Religulous

Religious faith: reasonable or ridiculous? In the mind of Bill Maher, the title for his movie says it all, “Religulous.” To Maher, nobody really knows anything about God; so to say anything with certitude is simply to express unfounded faith in the ridiculous. He goes so far as to caricaturize faith as something “that makes a virtue out of not thinking.” To his credit, there are entirely too many Christians that do not know why they believe what they believe, and those Christians were all too available for Maher’s interviews. Why do people believe in God? Answers from interviewees ranged from seemingly mild coincidences interpreted as personal miracles, to no reason at all—they just believed… because.

When people have no idea why they believe in God, it would seem that their faith is without foundation, and that has never been the faith of Scripture. If Christians define faith as just something they believe blindly, then why wouldn’t the pagan who believes in magical unicorns have as much claim to the truth as we? The fact is that God has not left us without evidences, good reason, and eyewitness accounts, but Maher would hardly know that from the champions of our faith with which he had the opportunity to dialogue.

The film is reminiscent of another documentary recently released titled, “EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed.” In that faith-affirming film, the host runs all over the world getting input about Intelligent Design, and splices in humorous clips from other movies to enrich points or to lighten the mood.

“Religulous” follows this same format, and there are some very funny bits for which only the dourest among us will be able to remain untickled. Unfortunately, these come with the unhappy realization that Maher is laughing at us, not with us, and that is what makes it all the worse, because some of it is pathetically deserved.

Have we forgotten what it was like before Christ saved any of us? How did Christians appear to us then? Perhaps this is a reminder.

Bill Maher traveled the globe asking his questions, often with a smugness that left people speechless (and in several occasions, irate). He was ejected from churches and their property, and people walked out on him when they sensed they were being sucked into God-bashing sessions. Many tried to answer him with simple responses, not realizing that they were dealing with no mere seeker, but a hostile inquisitor.

This was not unlike some of what occurred in the movie “Borat,” another film by “Religulous” director, Larry Charles, in which people were lulled into situations that would end with the star making fools of them.

While Maher questions all religious belief, it is the Bible which irks him most of all, and that because he was raised a nominal Catholic. He recalls hating church and viewing it as boring and irrelevant. This, if anything, should be instructive to us about how important it is to positively engage kids in their Sunday school classrooms, if we ever hope to have them value and retain their faith into adulthood.

Maher’s family abandoned churchgoing and spiritual things when he was very young, and as he sat and interviewed his own mother and another family member, it became obvious that that the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree.

The language in this movie is rough. It’s typical, worldly, conversational speech that is punctuated by profanity throughout. It’s not as though the use of such verbiage is there to deliberately shock anyone, it’s simply the way people who don’t abide any divine parameters express themselves, and Bill Maher is one of those. It would be pointless to number the times any particular offensive word was uttered since everything that could be said, was.

There is also one movie clip inserted to illustrate a perverse point, and it involved a sexual situation with a topless nun. The scene is brief, but it does add an element of lewdness to the film which was probably responsible for gaining the R-rating.

Other clips were included that display angry people wielding guns, but there is no real violence to speak of. If scenes of smoking bother particular viewers, then they’ll be bothered a tad more that Maher is shown smoking marijuana with some cult leader of a stoner religion in the Netherlands. This is another of the things that helps muck up the truth about God in “Religulous,” as well as in the mind that conceived it, since every cult, pagan religion, and oddball spiritist gets thrown into Maher’s supernatural blender and poured out as examples of religion’s idiocy.

If Maher would focus in on biblical scholarship and seriously be open to answers regarding Christian faith, he might actually find himself believing what he now denies.

Of note was one eureka moment when someone explained the Trinity to him, using the single-substance water analogy of liquid, solid and vapor. Christians debate the usefulness of such poor models for God, but it had a measure of resonance for Maher, briefly, before he laughed it off as stupid. If that example provided even a drop of reasonableness to his faithless mind, imagine if more and better things could be shared with him and those of similar ilk.

Maher vehemently denounces what he deems arrogance on the part of people who speak with any certainty about spiritual matters, but that causes me to ask why Maher’s certainty of everyone else’s ignorance should be preferred. He is certain that nobody else knows anything for certain, but only their certainty is arrogant? Maher has not thought all of his logic through, nor has he done enough homework to get beyond the atheistic canards of the past.

He takes swipes at the life and existence of Christ, claiming the biblical account to be a mere retelling of earlier myths about resurrected Greek gods. No unbiased scholar today believes this, of course, and the evidence shows that the making of parallels between Jesus’ life and the ancient mystery religions developed after the first century, not before. In other words, the Christian story was co-opted by the cults, not the other way around.

But his gripes should remind us how important it is for every generation to be prepared to revisit the old questions and to have good answers for them. Maher is also certain enough about his own position that he judges religion to be a “neurological disorder,” and he is betting his life that no Hell awaits him on a non-existent judgment day. I’m betting my life that he’s wrong.

The movie ends rather sadly when Maher asks his mother if there is a Heaven, and she replies with little concern, “who knows?” Everyone laughs. After this, a screen inscription informs the audience that she is now dead. Christians will think, “She now knows the truth with a bit more vested interest.”

My advice for thinking Christians is to see the movie. If anything, it will put your faith into high gear as you seek to answer Bill Maher’s challenges. Children cannot see the film due to its rating, but they wouldn’t like it anyway, and I wouldn’t take your sainted grandmother to see it lest she go apoplectic. But for the rest of us, if we can’t countenance the language and challenge of the movie, then perhaps we aren’t engaging unbelievers very much in our Christian walk and witness.

Some will disagree with me, citing Psalm 101:3 that I should “set before my eyes no vile thing” (NIV), but I think this is a different sort of vile thing. This is not a vulgar film to be enjoyed as rank entertainment, it’s the world’s playbook, opened for our understanding and subsequent response. Had God not seen our sin, Christ would not have come, but our need necessitated His action, and we are His ambassadors to engage sinners on account of the Gospel. Here’s our opportunity.

Violence: None / Profanity: Heavy / Sex/Nudity: Moderate

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