Good News Florida

LOCAL 32 APRIL 2018 Good News • South Florida Edition “God’s Not Dead 3”-A Church Under Fire Chris Alexander Good News We’ve come to expect great faith-based films from Pure Flix and “God’s Not Dead 3: ALight in the Darkness” is no exception. As with the previous God’s Not Dead series, the Christian faith is under attack. What is interesting with each of these films is the attention they bring to the current cultural cli- mate. Providing scenarios and solutions for situations we may encounter ourselves in the real world, it is on-screen Christian apologetics (giving a defense for the Christian faith). So what can we glean from God’s Not Dead 3? Perhaps this line from the film says it best: “Sometimes fighting doesn’t require defeat- ing those we disagree with but rather finding a way to heal and to rebuild.” A church under fire When the St. James Church is damaged by a fatal fire, Pastor Dave fights to save the church’s presence on cam- pus from the heads of the now secular Hadleigh University. Controversy and conflict arise, causing students to protest and pushing Pastor Dave to seek legal counsel from his atheist brother Pierce. This reunion with his brother brings contention of its own. In dredging up Pierce’s painful departure from the fam- ily and faith, we see how each brother was affected by this de- cision. Dave, feeling aban- doned by his brother, was left caring for the parents. Pierce, feeling dejected for having questions about his faith, left without answers or love. A generation under fire This questioning of faith is prevalent in the movie, espe- cially among the college stu- dents. One leaves his faith because of painful childhood experiences with a failing church. Another tightropes her faith over the gravitational pull of social acceptance and the decadence of college life. Oth- ers, wanting to believe in some- thing, find it more palatable to entertain conspiracy theories than to follow a religion that they find unloving. As one of the characters relates, “My genera- tion knows what the church is against, but we don’t knowwhat the church is for.” When Pastor Dave responds to a student’s fear of questioning her faith, he assures her that even John the Baptist wrestled with doubt and that “uncertainty led to truth.”