July 2003 – Like virtually all Jim Carrey movies, the recent comedic hit Bruce Almighty contains its share of silly moments and belly-laughs, as well as the immature crudity that probably explains the actor’s popularity among many 12-year-old boys.

Bruce Almighty, however, has something different than other Carrey movies: God. The entire film, in fact, deals with the reality of God, the nature of man, and the struggles of life. Although the movie falls well outside any accurate, Biblical portrayal of these matters, many viewers will find the film witty and warm, and may be taken in by its feel-good ending.

The smiley face God
The movie centers on the life of Bruce Nolan, a frustrated television reporter living in Buffalo, New York, who blames God for all the things that go wrong in his life.

After he’s fired from his job, Bruce’s frustration boils over. “Fine! … Come on… Smite me, Almighty smiter,” he defiantly shouts. “You’re the One who should be fired! The only One around here not doing His job is YOU! Answer me!” Later, Bruce tells God, “You suck!”

Bruce Almighty’s version of God – played by Morgan Freeman – doesn’t ignore this mortal’s blasphemy. Summoning Bruce before Him, God lets him know that his rantings have been recorded.“Now, I’m not much for blasphemy,” He says, “but that last one made me laugh.” 

One can hardly imagine the Sovereign God laughing at man’s blasphemy, but that is part of this movie’s problem: from the manner in which He’s portrayed in Bruce Almighty, one cannot properly imagine the Sovereign God of the universe at all.

As The New York Times’ Stephen Holden notes, “The movie’s fuzzy idea of God as a sly old Santa Claus who means well but can’t begin to answer all the prayers directed his way is a soothing pop confection intended to ruffle as few feathers as possible.”

In other words, God has become t¥he buddy we never knew we had. God with a smiley face.

The only problem for those who watch Bruce Almighty is that the true Lord God is nothing like Freeman’s “pop confection.” Jehovah is not “soothing” and, in fact, tends to ruffle feathers – to put it mildly.

Groping for God
So why did the producers think Morgan Freeman was an adequate representation for God? Does it reflect some evil tendency of men to ridicule the Almighty or deny Him the glory due His name? Perhaps. It wouldn’t be the first time Hollywood mocked God.

Bruce Almighty, however, doesn’t feel like intentional mockery. Instead, it seems more like man, in his ignorance and spiritual darkness, attempting to fashion God in his own puny image. It ends up being mockery because the creature simply cannot ever be the Creator.

God has ordained man’s time on the earth, Paul told the Athenians in Acts 17, “that they should seek God, if perhaps they might grope for Him and find “Him, though He is not far from each one of us,” (vs. 27).

Like the Athenians, who created a statue to an “Unknown God,” the producers of Bruce Almighty appear to be groping for their own version of the God they don’t know. And it shows.

A shot at the controls
If the God in Bruce Almighty is so far from the truth, so is the portrayal of God’s interaction with man. In the film, God sets out to redeem the titular character by helping him to see the error of his ways. The vehicle for that change is simple: God challenges the mortal to take a shot at the controls. 

After a series of circumstances that brings Bruce to a nondescript company building called Omni Presents Co., God says, “I’ve brought you here to offer you a job. … My job. You think you can do it better, so here’s your chance. When you leave this building, you will be endowed with all My powers.” The only two restrictions on the deal: Bruce cannot tell anyone he’s God, and cannot “mess with free will.”

How does Bruce use these powers? Probably the same way most of us would, at least initially: for ourselves. Bruce gets himself a new car; the anchor spot on the network news; makes his live-in girlfriend’s breasts bigger; and later, in a particularly crude scene, excites her sexually without actually being in the same room with her.

Bruce’s selfishness is made painfully evident to the viewer. As the San Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle says, “[W]e begin to wonder why Bruce is so thoroughly selfish that he doesn’t once use his divinity to do something for someone else. … Bruce doesn’t heal the sick and doesn’t give to the poor. He tries to ignore the prayers that are bombarding his consciousness.”

We are apparently supposed to see ourselves in the mirror. Holden notes, “All [Carrey] 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” self-centered personality.

Soon, drunk with power, Bruce declares from the pinnacle of a building, “I am Bruce Almighty! My will be done!”

