Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter. After attending a beautiful sunrise service Alicia and I decided to go see the movie, Noah. It was a good movie. We knew it did not follow the original bible story but the movie did bring up some good questions for me and it moved me to go back and reread the original bible account of the flood.

Here are some questions that came up for me after watching the screen version of Noah and rereading the bible.

Does God have regrets?
Did God have some second thoughts about destroying His world by the flood? Can you imagine what it was like for Him to watch all his creation destroyed? Surely there was some good destroyed with all the bad. Is it possible that after seeing the destruction God wished he had found another way to cleanse the Earth? He did make a new covenant with Noah that he would never bring another flood. He gives us a rainbow following a storm as a reminder of this covenant. He chose to offer his Son, Jesus, to remove our sins instead of destroying the world again.

What is God looking for from us?
Relationship. God was pleased with Noah and his offspring because they stayed in relationship with Him. Noah and his offspring also stayed in relationship with each other, the land and animals. Surely God must wonder what is so difficult about this. He gives us free will and all the opportunity for success and fulfillment and all he asks is that we love Him and others.

Does God want blind obedience?
In the movie Noah is faced with an impossible choice of killing his granddaughters because he believes God does not want man to continue on earth. Trust me, this part is not in the bible. In the bible the whole point for the flood was for man to survive and multiply. So Noah believes God is forcing him to make this choice and his struggle to obey God almost destroys him.

There are so many examples in the bible of God asking for someone to follow His guidance based on trust and it always works out for those who do this. Even when Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son, Issac, he fully expected a lamb to be provided by God and it was. There is no account of Abraham struggling with God’s request. It was Abraham’s willingness to trust in a God that he knew well that pleased God.

The movie, Noah, is good in one way because it brings up questions about God. God wants us to seek Him and questions about who He is and why He does what he does. This is a good place to start building that relationship. The bible holds so many answers but it is sometimes a hard book to pick up and read. That is where a movie or novel based on the bible can be a start in learning to relate with God.