"Bruce Almighty" dealt a blow to the exclusively secular public square over the Memorial Day weekend. It racked up $84.6 million in box office receipts, second only to "The Lost World: Jurassic Park". What in the world is going on here? Could it be that we moderns are not satisfied with a purely mechanistic worldview bleached of all spirituality?

Bruce Nolan (Jim Carrey) whines incessantly to his loving fiancee, the aptly named Grace (Jennifer Aniston), that he’s sick of his human interest reporter job at a Buffalo television station. Doesn’t she know, doesn’t everyone know he’s the next Walter Cronkite? Grace grows weary of the complaints and tells Bruce she doesn’t want to hear it. When another reporter gets the anchor job, Bruce goes ballistic. Bruce, with no one left to complain to, vents his rage on God. Like Charles Darwin, Bruce isn’t so much an atheist as someone who thinks God does a lousy job and should be replaced. Bruce knows he could do a better job. We all relate to this to some degree. Haven’t you ever lamented, “If I could be God for a day then I would…”? Bruce calls upon God, and God answers.

Bruce ends up face to face with a white-suited God (Morgan Freeman), who gives Bruce his powers, though somewhat limited to the Buffalo area. Bruce is transformed from a hopeless, self-obsessed loser to an all-powerful, self-serving prankster. He’s got the power! Carrey’s physical humor is perfect as he easily employs zany solutions to his previous problems. Now his dog uses the john, his bashed up car morphs into a high performance sports car, and Grace is no longer flat-chested. As Tony Bennett sings “If I Ruled the World” he tearfully tells Grace he’s even landed that anchor job. In short, he uses his God-like powers to get everything he wants without concern for anyone else, especially Grace. When she finds him in the arms of another women she leaves him.

At this point Bruce represents our modern secular culture. Enriched with the success of modernity, we often fail to use our technological powers for purposes other than self enrichment.

What Bruce wants most is for Grace to love him again. But all of his strategies to force her to love him fail. The message is clear. Even God can’t make someone love him. In despair, he asks God for help. This is the major turning point of the movie. Face to face with God, Bruce sees how selfish he has been and realizes he is nothing like the loving, humble, patient God with whom he is speaking. The experience transforms him. He now can care deeply for Grace, more concerned she is loved than she loves him. He gives up his self-obsession, free to love those around him. It changes his life.

Reel Reviewer James Berardinelli slams the movie for taking this mawkishly sentimental turn. To Berardinelli, this ill-advised detour into Bruce learning that the greatest power of all is to help others made him want to ‘wretch noisily’. Jeffrey M. Anderson of the San Francisco Examiner writes ‘the whole thing collapses into a pile of sentimental pudding…ending with boring Significance.’

This movie is much like ‘It’s A Wonderful Life”. Both deal with people in need of discovering their true worth. The answer in both films is the same. Your worth is embedded in a loving God who gives you the strength to love others. Your life is not solely your own. It impacts others in profound ways that even you cannot fully understand. Is this sentimental, as many critics claim? Yes. It results in complex feelings and strong opinions. But it is not just sentiment. It is a worldview that can transform your ability to treat others with dignity and compassion.

"Bruce Almighty" is not a great movie. There are too many words and not enough story. But its success speaks to our desire to maintain the expression of spiritual faith in our common space.

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