Imagine yourself as a terrified outsider who is facing copious amounts of persecution. The majority of the nation that you live in disagrees with you, and wants your head. You are oppressed on a daily basis, and abused for your principles and beliefs. It’s up to you to fight for what is true and what is right.

This is what the movie "God’s Not Dead" would like you to believe being a Christian in America is like. For example, the official website for the film states in the synopsis:

“If Christians don’t take a stand today, will we even have a choice tomorrow?”

In light of the fact that God’s Not Dead 2 will be coming out in April of 2016, and how God’s Not Dead is still an enormously respected and popular movie in Christian circles, I feel as though it is pertinent that I illustrate for you how this movie is not only poorly made; but how it may be sending the wrong message entirely.

God’s Not Dead deals with a college freshman who enrolls in Philosophy 101 and comes face to face with a bitter professor. The professor tries to force his students to unanimously agree that God is dead (AKA: doesn’t exist). He threatens to fail any students that disagree.

When the brave Christian freshman decides to take a stand and show to the professor that God is real, it sets the stage for the next 2 hours of incredibly shallow intellectual debates and even more offensive stereotypes of anybody that isn’t a Christian.

What’s offensive about God’s Not Dead is not the message that it presents on the surface. A movie that tries to philosophically argue for the existence of God while intertwining an entertaining narrative is a great idea. However, the movie quickly ditches all of its intellectual capabilities in favor of nasty stereotyping, pandering, and fear-mongering.

For example, the film absolutely loves to mock and point out the flaws of everybody who is not a Christian. The non-Christians in this film are awful, terrible people who hate everyone and everything around them:

The atheistic reporter is an arrogant, aggressive vegan that is hell-bent on destroying Duck Dynasty. Her boyfriend is an atheist that hates his mentally ill grandmother and dumps his girlfriend for having cancer. The Muslim father beats his daughter for becoming a Christian and despises all other belief systems.

You get the picture.

And of course, the titular antagonist named Professor Radisson is the worst stereotype of all. He represents everything that far too many Christians thinks that atheists are like: moronic, arrogant, and incredibly angry.

Instead of trying to rationally explain why the atheist professor does not believe in God, the movie is content with revealing that he is actually just angry at God for letting his mother die. This is a concerning thing to do. It creates a strawmen of non-Christians and unrealistically depicts their unbelief.

Ignoring both the terrifying strawman and the total lack of realism as far as plot goes, it is incredibly disheartening how this movie takes such sadistic pleasure in mocking and lowering the names of those who don’t believe in God.

The film climaxes not with some kind of philosophical debate or an enlightening discussion about the nature of God, but instead with the atheist professor getting hit by a car and the rest of the characters going to a Newsboys concert. A character from Duck Dynasty then proceeds to pop up on the screen to tie up the moral of the movie, and to try to get you to text all of your friends the three words: “God’s Not Dead”.

What’s even more scary than how terrifyingly inaccurate this movie is about religious beliefs is how well it has performed by pandering to what Christians like to think atheists are like. This movie was a box-office hit, and Christians from around the world have absolutely lauded this film as incredible and well crafted.

None of this is how Christianity should actually work. God never calls us in the Bible to mock and scorn people who believe differently from us, but this movie excels in it. God never calls us to make up easily defeated strawmen so we can feel better about ourselves, but this movie excels in it.

And what God especially never does is preach how good Christians are. The Bible constantly points out that all men are incredibly sinful, but the Christian characters in the movie have no flaws. They are kind, well intentioned, intelligent people. Meanwhile, the atheists are legalistic, immoral, arrogant, terrible people with no moral compasses to speak of.

I am not attempting to put down the people who enjoyed this movie, but I am saying this: God’s not Dead is incredibly detached from reality, and ridiculously far from what I believe Christianity is actually supposed to represent. God’s not Dead is all about tearing other people down and making Christians feel better than the “mean old atheists”.

So, to those of you who are planning to see God’s not Dead 2 when it comes out in April, I would implore you to think very hard about what kind of message the film you love is trying to convey about your belief system, and the beliefs of others. Just because a film markets itself as Christian does not mean that you have to support it, or even enjoy it.

In cases like God’s not Dead, I feel like it is crucial that we combat the negative stereotypes and horrifically offensive strawmen this movie tries to tell us is the real world.