“God is dead” – Paul; “Paul is dead” – Box Office

Copyright 2011 - Universal Studios

What is it with British filmmakers and attacking God?

Eighteen months ago, Ricky Gervais took an interesting premise in The Invention of Lying – he creates a world where people compulsively tell the truth -- and uses it to ridicule the Christian faith. The "theology" (and I use the word loosely) that Gervais brings to the screen could be demolished by any second-year seminary student, and even by many lay Christians. Talking fast and being funny isn't a substitute for clear thought and evidence.

So this week we get another serving of religious ridicule courtesy of Paul, the new film by screenwriters/actors Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. As someone who appreciated much of the genre-lampooning humor in Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, I was interested to see where Pegg and Frost would go with their alternative alien-comes-to-Earth scenario. At first, it appeared as if they were going to carefully skewer the idea of difference – the problems of being an "alien" in its many contemporary iterations. But the one difference that the filmmakers will not abide is a difference in theological ideology.

Pegg and Frost play a couple of British graphic-novel geeks on a pilgrimage to comic book Mecca: the San Diego Comic-Con. All of the targets are easy. The running joke is that the two men are mistaken for a gay couple. Together they hit the road in an RV, have a run-in with a couple of rednecks, and stop to take photographs at notable UFO hot spots around the American Southwest. Along the way they meet Paul, a smart-mouthed alien with a penchant for dropping his pants, pervasive profanity, and an evolutionarily-acquired (they go to great pains to point this out) ability to raise the dead. What he does with one of his resurrected beings is the source of a quick laugh.

About halfway into this generally crude, but unremarkable, film, the boys roll their RV up to the Pearly Gates, a trailer park where, sure enough, they encounter a loud, likely daughter-abusing, moronic Bible thumper, who likes to cling to his shotgun even quicker than his Bible. His daughter, a cliché-spewing, half-blind stooge, delivers up theological softballs for Paul to whack out of the park. Actually, one of her questions -- Could Paul account for the apparent irreducible complexity of the eye? -- was pretty good; but Paul's riposte, "About 4 billion years of evoluuuuuution!" is really more begging the question than a real answer. The audience is expected to chuckle at the stupidity of the girl, and at the brilliance of Paul, who in a few short minutes demolishes her faith and puts her on the road to profanity and promiscuity – a road she seems all too eager to traverse. Near the end, when Paul half-heartedly apologizes for shaking up her faith, she thanks Paul for freeing her.

I suppose that there may be some people who find ridiculing "straw-men" Christians to be amusing. It is, after all, easy to make people look foolish, and yourself brilliant, when you get to write what your opponent will say. But when films move from light entertainment to engaging in bad theology – which is, if true, a matter of eternal life or death – most people are going to put on the brakes. If the new British comic invasion is fixated on ridiculing the religion of more than two billion people worldwide, then they need to be resisted. But it will not take vocal demonstrations and boycotts to doom such films (don't do it, they never work as intended) -- they just need to die a natural death at the box office. And with the early returns in, Paul is already on life support.

Gervais' film bombed at the box office, and Paul will be heading for the exits shortly after its opening. The right response to a movie such as Paul is to ask questions of those who have seen it: "While there are most certainly some pretty wacky people in the world who claim the name of Christ, do you think that this woman was a fitting representative?" And beyond the arguments concerning organ complexity, what of humanity's dogged belief of people in the ideas of purpose and morality? If we really are nothing but time plus chance plus matter, coming from and going to oblivion, then none of our choices really matter in the long run and we should all do just as we please, even if that includes doing rather heinous things to our neighbors. Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that scientific materialists cannot be moral people -- they can, but only secondhand. They have to borrow a notion of a transcendent vision for life from those pesky theists. Without God, concepts of morality are nothing more than local fictions impressed on rubes so that the powerful can manipulate their gullible neighbors to their own ends.

This might seem like a lot of ink to spill on such an inconsequential film as Paul, but that other Paul – the one who wrote the majority of the New Testament – admonishes followers of Christ to be ready, to have an answer to anyone that asks. So when films question God's Word, we should be prepared to engage with those who watch them.

Marc T. Newman, Ph.D., is the president of MovieMinistry.com, an organization that provides sermon and teaching illustrations, Bible studies and discussion cards, drawn from popular film, and helps the Church use movies to reach out to others and connect with people. Dr. Newman is an associate professor in the School of Communication and the Arts at Regent University. Requests for media interviews, or reprints of this article, can be made to marc@movieministry.com