http://www.sbl-site.org/publications/article.aspx?

articleId=364

I remember as a high-school student asking my father, "If you had to pick somebody other
than God to be God, who would you pick?"

I expected him to name some very holy person, some personal hero or great saint. Instead,
after a moment’s reflection, he replied thoughtfully, "I would pick a genocidal nihilist who
would instantly obliterate all existence."

Theologically speaking, the question was absurd and meaningless; but the answer, I think,
contained profound insight. God is both the source and the goal of our being, the meaning
as well as the master of our lives. Imagine reality without God, and life becomes
meaningless; imagine divine omnipotence at the disposal of anything other than divine love,
and existence becomes infinite horror.

In Bruce Almighty, God hands over his power to Jim Carrey, who is not a great saint but a
shallow, selfish-centered jerk named Bruce. Instead of anything like infinite horror, though,
the world bumps along more or less as usual, with no worse consequences than some
flooding and minor rioting.

In fairness, despite the fact that God says he’s "going on vacation," there are intimations
that he hasn’t really turned everything over to Bruce. But this is really rather a cheat. Bruce
turns out to be not very good in the prayer-answering department, mainly because God
hasn’t sufficiently expanded his consciousness (forget about omniscience) to deal with the
large number of prayers that come his way. According to Catholic belief, even the saints in
heaven can do that! If God gives you more responsibility than he does power, what does it
prove if you can’t do the job?

Of course Bruce Almighty is a Hollywood comedy, not The Divine Comedy. We’re not looking
for anything approaching theological precision here. Theologians and apologists could
explain why the whole concept of God endowing a creature with all his power (the movie
speaks of all his "powers," as if he were a superhero) is self-contradictory and meaningless,
and why Bruce Almighty obviously doesn’t have the power even of a heavyweight angel, let
alone the Ancient of Days. But hey, it’s just a movie — a lightweight comic parable about
letting God be God and trying to make a difference. Lighten up.

Right. Fine. I’m willing to give the movie its premise. And on the whole I don’t mind its
depiction of God as a dignified, humorous Morgan Freeman. (Of course God is black; look at
all his servants and messengers and so forth — Djimon Hounsou in The Four Feathers, Will
Smith in The Legend of Bagger Vance, Don Cheadle in The Family Man, Michael Clarke
Duncan in The Green Mile, Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost, even Freeman himself in Robin Hood:
Prince of Thieves.)

Undoubtedly some Christians will enjoy Bruce Almighty, in part simply for its subject
matter. Despite a recent bubble of religious themes at the movies, it’s still relatively unusual
for Hollywood to treat God and prayer and so forth without open mockery, and Christian
moviegoers may be so hungry for it that they’ll take what they can get whether the movie is
good, bad, or indifferent, and even whether the treatment of religious themes is
commendable or iffy.
And Bruce Almighty does have some good intentions. It takes seriously the idea of
surrendering to God’s will. It depicts prayer as commendable, while debunking self-centered
prayers. It also critiques the sort of passive fatalism that sits around blaming God rather
than taking action to change things.

Yet the movie goes to the opposite extreme from passive fatalism by suggesting that we
need to look to ourselves and not to God. In one key scene Bruce watches as God climbs a
stairway (or a ladder) to heaven, leaving him behind. "But what if I need you? What if I
need help?" Bruce calls after the Almighty.

My first thought was that God would say something like "I’ll always be with you" (there are
precedents). Then, when I remembered that God still had the "prayer beads" Bruce had
thrown away earlier in the film, I expected God to drop the beads down to Bruce, as much
to say, "If you need my help, try praying."

Instead, here is what God says: "That’s your problem, Bruce — that’s everybody’s problem.
You keep looking up."

In other words, stop "looking up." Stop looking to God. Look to yourself instead. "Don’t pray
for a miracle," the movie emphasizes in so many words: "Be the miracle." Make a
difference. Give blood. Take the high road. Care about people. Forgive. Be satisfied with
what you have.

