I recently watched “Bruce Almighty”, for the second or third time. For those who don’t know, the premise is that a guy named Bruce gets to be God for a few days. The movie is a comedy with Morgan Freeman as God and Jim Carey as Bruce. I’m sure that there are those who will object to some parts of the movie. Certainly, using God as a punch line is problematic.
Bruce, needless to say does not have the skill set that being God requires. Furthermore he begins as a shallow, self focused jerk. He has no real interest in the needs of others. He uses the power that has been given to him to advance his own needs and desires.
And it all goes south. I asked myself why does power work for God but not for Bruce? The answer is fairly straightforward. God uses his power for the benefit of his people. Bruce uses God’s power for the benefit of Bruce. This theme turns up in the Bible over and over…….the idea of the servant King. It is summed up best when Jesus washes the apostle’s feet. I have often said that the surest path to true joy……..is to love and care for others. This is the first lesson of “Bruce Almighty”……….taught by Bruce’s bad example and by his failure.
As Bruce learns and grows, the movie makes a second point, that, in my opinion, is one of the best theological statements that I have ever run across.
At the very bottom of his failure, Bruce cries out to God and asks (I’m paraphrasing)…….
“How do you give someone free will……..and make them love. you?”
God looks back, with pain in his eyes, and says,
“Welcome to my world.”
God doesn’t now and never has forced us to love him.
God loves us. He wants us to be happy. Because he created us, he knows how we work. He knows that the surest path to our own happiness is to love and serve others……and that begins with loving and serving him. By giving us free will, he guarantees that our gift of love to him is real. It is sincere. It means something.
God is not on some eternal cosmic ego trip. If that was the case, he could have skipped the free will part and built us as robotic worship machines. Instead God wants us to be happy…….and the road to that happiness is relationship. He wants a relationship with us that is based on love, freely given by us………just as his love is freely given to us.
Until you understand God, as a servant leader……..willing to go as far as death on a cross in order to have a relationship with you………you will never “get it”. You will never find true love and peace. You will never find the happiness that God intended for you when he created you…….the deep abiding joy that is and always has been your destiny.
And that is the theology of “Bruce Almighty”.
Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!
Paul, NIV
“Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all .”
Jesus, NIV
“The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Jesus, NIV