Is Religion Just a Joke? Essay -- Religion Religious Essays

Is Religion Just a Joke? Driving with my friend to the movies one evening last winter we discovered a group of people bundled up and picketing by The Safari movie theatre in Moorhead.à  My friend and I didn’t know what movie we wanted to watch, but these protesters made up our mind.à  We decided to see the movie â€Å"Dogma† because that was the very movie these outraged people were boycotting.à  Sometimes people carry their religion to the point where it has an adverse effect on people.à  This was the case that evening. As we watched â€Å"Dogma,† my friend and I laughed hysterically.à  It wasn’t nearly as bad as the protestors suggested.à  The view the â€Å"outraged Christians† and I seemed to disagree on was they took the movie literally, whereas I personally took it as mere fiction.à  In my opinion, it was just another religious comedy to bring the sometimes-scary topic of â€Å"religion† down to a point that seems more human in the eyes of the average American today. By making the topic of religion humorous, we as a society can take a look at the different aspects of this complicated and controversial issue.à  What is ethically right or wrong has been seen in many issues such as cloning, euthanasia, and abortion.à  Religion, along with these other issues, is often hard to confront.à  With the aid of movies, such as â€Å"Dogma† and â€Å"Keeping the Faith,† we are able to delve into the issue of religion more easily.à  Let us now take a look at these two movies.à  â€Å"Keeping the Faith† starts with a priest, Brian Finn, played by Edward Norton, telling his complicated story to the local bartender in New York who thinks he’s heard it all already.à  Brian tells of a childhood friendship between himself, Jake Schram, and a girl named Anna Reilly.à  The three... ...ck Jesus, a thirteenth apostle played by Chris Rock who was written out of the bible because he was black (having a black savior is okay, but not a black apostle), Mary not being a virgin, after all, â€Å"Do you think Joseph would stay around if he wasn’t getting any?,† and God being a woman.à  Anyone who would take these humorous and outrageous suggestions literally is more of a joke than this movie.à  In my opinion, a movie is just a movie and nothing more, other than to bring into focus a difficult subject matter.à  Therefore, funny movies about religion actually help viewers think critically about religion.à  The protestors seemed to want to make the religious comedy genre be blasphemy on God, where that is not what the movie was trying to do.à  Which brings out the question: Who is making religion a joke?à  -The movies? -Or the people carrying their religion too far?