The Mystery of God in the Production of Bruce Almighty

The mystery of God is something we do not have much information on. Over the years we have seen images of God or what we expect him to look like. It is still unknown to this day, but many producers have made movies about bible references and one of them is Bruce Almighty. Bruce Almighty is a Comedy Drama and a Fantasy film released 23 of May 2003, Main characters: Morgan Freeman, Jim Carrey, Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carrel. The film is about a television reporter that has no luck in life regardless of his popularity and his girlfriend Grace. He came upon his worst day of his life and lashed out at God and God responded. God gave Bruce powers to see if he can take on his position. Through the analysis of depictions of God as found in the OT and a modern film, it can be found that the message still resonates with a modern audience.

Images of God are found throughout the old testament scriptures. This quote is from the Priestly scribes. It reads “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness”. This quote states that humans can act like God and may use his powers to rule the land and sea. The scripture was published in Genesis. And can be found in the bible Genesis 1 26:27. The time at which this was written was the 6th century BCE. The purpose of this scripture is explaining to people you are allowed to act in the likeness of God and to use his powers. The biblical story of Exodus 14:21 states the story of how God parted the red sea. “Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the LORD caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided”. He chose to do this, so the Jews would escape the Egyptians who enslaved them. The author to this story is unknown but people suspected Moses authored the book. Exodus was written around 1400 BCE in the 6th century. The purpose of this scripture is to communicate to people about the salvation of slavery.

Throughout Bruce Almighty there are many similarities and differences in the portrayal of God. Some of the similarities are when Bruce has Gods powers and parts his soup this refers back to Moses parting the red sea. This also relates back to the image of God because God gave Moses powers to part the Red Sea and God gave Bruce powers and Bruce used them to part soup. Another similarity is when Bruce is stuck in traffic late for work, so he parted the cars making a pathway for him to drive through. The producer of Bruce Almighty added these two scenes into the movie just to add a bible reference that relates back into the old testament. It was smart to add this into the movie just to give the movie an old testament feel and a God themed scene. The image of God in Bruce almighty is different from what people have suspected God looked like. This relates back to my quote that talks about making men in God’s image. In the movie God is played by an African American everyone suspected God to be white not African American. Later in the movie God gives Bruce his powers. He has some similarities compared to the stereotyped God, both have the same beard and same hair style.

The movie Bruce Almighty relates to a modern audience and provides a relevance to Australian society. There is one main example that relates to Australian society that is the way God talks in the movie he is calm and is helpful and I think that this can relate back to our society not because we are but because we are helpful and always help others. God does this in the movie by answering everyone’s prayers. There is evidence of this happening when God answers Bruce’s pray and makes him have good luck. Another example is that God is represented as a humorous guy and is easy to get the message across with him as seen in the movie when him and Bruce are talking in the building.

To conclude, the movie Bruce Almighty is an accurate representation of the Mystery of God. This is proved in the scriptures I have provided from the bible. My first scripture/quote states that humans can act like God and may use his powers to rule the land and sea. To go into deeper meaning this is saying that humans may use characters to be like God. This scripture relates back to the image of God and how he is reflected on in the movie. My second scripture explains the Red Sea story. This is related back to the movie when Bruce parts the soup and cars. This is a image of God because God gave Moses powers to part the Red Sea and God gave powers to Bruce powers and Bruce used those powers to part soup. To summarise the Image of God is represented in this movie a lot and can be identified with multiple scriptures.