A fair warning about religious debate: I don't delete comments on my blogs, but the mods might if you act like an ass. I'd like it if ye all would stay on topic. Danke.

Christian-themed movies have been making a comeback recently, and I have nothing against that in concept. Many profound and groundbreaking worldviews first made their debut in the form of art. Religion, in particular, is something I feel humanity needs to have a more nuanced discussion about. Modern hugbox culture has succeeded in polarizing theists and atheists against each other, while poisoning the well to the point that argument quickly descends into a melee.

The current batch of Christian movies is not helping matters. Putting aside the fact that most of them fail on purely a quality standpoint, the sad fact is that they only seem to be made to pander to people who are already devout Christians. There is little intention of explaining their side to Atheists, or Jews, or any other denomination apart from their own.

But I'm not one to bitch without offering solutions. A lot of what I write below is devil's advocate, but I want to prove that it can be done.

Inevitably, the first issue I can hear people screaming is that I don't really believe in God, so how could I ever make a movie that portrayed God (and Christianity) positively?

God, in our world, is akin to Schrodinger's Cat: nobody knows for sure what the truth is, but everyone has an opinion. And my personal opinions on what exists in our universe do not affect what exists in the universe of the film. A good storyteller must divorce their feelings about the world they stand on from the world they write of. To put it simply: God exists within the film's context because I say so.

And with this established, we must now ask what God's relation is with the planet Earth and our human characters. The Problem of Evil being what it is, obviously God doesn't hand out miracles willy-nilly. Free will and the laws of nature still very much apply, and can be responsible for incredible tragedy. A storyteller must speculate on the reasons why God did not prevent the Holocaust, or end world hunger, or stop any other of the countless tragedies which would naturally be simple for an omnipotent being.

The answer to this puzzle must fit an additional condition: It must assume that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent. All-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving.

This isn't the only possible answer to the puzzle, but the one proposed in the Futurama episode Godfellas always made the most sense to me. God knows that if he interferes in any noticeable way, things are only going to get worse. Therefore, the world must turn on its own. Bad things are going to happen, but a small miracle here or there can hopefully mitigate the damage without creating an even worse situation.

And if we can look at one of these miracles, and instantly discern that it was God's doing, then he's already failed.

God can not interfere significantly with our characters' lives, yet he must still be a central driving force in the plot. The way I see it, we need to look to the real world for inspiration. The best stories of faith involve God as an inspiration for mortals to achieve something great, and throughout history, this has proven true. God's role would best be served as the messenger and motivation to our human protagonist, with one free card reserved for a tiny Deus Ex Machina later on down the line.

Speaking of which, what of our human protagonists? Contemporary Christian films have protagonists that range from "Devout Christian whose faith saves them from a crisis and is reaffirmed" to "Atheist who does a 180 and becomes a devout Christian."

They are answering the wrong question.

Before you can give a character their traits, you must first give them a motivation. The question is not "who is this character," but instead "what does this character want?"

Recall what I said earlier. God, in the context of the story, must motivate our protagonist to do something incredible. But what? Could they change the world? Could they inspire the next great wave of change-makers? Or could they simply make a profound difference on one life?

Films about a man and his child against a cruel world are not uncommon, but I feel that this would be the best framework for our storyline. To get a sense of what I mean, I suggest you watch the film Life is Beautiful, which is the story of a Jewish man in wartime Italy who must keep his son alive in a Nazi concentration camp. Stories like these may be familiar, but they strike universal appeal for a very good reason. Everyone has someone they care about, and we all know how horrible the world can be.

The character in our film wants to save their child from one of our world's very shitty situations. This is his motivation. Now that we have this, we can expand further into asking who he is.

I decided early on not to make the protagonist an atheist. The reason for this is very simple. God is going to be aiding this man, albeit in intangible ways, throughout the story. Enough so that, by the end, any man would be a believer. Character development is all well and great, but you need to think about what you are portraying as a positive or negative character trait. It would be real patronizing to have an entire character arc be all about how this "heathen atheist" turned his life around and conquered the odds all because he found Jesus. You need to have shades of grey when you talk about real world issues, and an objective examination.

For similar reason, he also can't be a practicing member of a different religion, or else the film's message becomes "convert to our God because yours is shit." Arguably, that's even worse than the previous example.

On the flipside, our character also can't be a devout Christian, or our problems are two-fold. Not only does this leave no room for character development, but it also makes him unrelatable to much of the audience. Denzel Washington's film The Book of Eli made this mistake. The main protagonist was an already established devout Christian on a mission from God, and this made him extremely self-righteous and preachy. This wasn't his character flaw, though. His character flaw was that he didn't stop and help every single person he came across... in a nuclear wasteland.

Basically, characterization is a minefield. If you look at it only as a sliding scale between "christian" and "not christian," you're only going to be choosing between two types of patronizing. That's why I chose to look at it in another way.

Our protagonist believes that God has forsaken mankind. He believes that man's actions have left us beyond salvation, and that we are being left to decadence because God no longer believes in us. Whether he is correct or not is left up to interpretation, however, it is implied that his is the good soul that may redeem our species. This approach is superior because it brings the human element to the forefront, along with asking a question that resonates with both Christians and non-Christians. Everybody walks away with a new perspective, and nobody is patronized in the process.

To finish off, I'd like to talk about the film's setting, and attempt to tie this thing into a cohesive premise. I have decided against using a historical setting, against my better wisdom, and opt to set the tale close to the modern day.

In an unnamed middle-eastern country, a marauding force of invaders is conquering cities one-by-one, and slaughtering all who think or look differently from them. Our hero lives in a suburb near the capital with his daughter, when the marauders begin their siege. The government declares a lockdown. Nobody gets in or out. Every able-bodied man must pick up a rifle and fight. When our hero's draft order comes, he instead waits for the cover of night, and slips out of town with his daughter.

The two must head north, and cross the border into a more stable country. A wanted deserter and his five year old daughter against the perils of the desert, and all the demons of a forsaken race. Along the way, he is tested in numerous ways by powers beyond his control. However, it is not his faith which is being tested, but his virtue and resolve.

And that... would be a damn good movie.