As a liberal Christian, I am often horrified by what people call themselves Christians often do in the name of Christ.  One has to only look at the Westboro Baptist Church for an example of Christianity gone horribly wrong.  What people often fail to see is the good often done without any strings attached.  Yes, there are Christians out there who help feed the poor and do other charitable works and do it because they believe it’s the right thing to do in regard to how they live their life, and not because they are simply trying to add to their numbers.

This is why when I approach a pseudo-documentary like The God Who Wasn’t There, I do so with some trepidation.   While I acknowledge the behavior of some Christians to be pretty abhorrent and totally against what Jesus himself taught, it seems that some of these people with access to a camera and a production team are nothing more than people with an axe to grind; as devout and self-righteous in their non-belief as those they seek to demonize for their beliefs,

Brian Fleming is an ex-Christian Fundamentalist (that should tell you a lot right there) who seems to want to tear apart Christianity from the ground up.  He immediately jumps into the fray by showing how Christianity was wrong about the fact that the Earth revolved around the Sun and not the other way around.  Well, was Christianity the only religion proclaiming this in a world that was shouting a different rhetoric?  No, but he conveniently doesn’t add in that little factoid while he’s trying to get a good zinger to start off the film.

His next tactic is to show how evil Christians are by trotting out examples of people who have called themselves Christians such as Charles Manson, Pat Robertson, Dena Schlosser, Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins, and those in the cult in Waco, Texas.  Yes, these people have done or written some pretty horrible and/or mean-spirited things in the name of Christianity.  When you look at the big picture, though, it has more to do with mental illness or their own sense of self-importance rather than really doing God’s work.  Shall we blame a belief system in the case of Schlosser who was quite obviously mentally ill when she cut off her baby’s arms and said she was doing it in the name of Jesus? As horrible as that act was, I know it had more to do with an illness of her mind than something that came from her faith.

Quite frankly, I was surprised he didn’t trot out Hitler.

Using old films, he tells the general story of Jesus, not bothering with a lot of the details and instead putting them under the heading “and then there were the miracles”. But really, I don’t think there would be much to my faith if some cheesy movies could bring on the doubt.  But his tactic then is to take the same people he interviewed earlier and deemed “Happy Christians” and try to make them look foolish for not knowing the history of Christianity.  Details like how it spread in the early years seem lost on people (it actually spread through the good acts of the early Christians rather than evangelizing, something I alluded to earlier) and that seems to be his “A-Ha!” moment.  Why don’t leaders talk about this in church? I’ll admit, I learned the details in my AP European History class.  Personally, I’d rather hash out my feelings of faith and doubt and the questions I have in the precious time I have in Church rather than dwell on history.  Fleming drags out a timeline showing when Jesus (allegedly) died and when Paul began preaching and the Gospels were written as if that’s somehow an indication that the story is all made up.  Particularly of interest to him is the fact that Paul only talks of the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ death rather than much else that we study as part of the “Jesus story”.

History is replete with gaps.  It wasn’t like there was a media market recording everything.  You couldn’t go to Jesus’ Facebook page and check out what he did that day – even before they rolled out Timeline.  Much of what was handed down through the centuries was handed down through word of mouth.  There’s no way now to go back and check out if the information we have is true, whether you are talking about Jesus or Cleopatra unless you happen to have a TARDIS in your attic.

The next step is to tackle the Gospels and the Bible itself.  Historians are brought in to point out that some of the Gnostic Gospels which weren’t included seemed too much like folklore.  I’ll not debate what some historians and those who study these writings believe, but at this point, the story is being filtered through human beings.  We can’t even get facts straight about events that are well documented in this day and age.  How many people still believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11? And we’re going to trust the same human frailty to get everything right in regard to what went into the Bible? For me, personally, the answer is no.  I know there are contradictions in the Bible and there are things written by Paul himself I take issue with.  I have always felt it was the human filter that was placed on God’s word, both in writing the Bible itself and when those men got together and decided what was to be included in the Bible.  If you believe that those men who decided what was going to be the “official” Holy Bible didn’t have some sort of agenda when they did so, then you have way more faith in humanity than I do.

Where he does have valid points is when it comes to the similarities between the Jesus story and other stories out there from the Greeks and others.  He doesn’t cover this as completely as I would have liked, but in a way, that’s okay because honestly, with the axe he seems to have to grind, I would rather do my own research into it at this point.

It’s also unfair, as I’ve pointed out, to lump all Christians together, which he does.  Quite often when the narration says “Christians” they really mean Fundamentalists.  Nowhere is this clearer than when he looks at the Mel Gibson movie The Passion of the Christ, which I saw all of ten minutes of and clicked off, not needing to view anymore. Yet he asserts that this is the single most powerful experience in the lives of “most” Christians.  I’d like to know where he’s getting his data from.  In the Christian circles I’ve traveled in, the movie hasn’t even come up as a subject in years.

At this point, he really lost me and I didn’t pay as close attention as I should have to the rest of the documentary.  As soon as all Christians are lumped under the same umbrella, I tend to tune out.  I’m sorry that his experience was so horrible.  I agree completely that there are some aspects of Christianity that are horrible and have been used to justify the commission of horrible acts through the centuries.  But just as I posted recently, “As a Christian I don’t stand with the angry mobs, judging and looking to punish sinners. I stand between the angry mob and the sinners, trying to remind the so-called righteous that they shouldn’t be throwing stones.” Being lumped in with those so-called righteous by someone with an obvious axe to grind due to how he was raised in the faith is as bad as what he is crusading against himself.


SPECIAL FEATURES:

• Extended Interviews 
• Commentary Track with scholar Earl Doherty, author of The Jesus Puzzle
• Commentary Track with Richard Dawkins and other atheisys
• Exploring the Myth
• Cast & Crew Bios