Editor's note: This is a guest article written by thirteen year old Chloe Lawler.

I recently went to see the movie "Evan Almighty." It is a movie contrasting the story of Noah and what the modern day Noah would be like. The overall gist of the movie is a comedic look at the persecution of someone who would suggest that God himself has spoken to him.

The main character is Evan Baxter. He is a successful television news anchor man who gets elected to congress and moves his family to a recently established and extremely wealthy neighborhood on the outskirts of Washington DC. Throughout the movie, you see him become less involved with his career and more into what he has been instructed to build, an ark. God, played by actor Morgan Friedman, is characterized greatly from modern society's picture of God. In the movie, he is a very calm laid back guy with a typical grandfather's likeness.

God has a way of showing up in a much toned down way. His sense of humor is very vibrant. The typical sense of God that we have is that he is a hard, cold character that has a weak sense of humor and no real warmth to him. I think that is why people become so disconnected from him. How are we, as human beings going to be able to love someone that is so cold and distant? What I really found best about the movie was the portrayal of God as a warm, funny person we can love and relate to.

Of course not everyone has a father that is like Morgan Friedman. This is shown in Evan Almighty. Some fathers become so obsessed with their career and money, leaving their children with little view of what a good father looks like. Sometimes, a father leaves for good, leaving children without a view at all of how a father is supposed to be. Some fathers are abusive and that leaves the children with an awful image of a father. So it is very interesting in this movie to have an image of God that makes it easier for us to see a positive image of God.

Evan, in the beginning of the movie is distant from God. At the end of the movie, he sees God under a tree and he is very comfortable with him, much like the ideal picture of a father and son. He had a very relaxed, comfortable expression on his face. This is quite interesting with the thought in mind that if any typical person were to converse with God he would most likely be very nervous and or twitchy. They would probably put on a show of someone that they are not. They would watch their words and be in complete awe of being with God in person.

There's a scene in the film when the wife unknowingly has a conversation with Him and he tells her that god does not give us courage but the opportunity to

be courageous. He doesn't give us intimacy with him, but the opportunity to be intimate. It's all a matter of him giving us the opportune moment to get what we want or need.

I think that our ultimate goal should be that we aren't impersonal with God, but intimate. If we are, I think that we would all be better Christians and overall better people. By knowing God intimately, it would be easier to understand the Bible. 
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