Hollywood's War on Christianity Now Using Aliens

I recently saw the movie Paul. It's a comedy about two young adult male British nerds who are realizing a longtime dream of coming to America to visit Comic-Con, followed by taking a tour of famous UFO sites in the US (like Roswell and Area 51). As they're traveling, they witness a car suddenly veer off the desert highway and crash. When they stop to investigate, they meet Paul, a rather foul-mouthed alien who has escaped government capture and is trying to get home.

The movie is pretty funny, with lots of nerd references — from Star Wars (the cantina theme being played in a trucker bar, a guy shooting out his CB radio as he murmurs "Boring conversation anyway") to Close Encounters (a spaceship landing at Devil's Tower, a large firework that plays the five-note theme) and Aliens (a character quotes "Get away from her, you b---", a line spoken by Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, to Sigourney Weaver's character in Paul). It is also full of bathroom and locker room humor that's so popular with the kids these days.

The part where it starts to dig at religion comes when, soon after meeting Paul, the Brits decide to pull their RV into an RV park. They are greeted by a young blonde girl, Ruth, who comments on how she'd like to travel someday but has never gone anywhere in her life yet. The conversation is interrupted by a gruff voice calling her back to the office/house for "PRAYERS!"

The next day, Ruth visits the Brits' RV, and she starts to reveal herself as what I like to call a "Strict Creationist" — someone who believes in the literal word of the Bible, that the Earth was created 4,000 years ago in a process that spanned six days, and that there is no possible way there could be "alien life" elsewhere, as we were all created in God's image. Paul, somewhat put out by this, emerges from his hiding place in the bathroom. After fainting (something of a running gag in the film), she awakens and tries to convince herself it was her imagination, until she sees Paul again. She then goes into a fit of hysterics.

Up to this point, it's not so bad. Hollywood loves its stereotypes, especially taken to extremes. An openly gay character will be extremely flamboyant; a character born in the Lone Star State will almost invariably be wearing a cowboy hat and calling every female "Darlin'". It's almost a foregone conclusion that an openly Christian character will end up being extreme fundamentalist.

To stop her fit and from denying his very existence, Paul does this "alien thing" where he gives Ruth all of his knowledge and experience, including memories of his galactic travels.

Here's where it starts to turn south.

Filled with this knowledge, Ruth decides that all of what she believed is wrong, decides there is no God, and she is free to swear and fornicate. She then spends the rest of the movie trying to swear (in a manner not completely unlike Captain Kirk trying to "fit in" to contemporary Earth in Star Trek IV). Paul does make a token effort at trying to settle her down and say his experience doesn't necessarily preclude the existence of God, but his comment is ignored.

Going from one extreme to another isn't completely out of place in a low-brow Hollywood comedy. But the telling scene comes at the end, when, in a very sober moment, Paul says he's sorry for destroying Ruth's faith. Her reply? "You didn't destroy me; you freed me."

That actually made me a little angry. This was not a comedic scene; it was said with all seriousness, like it was one of the morals of the story. Faith is confining, and a foul mouth and spread legs is freedom. The disdain for religion is reinforced when Ruth's father wishes him well by saying "God be with you", and Paul scoffs, "Yeah, whatever."

I know it's just a story, and I should really just relax. And, when it comes down to it, I do see fundamentalism to be rather confining. I believe God has created this whole universe and there are many wonders and possibilities we have yet to even discover; and refusing to acknowledge wonders God has created because you cling to your narrow interpretation of what you know of Him today is akin to wearing blinders. I just object to this assertion that immorality and atheism is automatically superior to religion. These things are never "free", whether you believe in God or not — not believing does not release you from the consequences. And I'm not just talking about "fire and damnation". Promiscuity can lead to unwanted pregnancies, diseases, lack of trust in relationships; foul language can lead to loss of respect.

But, I guess, if you really believe your existence is over and done in 80 years, even these "little" consequences don't mean much, either.…

Focus on the Prejudice

Recently, the evangelical group Focus on the Family was promoting a certain book, The Christmas Sweater, written by Glenn Beck. In a nutshell, at least from what I can gather from the Amazon summary and other news reports, it's a book about Christmas, God, family values, and redemption. One that seems to be quite popular, and one that seems to be in line with what Focus on the Family might promote.

Unfortunately, it was "outed" that the author, Glenn Beck, was in fact Mormon (gasp). From Beck's web site here, which ultimately leads to the story at Mormon Times, an anti-Mormon group posted a release to Christian News Wire calling Mormonism a cult, saying they were not Christian, and condemning Focus on the Family for not calling attention to the "differences" between Mormonism and Christianity, and therefore implying that Beck is a Christian and promoting the "false religion".

Focus is headquartered not far from here, and I have heard of Mormons who have been denied working there because of their insistence on their employees being Christian and their rejection of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a Christian church. (Might as well "out" myself here as well; I've heard these reports first-hand from members of my own congregation, being a Latter-day Saint myself.) So I suppose this can only be seen as "corrective" action on their part. It's still fairly disappointing, for apparently it reveals them as being more focused on their prejudice against a religion they don't agree with than the message being promoted.

