Doubt

I went into the movie Doubt cringing - mostly because I've seen dozens of movies with religion as a major plot point before, and they're nearly all the same.

The message goes like this: people who believe their faith/religion is exclusively true are backwards, bitter, and intolerant. People who believe all faith claims to be equally true are progressive heroes, and usually much better looking.

So when I learned that Doubt was a movie set at a Catholic church/school, and that it focuses on the tension between a progressive, open-minded priest (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and an old-guard, ice-cold fundamentalist (Meryl Streep) I immediately groaned inside. Did we really need another movie like this?

The plot is simple: a young, well-meaning nun (Amy Adams, radiating a sadder version of the innocence she displayed in the movie Enchanted) begins to suspect that Hoffman's priest has sexually-abused one of the altar boys. Torn between her uncertainty and her concern for the boy, Adams' character reports what's she has seen to Streep, who then launches a crusade to have Hoffman removed.

As I expected, Doubt does make a case about the "evils" of believing the Bible - or anything else for that matter - as absolute truth. It also makes the claim - it's indirect but there - that homosexuality is a God-given trait that should be accepted as such. And Streep's character IS - for the first half of the movie - a crusading, fire-breathing dragon, with no compassion for anyone, bitterness in her veins.

But halfway through Doubt the movie becomes something more. Rather than Hoffman's character being the unjustly accused hero and Streep being evil incarnate, the movie makes the viewer question Hoffman's innocence ... and gives us reason to believe that Streep might be wiser and more nuanced than we originally thought.

(warning: spoilers follow)

The most fascinating attribute of this movie is that it never gives the viewer an answer regarding the priest's innocence. We are left - fittingly - with doubt. And that's the whole point.

But this is no relativist metaphor about how truth doesn't exist. Doubt creates a situation where there's a truth out there, and finding that truth is essential. Right or wrong in her suspicion, Streep is completely justified in trying to get to the bottom of things. So this movie isn't preaching some misconstrued, agenda-driven message of "tolerance." Rather it's about the struggle of finding and living out absolute truth in a world that is rarely ever fully good or fully evil.

The fundamental flaw in Streep's character is that she is a modern-day Pharisee. She lives her life with a stringent set of rules that go far beyond the Bible's and insists that everyone around her follow suit. As the movie progresses it becomes clear that she does this because she is afraid - she is afraid of a world she doesn't understand destroying her faith, and she is afraid that any uncertainty would be a sign of weakness in the ongoing culture war she is waging. And so she draws lines in the sand between those who follow her rules and those who don't. Those who don't are lesser than her, people who are weak, misguided, and perhaps dangerous because they expose her belief system.

This becomes clear when Hoffman's character - desperate to keep his job - asks her "can't you see that we are the same?" And Streep, who has been softening throughout the conversation, recoils and says - calmly and deliberately - "we are NOTHING alike."

Streep's character is not wrong for believing something to the point of action. She is wrong because she is losing her capacity to love. And this is something I see both in myself and in the Christian communities I've grown up in: we get so caught up in our traditions and rules - those that go beyond what the Bible tells us - that we turn them into The Way Things Have To Be. Worship music should be like _____. This doctrine has to be _____. Churches who don't preach on _____ are heretical.

Like Streep's character we draw lines between us and them. Then "them" become the bad guys, making us - obviously - the good guys. God is on our side but not on theirs.

Of course the problem with this is that "all have sinned" and salvation is by grace alone, and God so loved the WORLD - including independent, fundamentalist Baptists and atheists and Muslims and Emergents, and even seeker-sensitive churches out in California.

We are all the same - it's Jesus who's different. And if we forget that we forget it all.

Josh Pease - NOT Josh Treece - works for the high school team at Saddleback Church and "Doubt"'s that a lot of people find movies like this as fascinating as he does. But if anyone does - or if anyone has any questions/comments - feel free to email him at joshp@saddleback.net.