Tag Archives: Biblical

The Case For Christ

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The Case For Christ is definitely a film where the premise strikes out at you immediately. In 2 of the previous Christian films that I’ve seen (God’s Not Dead 1 and 2) it was about the main character having to prove that God was real. This title flips that around by having the lead try to prove the opposite, that God is fiction. He seeks to do this by overturning the biggest event in Christian history, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Is this feasible or will Lee soon find out that debunking such an event is as futile as trying to suggest that the world is actually flat?

The film starts off with Lee and Leslie heading to a diner to enjoy a nice meal. Unfortunately the situation grows dire when their daughter begins to choke. As despair begins to set in and all hope is lost, a nurse steps in and is able to save their daughter in the nick of time. She is a Christian and Leslie begins to believe that maybe there is a God who is watching over everyone. She goes with the nurse to Church and gets saved. Lee is not happy with this as he is a devout Atheist and tells Leslie that there is no way they can stay together unless she renounces her faith. Leslie refuses and so Lee decides that he will put his reporting profession to use by finding evidence and making a complete case that God doesn’t exist.

Naturally such a journey is doomed for failure. It’s interesting to see the evidence behind the existence of Jesus Christ and how we have hundreds of accounts from individuals who saw him. The mountains of evidence left behind is quite impressive. To Lee’s credit, it does make sense to attack the resurrection if you were trying to debunk the religion since that miracle is really what proved beyond a shadow of a doubt God’s power. There are many other moments in the Bible of miracles as well and even if there wasn’t a mountain of evidence to defend the Resurrection that wouldn’t be enough to rock our faith.

At the end of the day it is impossible to 100% prove or disprove many things. You often have to take a leap of faith and it wouldn’t be worth much if you didn’t need it to proceed. I’m not saying that I would refuse additional proof if it was ever discovered, but I’m fine without it. Everything within the Bible is ultimately all that we need to know. The film fortunately has a happy ending for Lee’s character as he concedes defeat. He was not able to prove that God didn’t exist and furthermore, he only just ended up convincing himself of the opposite. It was a good way to close his character arc.

That being said, I wasn’t a fan of the character. He definitely did not take the situation in stride and came across as completely unreasonable. He’s been married to Leslie for several years at this point, enough to have a daughter who is old enough to talk and everything. Yet, he almost immediately wants to end the marriage because she has become a Christian. I can understand not wanting to accept this and to continue debating it, but not wanting to leave immediately. It’s not like the person suddenly became a Satanist or anything like that. He also doesn’t have any sympathy for criminals and even puts an innocent man in jail because he couldn’t be bothered to look at the facts of the case more closely. That same guy then gets stabbed and nearly fatally injured. Lee is sad about that, but the guy just created so many problems during the film.

Leslie was a good character. She wasn’t too forceful about turning Lee into a Christian right away which was good. It makes sense that she would understand the situation and try to be tactful about the whole thing. Naturally she wouldn’t give up on converting him and that’s good because as a Christian you understand the stakes better than anyone. If she can’t convert Lee in time, he’ll end up burning in Hell for eternity. Of course you don’t want someone you’re close with to experience such a fate. Since the stakes are that high, she has to try playing 4D Chess and trying to slowly get him to her side. At times maybe she wasn’t perfect with her approach, but at least she kept on trying.

I also liked the characters that Lee went to for advice. They all had an extremely confident air about them. Their smirks basically never left and while they weren’t downright condescending to Lee, they certainly seemed to think that he was asking extremely basic questions. Of course they likely weren’t in the best mood since he clearly was asking them questions to get them to take a shot at their religion so they were guarded. I just always like these kind of characters. You know that they’re not going to be on the defensive during the verbal exchange and have all of the answers.