I think the news wire release contains a couple of particularly damning points of these anti-Mormons that I found particularly interesting, in the one paragraph in which they actually reference Mr. Beck.

While Glenn's social views are compatible with many Christian views, his beliefs in Mormonism are not. Clearly, Mormonism is a cult. The CitizenLink story does not mention Beck's Mormon faith, however, the story makes it look as if Beck is a Christian who believes in the essential doctrines of the faith.

I underlined the things that stood out to me. Why do I find these parts so interesting? Well, first off, they fail to take into account that these social views are influenced by the very religion they're attempting to discredit. Likewise, if the story accurately reported on Beck's views (at least as presented in the particular book), and the results of the story are a set of views that "look like the essential doctrines of the faith", well, then, it stands to reason that Beck's beliefs are comparable to "the essential doctrines of the faith".

Are Mormons Christian? We steadfastly believe so. The name of the church — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — directly names Jesus Christ, and we study the Old and New Testaments as sacred books of scripture. The subtitle of the "controversial" book of scripture, the Book of Mormon, is "Another Testament of Jesus Christ". Our weekly sacrament service, as the name implies, centers around the partaking of the sacrament, in memory of the Savior and his sacrifice for us in body and blood. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ. "And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins." So from a very simple definition of Christian — a disciple of Jesus Christ — we certainly seem to pass. But for a more scholarly discussion and research, there exists The Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research, which has collected several articles, talks, and responses to the "you're not Christian" accusation.

In the meantime, I'll continue to follow Christ according to the dictates of my own conscious, love my neighbor, be honest and true to my fellow men, and do my best to be a good husband and a father. If someone thinks that makes me or the church that teaches these principles un-Christian, despite evidences to the contrary, I suppose that's the price of discipleship, but in the end, I'll let God be my judge.

I do have to wonder how Focus on the Family managed to promote this book in the first place. From what I can tell, it didn't seem like Glenn Beck had been hiding his religious affiliation before now, so a very simple bit of fact-checking by Focus's PR department would've revealed this "inconvenient truth" well in advance. Perhaps it was a moment of weakness where they were focused more on the message than the specific religion of the author.

Don't say that word!

Religious discussions (particularly on the internet) rarely end well. No matter what forum, someone will bring up the ways religion has been perverted to propagate fraud for someone's financial gain, or how many people have died because of arguments that have led to violence that have led to wars over religious differences, or some other list of atrocities. And, nearly always, someone will posit that religion itself is the cause of those travesties, arguing they would not have happened if religion had not existed, and therefore, the world would be a much better place, and indeed would have been a much better place for all of history, if religion didn't exist.

It's a hurtful thing to say to someone of faith, that the world would be a better place without something that you believe to be important. I don't think it's necessarily said with the intent to be hurtful. It's just an expression of their opinion.

Because opinions differ to such a degree, however, it's considered "conventional wisdom" that, to avoid hurt feelings, one simply does not discuss religion.

I've thought about this, though, and something occurs to me. If I were Satan, and I wanted to stop people from drawing closer to God, it seems that one very effective way to do this would be to stop people from talking about Him. I think that spreading it around that it was somehow "impolite" to talk about religion might be a good way to make people stop talking about it. In fact, it might have the added bonus of making people expect a religious discussion to be impolite before it even began, to make them less likely to respect another's point of view (even if they disagree with it) and more likely to use absolute statements that are hurtful and mean, perhaps without even realizing it.

So that means the only appropriate response is to talk about it.

The argument goes that religion is the cause of so much evil and horror in the world, leading to many of the wars in history. However, I look at our current government. It has ruled under a policy of not governing according to a religion. And yet, it has had plenty of opportunity to wage wars for different reasons. So to suggest that wars were caused by religion would also suggest that, without religion, the wars wouldn't exist. And yet, mankind seems to find plenty of reason to wage war outside of religion.

Some people point to the instances of people using religious influence to swindle people out of money for their own personal gain, or even violations of person. This, too, has plenty of evidences outside of religion to be considered a flaw of religion itself.

The very argument that religion should be thrown out based on these examples is flawed anyway. It is an extreme solution that focuses on the negatives of people misusing the tool. One could make the same argument with governments. Or public schools. Or armies. Or the Boy Scouts. Or the internet. Guns. Television. Oil. You name it; somebody has used it to hurt someone. Maybe even lots of people. Maybe started wars over it. And yet to say "it" is bad is just scapegoating at best.

I'm not sure why someone would say the world would be better off without religion. Maybe it's scapegoating. Maybe it's just that they don't like it and would rather not hear about it anymore (akin to me saying "The world would be better off without rap music," no matter how many people like it). Maybe it really is an attempt to say something so extreme and hurtful that it closes off any further conversation. It's hard to say, considering a statement like that does close the door to any meaningful dialog.

Which, unfortunately, is probably very pleasing to a certain enemy to all righteousness...