Evan Almighty

Yesterday Lindsay and I utilized our Labor Day off to go the dollar theatre. We went, in spite of all the negative reviews, to Evan Almighty. I try to be wary of mining movies for theological themes, but my resistance is fairly weak. The movie of course more readily lends itself to the theological themes because it is about a Bible story.

I don’t feel alone on my island of finding theological nuggets of truth in film because Roger Olson commented that he was pleasantly surprised by Bruce Almighty, this comment in reference to the overt theological Arminian tenet that the omnipotent God of the universe has decided the one thing he won’t do on a regular basis is manipulate libertarianly defined human freedom.

I found something in the movie yesterday that I thought was noteworthy. I’ve been reading Kyle’s book on prayer so this especially caught my ear.

The wife of Evan, who for the time being had abandoned him due to his commitment to participating in the faithfulness of God, is confronted by God played by Morgan Freeman in a conversation about prayer.

God reports that “When someone prays for courage I don’t give them courage, I give them the opportunity to be courageous. And when someone prays for patience I don’t give them the patience, I give them the opportunity to be patient. And when someone asks for their family to grow close together, I don’t make them close. I give them the chance to grow closer together.”

I guess what this got me thinking about is the intricate interplay between what want God to do for us and what we need to do for ourselves.

Many parts of life seem painful and we pray for them to go away…and understandably so I think. But we thrive on even desire bit of drama and or opposition in our lives. This is what makes them exciting and challenging worth participating in. This seems to be a bit of a conundrum to me.

Grace for the obstacles be they exciting.