What would happen if we had the power of God?

Rating: 7/10 (18 October 2013)

When this movie first came out I was really excited about it because it was one of those movies that focused on God and I thought that it would be a good movie for Christians to watch with their friends to help us spur conversations about Christinaity. However, now, ten years after this movie was first released, and having watched it now about five times, I am not so sure as to whether it really is a Christian movie. Since there are 586 reviews for this movie I will simply focus on the Christian content of this movie, and whether it is really what one would call a 'Christian movie'.
To put it simply, it is not. While it does deal with the themes of the existence of God, and of God's love, as well as God's unwillingness to intrude on our free will, and also touching on the idea of why God does not necessarily answer prayers they way we want him too, I feel that the Christian element of this film is sadly lacking. The reason that I say this is because there is no mention of Christ, or even of the Trinity. Secondly there is no mention of human sin, or of our need for redemption. Rather it portrays our spiritual reality in a form in which there is really only God (and yes, he is a God of love) and Christiaity is not the only monotheistic religion with a loving God. In fact, I feel that what this movie is simply doing is merging the Christian and Jewish faiths, and is probably more Jewish than it is Christian.
The interesting question that is raised in this film is the question of what one would do if one woke up one morning with the power of God. I think the film answers this question brilliantly in that one would probably do things that simply served one's own purposes. We see this happen almost right from the beginning where Bruce gives himself a Ferarri, teaches his dog to use the toilet, sets himself up as 'Mr Exclusive' and then sets the rival TV network up for smuggling drugs. Further, he decides that he thinks that it would be better if God answered all his prayers with 'yes' only to discover that chaos results.
However Bruce does come to understand that with great power comes great responsibility, and it is a responsibility that he does not feel that he can handle. For instance, he pulls the moon closer to the Earth so that he might have a romantic evening with his defacto wife, only to discover that this causes a tidal wave in Japan. He also causes a meteor to strike so that he might capture the story, only to discover that it results in constant black outs. He also ends up setting up his rival, and snaring the coveted anchor position, only to discover that he does not want it. Finally, even with all of his power, he cannot change his defacto's heart after she walks out on him.
I suspect that many of us out there would love to have the power of God, and would think that if we did then we would use it to make the world a better place. However what we do not have is God's wisdom, nor the desire to really make the world a better place. To many of us in the post-modern world, the whole concept of 'the world as a better place' really only focuses on our own particular world. Especially here in the wealthy and industrialised west, we don't actually see that what we have is actually pretty good – we actually want more. We see this with Bruce at the beginning, where he does have a good life, and wealth, but he is not satisfied with what he has, and it is only after he loses what he really wants, that he ends up learning that what he had was all that he really needed.