the small but growing Mississippi Humanist Association.