A Christless redemption
How does this movie’s God redeem a soul that has lost its way as badly as Bruce Nolan? One part of that fix is spirituality – and Bruce Almighty has plenty of that: a wish jar for the kids; prayer beads; a recognition late in the film that his girlfriend prays a lot; signs from God to help direct Bruce to the right decisions. 

In this respect, Bruce Almighty represents the trendy phenomenon of Hollywood movies that want to promote spirituality, but not organized religion. When it comes to the relationship between God and man, Carrey’s new movie gets a few things right, but all the really important things wrong.

From a Christian standpoint, then, the spirituality of Bruce Almighty is much ado about nothing. After all, the Athenians, Paul noted, were “very religious in all respects,” and yet this did not profit them. The wrong religion is not much better than no religion, because everything other than the revelation of the True Faith is created by man’s imagination.

Thus “we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man,” Paul tells the men of Athens.

The apostle’s exhortations are still relevant to us today, for although Hollywood – and probably most other Americans – do not literally worship idols formed of gold, silver or stone, many most assuredly worship a god “formed by the art and thought of man.”

Sometimes the human imagination creates stark religious images that create controversy, as did the blasphemous The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988. That film, which portrayed Jesus Christ as a sinful man who surrendered to lust and engaged in fornication, stirred such tremendous controversy within the conservative Christian community that it prompted protests and picket lines when it was released. 

Bruce Almighty, however, does not even mention Jesus Christ (except in two expletives), and this glaring absence of the Son of God is the movie’s major problem. For why should Christ be needed in Bruce Almighty, when its presentation of human redemption is man-centered, rather than God-centered?

At the end of the film, frustrated and broken because he’s made a mess of the world and his own life, Bruce pleads with God: “You win. I’m done. Please. I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to be God! I want you to decide what’s right for me! I surrender to your will!” 

It is a poignant scene, as Bruce is given a second chance. But what is the basis of that second chance? It is human effort, rather than God’s free gift of grace. All Bruce needs to do, he is told, is to realize what he has been created to do and do it; to stop being self-centered and selfish; and to realize that he has the power to make a difference in life.

This is Bruce Almighty’s prescription for making one’s own life better. After God makes Bruce help Him clean a floor, He tells his mortal charge, “A wonderful thing. No matter how filthy something gets, you can always clean it right up.”

Furthermore, God tells Bruce, using power for personal gain isn’t a miracle. “A single mom who’s working two jobs and still finds time to take her kid to soccer practice – that’s a miracle. A teenager who says no to drugs and yes to an education – that’s a miracle. People want Me to do everything for them, and what they don’t realize is, they have the power. You want to see a miracle, son, be the miracle.”

As God prepares to leave, Bruce begins to panic. “What if I need You? What if I have questions?” he asks.

“That’s your problem, Bruce,” God answers. “That’s everybody’s problem: you keep looking up.”

These sentiments are nowhere to be found in the true gospel. Salvation is not by human effort, it is through Christ’s effort alone. The good lessons that some may learn from this film represent the difference between human goodness and righteousness, a chasm that is bridged only by the cross.

In the end, Bruce Almighty is a spiritual film, but with the wrong spirit. Christians should keep in mind that to promote salvation apart from Christ is a message that is anathema (Gal. 1:8f.). It is, in fact, the very essence of the spirit of antichrist, (1 John 4:3).

In such instances, a movie that promotes “morality” but not Christian morality may do more harm than good. At least an explosion-filled summer blockbuster doesn’t pretend to point people to God.

Whose job is it?
So, are we making Hollywood’s job impossible? Is Hollywood supposed to understand the true nature of God and salvation, and then communicate that truth to the culture at large via the big screen?

Exactly whose job is it to present God? If Hollywood never again returns to the days when it produced Biblical epics like The Ten Commandments, does that leave our culture without a witness to the Truth?

Actually, America is left with the same witness that Paul presented to Athens: “What therefore you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you,” (Acts 17:23). Believers, who bear the image of the Son of God, must proclaim the truth of the eternal gospel.

In the end, Paul said of the Athenians’ idolatry, “The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands.”

One may say with equal confidence that the Lord of heaven and earth cannot be captured on film, either.