Oh. Is that what we’d be doing, if only we’d stop "looking up."

Bruce Almighty argues that we can’t be God, but it doesn’t seem to understand how
we need God. There’s a lot about prayer, and the movie agrees that it’s good to pray, but it
doesn’t have much interest in what good it is — why prayer matters. There are gestures in
the direction of why God can’t just grant everybody’s prayers, but little insight into why God
might want us to pray in the first place.

Part of the problem, of course, is that the movie conceives of prayer exclusively in a
petitionary mode, in terms what we ask of God — as opposed to, say, prayers of worship or
adoration, or even thanksgiving or repentance. Sometimes the prayers are selfish,
sometimes selfless, but always people pray only to ask God for help.

The idea that one might ever have anything to say to God that didn’t involve what we want
or need at the moment — that, in a word, it might be both possible and desirable to pursue
a relationship with one’s Maker — has no place here. The movie touches on belief in God,
even trust in God, but it hasn’t got a clue about faith.

Part and parcel of this is the typical movie picture of God as a deity who wants us to be
good and happy, but is nothing remotely like the object and goal of our being, our holy
obsession, our life and our all. He’s a sort of kindly manager or superintendent — just the
sort of deity you might happen to pray to when you want something, but would never think
of turning to just to spend time with him, or to ask forgiveness for your sins.

Speaking of sins, that’s another notion that’s pretty much absent from the film. In this day
and age, it’s hardly surprising to find that, for instance, the hero and the heroine are
cohabitating outside of wedlock. (I was a bit surprised at the way the movie apparently
takes this fact for granted during the first half of the film, while, for example, Grace sits
working on their photo albums.) But I can’t help noticing that, despite Bruce being cross-
examined by God on several occasions, there’s never any slightest hint that the Almighty
might have a preference for marriage over cohabitation.

I was reminded of Kevin Smith’s Dogma, a film with many faults that nevertheless managed
to cast aspersions on a whole litany of sins including idolatry, adultery, suicide, cheating on
taxes, and neglecting the needs of one’s elderly parents. Bruce Almightyis a much safer,
less provocative film, yet here God seems basically concerned that people be unselfish and
positive and pro-active and so forth.

All of this might go down easier if Carrey and director Tom Shadyac (Dragonfly, Patch
Adams) weren’t so determined to set their sights equally low in every other respect. Bruce
Almighty is excessively preoccupied with nose-picking and dog urination (one of Bruce’s
triumphant "be-the-miracle" moments is when he finally trains his dog to pee on the grass
instead of on the furniture). In the film’s lowest gag, Bruce uses his powers to make a
monkey appear out of a man’s butt (à la the camel and the needle’s eye, I suppose) —
then, as the man struggles to get away, the monkey forces his way back in again. Yuck.

Yes, in addition to its theological faults, Bruce Almighty isn’t very funny or creative (though
there are scattered funny scenes). I could write a whole review on the film’s artistic failings,
but lots of critics will be doing that, and the world doesn’t need another artistic
deconstruction of another Tom Shadyac film. It probably doesn’t need a theological
deconstruction of one either, but if I have to spend my time doing one or the other, I
choose to write about the movie’s theological failings. That’s what you really wanted to read
about, wasn’t it?

Three key teaching scenes:

Early in the movie as Bruce attempts to prove that God is not, he asks God how many fingers he’s
holding-out behind his back. When God responds, "Seven" and Bruce brings his hand around to prove
Him wrong only to find that he is now holding-out seven fingers on his right hand, we are reminded that
God’s word is absolute.

Near the end of the movie, in response to God’s asking him what he wants, Bruce gives a litany of
desires for the good of the world and God tells him "That’s great if you’re running for Miss America.
What do you really want?" In this we learn that God desires that we bring Him our heartfelt pleas with
expectations.

