A Matter of Faith

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omeschool .

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Father, reading from his daughter's college Biology textbook: Humans came from ape-like ancestors. There was nothing supernatural about it..

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Mother: How can they say that and get away with it?

This chilly afternoon I've been sitting and watching a movie on Netflix entitled A Matter of Faith. In this limited-release movie (read movie shown where invited), the darling daughter Rachel goes off to college and takes a biology class with a professor who has the temerity to teach biology instead of religion in his class. Rachel is confused by knowledge; she has never heard of this story before.

Rachel's father Stephen is very upset that Rachel seems to be moving away from religion. He goes to see Rachel's biology professor, concerned with the brainwashing going on in the biology class and Stephen ends up agreeing to debate the Professor on campus in an evolution/creation debate. 

In the meantime Rachel is experiencing her own conflicts on campus with nonbelievers and their insincerity, their egotism, their treachery, and their worldly behavior. She is surrounded by people she cannot trust, people who are not as they appear to be, and boys who have a hidden agendas, unspoken sexual plans for Rachel. Unbelievers are incredibly unpleasant.

Throughout Rachel's college struggles, the question postulated in her Biology class which came first, the chicken or the egg? continues to plague her. It's a truly vexing question. Fortunately, rescuing apologist friend Evan offers Rachel a convincing solution to this conundrum. The chicken came first. Because, according to Evan, Life does not come from non-life...like that egg. An egg is non-life, apparently. (Later on I know that that unborn chicken will be classified as LIFE by the pro-Lifers.) Rachel is very comforted by this call to faith because the thinking was bewildering. 

Yes, it is a true comfort to realize that even Rachel's great grandmother was not an ape.

The film climaxes with the very stirring Christian sermon at the campus debate. Not a single bit of moderating occurs during the debate, nor a single bit of actual debating, nor a single bit of true science offered by the biology teacher. And not a single mention of the fact that debating evolution and creation is an odd debate because evolution is a theory of change, not abiogenesis or the age of the earth or the big bang. But it is, rather, an emotional, triumphant music-laden call to faith and retreat from academia. Not to mention the usual cry of persecution of the faithful. My son was flipping the frick out.

In the end it's nothing more than a young Christian woman going to college and when challenged, having her father and the church sweep in and intensify the brainwashing.

And DAMNED if this movie didn't ruin Night Court for me too.