My cable lineup on campus isn't great, so I find myself watching channels that I typically wouldn't at home. One of those channels is UPTV because they show Supernanny and Gilmore Girls daily, and those are two shows that I happen to love. UPTV is a Christian network, so a lot of their commercials show previews for the Christian-themed movies they show on the weekends. One that frequently comes up is God's Not Dead. The commercial actually made it look pretty interesting, so I decided to sit down tonight and watch it.

I guess now would be a good time to mention that I am an atheist. I believed in God when I was younger, and I went to church with my dad for a few years, too. As I continued growing up, though, I realized that a lot of things that the church was teaching me didn't make a lot of sense, so I stopped believing, and I don't regret it. While I don't personally believe in God, I will not force my beliefs onto anyone who does believe in God, and I will not shame them for the beliefs they hold unless they are trying to hurt others with those beliefs. Please keep this in mind as you continue to read on.

So, considering my beliefs, or lack thereof, God's Not Dead is a weird movie choice for me, but I stuck with it. It honestly wasn't a bad movie. It kept my attention the entire time, and as many know, that is a very hard thing to accomplish. The movie had a really good main message about sticking to your beliefs no matter what others think. There was also a side theme of acceptance, which is something I really enjoyed. While the messages were good, the portrayal of non-Christians was honestly borderline offensive.

In this movie, there is an atheist professor, and a Muslim father. Both of these men were portrayed as horrible men. The professor was pompous and cocky. He taught philosophy, and for the sake of his class, he forced his students to write down "God is dead" on a sheet of paper. When one of the students, the main character, said that he refused to write this down, the professor decided that if the student wanted to stay in the class, he would have to come up in front of the class and present to them reasons why God isn't dead. The student agreed to this, and while he was presenting, the professor would make snide comments about why the student was wrong for believing in God.

Now don't get me wrong, I know that there are atheists out there like that. There was even a list at the end of the movie of universities where similar situations occurred. But most atheists aren't like that. If anything, it's the Christians who are more likely to push their beliefs onto others. Like I said earlier, I was a Christian growing up, and I'm an atheist now, and I can tell you that I've had more Christians trying to force their faith onto me as an atheist than I did atheists forcing their beliefs on me as a Christian. That isn't me shaming Christians, it's just me stating my experience on both sides.

Moving onto the Muslim father. His teenage daughter had been secretly practicing Christianity for a year. Her brother walked in on her one day listening to a reading of scripture, and even though she begged him not to tell their father, he told him anyway. Once the father found out, he ran into the girls room, slapped her across the face multiple times, picked her up, and threw her outside of the house, kicking her out.

As with the professor, I'm sure there have been instances of this type of thing happening. But you know who else kicks their children out of their homes? Devout Christians with children who come out to them as gay. How is this any different from that? Why is kicking your child out because of who they love better than kicking your child out because they choose to worship a different God? This double standard is ridiculous, and I really hope that whoever wrote that into the movie is able to look back at it one day and see how hypocritical it is.

God's Not Dead is definitely an interesting movie that's even eye-opening at some points. However, its depiction of non-Christians is appalling and offensive, making it controversial and the opposite of the root of Christianity. Christians are called to love their neighbors. Depicting the ones who are different as evil is doing the exact opposite.