And the third teaching point is found in the sound track played when Bruce realizes God has really given
him the power to be God: as Bruce boldly experiments with his new God power, the sound track blares
to a hip hop beat, "you got the power!" And we do as God has given us access to His throne and desires
to meet our every need. We have only to seek Him.

Overall, what we learn from Bruce Almighty is that we must use the talents we are given regardless of
the obstacles we face and that God never gives us talents to be used exclusively on ourselves. Bruce
learns this the hard way, we don’t have to. Whether or not a person believes in God, most people have
thought they could make things better if they ran the world. Some would end world hunger, some
would make world peace, and other would just fix the problems in their own lives. But few people would
ever consider the burden and awesome responsibility of the universe's most absolute power. How
would prayers be answered? How would you handle disasters and riots? What would you do if someone
did not believe in you? `Bruce Almighty' presents a view of what would happen if a man's will were
done. The movie is not only funny but it also looks at the seriousness of what it really means to be God.
The story takes the carnal and self-centered Bruce Nolan, who feels alienated by God, and endows him
with godly abilities to see if he could do any better. In turn, the message relates the fact that humans
cannot do God's job and in fact will only screw it up. Bruce used his newfound abilities for his own gain,
for his own benefit and own selfish desires and each had their consequences. Shadyac used humor as
the first and foremost element to convey this message, but the story does a 180 and turns more
sentimental and emotional before its close. By the way, many critics found this to be a problem, but I
found a certain charm from its ability to be emotional and serious at times. In fact, that's what helped
redeem the often vulgar but often hysterical Liar Liar. The messages are huge without beating your mind
to death. But Bruce Almighty tastefully drives home the message of how important it is to not be so
focused on ourselves and our own wills but to live out our lives more others-centered and sensitive to
God's direction. It was a b-e-a-utiful (couldn't resist) thing to watch Bruce's transformation to surrender
himself to God and even offer up some non-generic prayers before the film's close. Content-wise, the
film falls flat on its face in a couple moments. The movie really is about learning what's really important
in life and concentrating your energies there instead of going for the silly stuff. To me the movie got this
point across with good use of humor and comedy, and I never felt as if I were being preached to unlike
other reviewers. Carrey is in prime form this time out and I really wish he'd stick to doing these types of
movies instead of the dramas, but until God gives me the power, I suspect this wish won't be coming
true. Jim Carrey embodies the scary possibility that at heart every human being is a sugar-
crazed 6-year-old hellion gleefully wreaking havoc in Mommy and Daddy's fastidiously
decorated living room. All this star has to do is stand there and grin to convince you that
once the layers of civilization have been peeled away, what's left is an insatiable, rampaging
id. But being God, Bruce discovers, can also be a drag. When he begins to hear the muttered
prayers of the world, he has no idea how to silence the din. In desperation, he lumps those
millions of pleas into e-mail and answers them with a blanket yes. As a result, a lottery has
so many winners that the city erupts in riot when it's revealed that each lucky contestant will
pocket a measly $17. Meanwhile Bruce's love life suffers after an initial rush. As Grace, the
loyal girlfriend who runs a day-care center, Ms. Aniston brings a likable common-sense
realism to a largely thankless role. Bruce's carelessness in lassooing the moon (a reference
to It's a Wonderful Life that is underscored later on when we get a glimpse of that scene on
television), unleashing an asteroid, and making hundreds of lottery winners, is portrayed as
humorous. Even though we get glimpses of the disasters he causes, Bruce never has to
clean up the mess. And when Bruce tells God that he wants to solve the problems of world
hunger and peace, God tells him that is a "Miss America answer" and His goal seems to be
to get Bruce to think about what would make him happy with no regard for anyone but
himself and the woman he loves. The result is a movie that, despite some very funny
moments, makes the same mistake as its main character without learning any lessons
about maturity or responsibility. It teeters between happily deranged comedy and
sentimental fable, but is unsatisfying in both categories.