Overall, The Case For Christ is a pretty fun film. The writing is solid and the pacing for The Case for Christ is on point as well. I haven’t seen any debates in a while, but I always like seeing debaters challenge the two sides. I’m certainly not impartial as I’m a Christian, but all the more reasons to better understand the points that the opposition makes so I can know how best to respond. If you liked God’s Not Dead then I believe you’ll like this film. The main character is definitely annoying, but the rest of the case is solid. His coworkers are all pretty fun characters and the Nurse who saved the kid at the beginning isn’t bad. Maybe a little ineffective the whole time, but saving the kid is really all she needs on her resume. I’ll definitely be interested to see which film this company churns out next.

The Young Messiah

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There are some movies that had good intentions and just didn’t work so well and others that had poor intentions from the start. This one is the former and the plot just didn’t do it for me. The film had to take a lot of liberties to be a full length feature film, but at the same time I just can’t picture a lot of this happening. Now, I won’t profess to be a super expert on the Bible where I can tell you 100 quotes or have all the families of David memorized, but I do believe that in the Bible it is heavily implied that Jesus lives a very ordinary life as a kid. He didn’t stand out and that’s why we didn’t hear about the great miracles he performed or his status as the Savior until after he had grown up. This film has him performing many miracles and in front of large crowds at the age of 7. (Apparently anyway based on the poster) He even has to run from the authorities because they find out and it becomes a huge debacle. I’m just not sure about this.

One big plot point in the film is that Jesus is initially a seemingly ordinary child and he doesn’t even know about his abilities. Gradually, he starts to gain knowledge of them and at times he personifies his role as the son of God and then he’ll turn back to normal. It’s almost like his body is slowly being taken over or his mind is being awoken from a long sleep and I’m not sure about that either. Granted, there aren’t really any easy answers for this. Did Jesus just take up one day when he was an adult with his full knowledge or had he always known ever since he was a kid? I actually like to think it was the latter personally. I believe that Jesus was essentially a perfect child and that he simply lived a very quiet life. He wouldn’t lie, steal, or make any moral mistakes that many kids make, but at the same time he would learn how to read and write the same as any other person.

After all, God chose to come to Earth as a man in order to live among us and save as many people as possible. I think it’s definitely feasible that as a result, he wouldn’t have immediately brought about his all knowing mind and other abilities that would make him stand out from the start. That’s why I can picture him knowing that he is Jesus Christ and just gradually growing up normally until it was time for him to act in the public sphere. Furthermore, I imagine that he waited to act until it was the perfect time for him to have an influence on as many people as possible. As a child maybe he knew that less people would be more convinced or that it would hurt in the long run. God knows all eventualities so he would ultimately choose the best route.

As I mentioned, I do think it was a nice effort in concept though. Biblical scholars have made a profession out of reading the Bible and trying to find more details that are hard to catch or can only be noticed by cross checking various books in the Bible and even other sources. You can find out a lot of fascinating things online and I’m sure that they would love to learn more about Jesus as a child. I just think that there isn’t much to find because he just wasn’t standing out at the time. Did Jesus have to content with bullies when he was a kid? Maybe. Did he have to revive a boy who was killed by the Devil in an attempt to frame him? That one’s a far greater stretch, but you never know. The point is, the film had to take a lot of liberties to make this a film, but as long as it doesn’t directly contradict the Bible or attempt subtly make Jesus or other individuals look bad, then it’s fine.

Overall, This can still be a good film to check out if you find the premise interesting. I personally prefer to relive parts of the Bible or listen to scholars speculate what may have happened back in the day based on their findings. I just find those more interesting than a film like this one, but it’ll really depend on the individual. At the very least, you can be sure that the writers probably did their homework on how the scenery and surroundings may have looked so that can be fun to see. It is good to see so many Christian films coming out nowadays and hopefully that trend will continue. The God is Not Dead series is certainly still my favorite, but we have had a nice array of titles that span many different genres. Hillsong, Risen, The Young Messiah, God is Not Dead, and many more. There is something for every Christian to check out. Some of the films didn’t go very well at all like Noah, which changes so many things that I even wonder about the intentions. I certainly would not be surprised in the least to see some “Christian” based films that exist only to discredit and confuse Christians rather than spread awareness. Always be prepared for every trick in the book in this day and age. I’m not sure which film is coming next, but I shall be awaiting the next Christian adventure.