Lessons from the Ark

“When people pray for patience, does God give them patience or the opportunity to be patient?If one asks for courage, does God give him courage, or the opportunity to be courageous? If one asks for a family to be closer, do you think God zaps them with warm fuzzy feelings, or does he give them opportunities to love each other?”

Really exhausted from work recently, I treated myself to the movies.

I rushed my socio-anthropology exam to catch my preferred viewing time which I only refer to as “the one before the last show” but which I wrongly estimated hence I still came half-an-hour late.

Bruce’s sequel is the story of congressman-elect Evan Baxter (Steve Carrel) known for his campaign slogan “Save the World” and “God” just knew how he could do that. After giving the congressman some signs and delivering tools to his home, God orders him to build an ark for a forthcoming flood. Baxter of course finds this ridiculous at first and refuses to obey until God lays down some reinforcement on him. It’s amusing how Baxter turned to the modern-day Noah quite literally with his beard and hair persistently growing, with a robe and staff complementing the look.

The story simply flowed sequentially without much surprise but for someone who used to regularly attend Sunday schools as a child, I appreciate how faithful the writers adopted things from the original story including the number of Noah’s sons (although Evan’s kids are adolescents and don’t have wives), direct quotes from the Bible, the pairs of animals, the people who refused to believe, the rainbow, and even the dove sent out to survey for dry land (although in the movie, it has no role as significant but at least it was there).

Since I became a student of Digital Movie Design, I became interested with production facts of films that I watch. I researched and was impressed to learn about when and how the ark was assembled, how the pairs of animals were rendered in computer graphics, and the production’s proactive effort advocating carbon-offsetting. [Know more]

Evan Almighty would not incite a standing ovation but at least not disappointing.

I’ll not tell how the flood happened but flood or no flood, to save the world we must make “one Act of Random Kindness at a time”.