“Noah” Drips With Gnosticism (a guest post)

 

My husband went with his team from work to see “Noah” last week. They wanted to form their own opinions of this movie and not rely on others. His team works with The JESUS Film Project, making the different language translations of Jesus, a biblically accurate accounting of the life of Christ (read all about it here) The following is what he thought.

The “epic” new movie “Noah” drips with Gnosticism—not to be confused with Agnosticism, although there’s some of that in there, too. Both the protagonist and the antagonist yell at The Creator, “Why won’t you speak to me?” Don’t confuse their Creator with the One spoken of in the Bible either. In fact, other than the names of a few characters, a big boat, and lots of paired animals—this movie has nothing to do with your Grandma’s Sunday School lesson on the biblical Noah.

I admit, after seeing previews for this six months ago, I was hopeful that it would be refreshing to see a movie with great special effects on the flood story. That was until I heard the writer/director was an atheist. Then I was disappointedly thinking, “Great. Whose bright idea was that, distribute a film based WAY loosely, barely, on a biblical story made by an atheist?

Some have called this film boring, others incoherent: “The CG was lame, the acting was terrible, the script was worse.” And these aren’t Christians whining about it—they’re from reviewers on IMDB.

But I digress—back to Gnosticism. Down throughout man’s history, those who feel let down by the True God who really is, re-make him into someone He is not. The being this movie refers to as The Creator is none other than the demiurge of Gnosticism—the craftsman who fashioned matter into the world they knew. This demiurge, it was taught, is a capricious, distant, limited downright mean god-like being. (For a more thorough look at Gnosticism in “Noah”, see this article here.)

This is what saddened me most about this movie: It doesn’t give the true picture of who God really is. Like any other human, I’ve had my share of unmet expectations of God. And yet, I still know Him to be loving, wise, patient and powerful, infinitely so. It would have been so cool to have an epic movie tell of how God opened His heart in grace to us all, and wanted us to open our hearts to Him in faith. That’s how it really was in the Garden of Eden: God walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day. They enjoyed relationship with their heavenly Father. Yes, He is holy, and cannot overlook sin. That’s what the flood was really about. But the real Noah was a pre-type of Christ, who saw to it that sin’s penalty was paid and renewal is possible.

In addition to the bewildering characters nobody could like, all worshiping an evil deity, more Gnostic themes are prevalent throughout this disappointing movie: everything material is bad—only the spiritual is good; rainbows fashioned after the circular, monistic “One”; a snakeskin talisman used in blessing rituals.

Bottom-line Gnosticism: They choose to “know” a god who is different than and less than the benevolent, compassionate, unconditionally loving, True God. Why? Maybe so they can feel better for raging at him.

The movie was a big waste: of the money spent making and promoting it, of the money anyone would pay to sit through it, of my time enduring it. My friend, who fell asleep during it, said it was like a pot-LSD-induced screenplay. Paramount Pictures is even back pedaling by adding an “explanatory message” (read: disclaimer) to their marketing materials telling us “the biblical story of Noah can be found in Genesis.” (See that story from the L.A. Times.)Thanks, Paramount. That’s where anyone should go for biblical truth—the Bible!

Did you see the movie, “Noah”? Tell me what you thought.