Brehm Center

In 1994, InterVarsity Press published a controversial book entitled The Openness of God. Written by five authors including the well-known evangelical theologian Clark Pinnock, it challenged traditional notions concerning how we might understand God’s power, given his love (and ours). Does God control everything? If so, what of human free will? Can our prayers actually change God’s mind, for example?

Has God given humankind room to flourish, surrendering aspects of his power freely in order to create the possibility of relationship? That is, is there in God a certain openness that is a necessary consequence of his decision to offer his love to us and to ask for ours in return? These authors answered, “Yes.” But what, then, does it mean that God has the whole world “in his hand”? Over the last ten years, there have been few more controversial topics among evangelical theologians than this: how are we to understand God’s sovereignty, given his love?

Now, we have a movie that brings this theological question to life with both humor and grace -- Bruce Almighty. If you did not see this blockbuster over the summer (or even if you did), here is a movie to rent on DVD or video. It will make you both laugh and think. Bruce Almighty is as provocative a discussion starter about God as you will find. One large mega-church in Arizona that seeks to reach out to non-believers in its services even devoted six-weeks in their summer series of sermons to the movie.

Bruce Nolan, the movie’s “star,” is a self-centered TV reporter in Buffalo, New York (Jim Carrey returns to his familiar role as a rubber-faced comedian). He longs for the lead anchor job on the nightly news, rather than the inane human-interest spots he is assigned. When Bruce is passed over for the slot (on the same day he crashes his car and gets beaten up by thugs), he both has a melt down on the air and yells at God as to why He is not helping him. Surprisingly, God answers on a cell phone in the person of Morgan Freeman (the role could not be better cast). Visiting God on the seventh floor of a building whose sign reads “Omni Presents,” Bruce is told that he is going to be given the chance to “do it better”! Bruce will be able to do anything he wants except for two rules: he can’t tell anyone who he is, and he can’t “mess with free will.”

At first Bruce is ecstatic. “I am Bruce Almighty! My will be done!” What follows is vintage Jim Carrey. Sitting in a diner, he parts his tomato soup like the Red Sea. With the lyrics, “What if God were one of us,” being sung in the background, Bruce lassoes the moon and pulls it closer to create a romantic moment with his girlfriend Grace (Jennifer Aniston). With omnipotence but not omniscience, Bruce doesn’t realize that altering the moon will create a tidal wave in Japan. Things are not as straightforward as he thought.

Overwhelmed by all the prayer requests he receives, Bruce creates a computer messaging system (“Yahweh, Insta-Prayer”) and then answers all the prayers with a blanket “yes,” so as not to be bothered by having to read them. As a result over 400,000 people in Buffalo alone win the lottery… but are angry and riot when they receive only $17 each! In the funniest moment of the movie, Bruce has the newly chosen news anchor read gibberish off of a manipulated prompter in a high falsetto. When these antics land Bruce the job he covets, Bruce invites Grace out to a special dinner. She thinks he will propose; instead, he is consumed with his own self-importance and only wants to tell her about the new job. Crushed by his ongoing egotistical ways, Grace departs from his life.

Bruce can’t figure it out. Returning to God, he asks, “How do you make someone love you without changing free will?” And Freeman responds both patiently and with humor: “Welcome to my world, son. You come up with an answer to that one, you let me know.” Soon Bruce is back, asking, again, for God’s help (and at the precise time that God had casually predicted earlier!). God says to him, “You want to see a miracle, son? Be the miracle.”

In the last third of the movie we see Bruce begin to change. Many of the movie’s reviewers think that the shift in the movie’s tone is too abrupt – “from irreverent slapstick to reverent sermonette” is how one described it. The makeover, though a little sentimental, makes it point: let God be God, but also allow God’s love to empower us to be his “miracles” to others.  When finally God asks Bruce what he really cares about,  Bruce answers, “Grace.” “You want her back?” asks Morgan Freeman. “No, I want her to be happy.” The transformation is complete and “grace” returns.

Tom Shadyac, the movie’s screenwriter and director, is one of Hollywood’s premier comedic artists, as well as a professing Christian. He is committed first of all to making entertaining movies. And you will laugh while watching Bruce Almighty. But in interviews Shadyac also has been clear that he wants to have his movies do more than make people laugh. Having begun his spectacularly successful career with the mindless Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and then The Nutty Professor, Shadyac moved on to create Liar Liar and Patch Adams. Bruce Almighty now extends Shadyac’s reach. In the process, we are being given theology lessons that invite conversation and reflection. Here is Theology 101 – a class that everyone can enjoy.