Spiritually Knocked Up

One of my favorite movies is Knocked Up. The first time I watched a Judd Apatow movie I realized that it was possibly the funniest, most brilliant combination of meaning, truth and crude humour that I had ever seen. Knocked Up is about a one night stand between a lazy, chubby, irresponsible slob and a girl who is a high class T.V. show host. The girl finds out a few weeks later that she is pregnant, thus spurning a unique relationship between two opposite people who band together to do the best for their situation. The movie is all about working through the struggles of relationship. It delves into the ideas of abortion, marriage, kids and growing up; and yes, it has some sex in it, and some crude jokes. It is not the most "Christian" movie you will ever watch. But it has more to say about relationships than watching an hour of Oprah.

So I really liked this movie, but I forget that Christians have this perpetual ban or mental block on appreciation for anything that is "Secular". So when I would tell others about my like of this movie, they could not get past the the coarseness of the content. Yes, there is a lot of it, but why in Christianity, does there have to be this idea that nothing in the secular realm has anything of value, anything worth watching, discussing or dialoging about? This movie has so much to say about what it means to be human, about the human condition and the messiness of relationships in real life. It deals with the real issues of abortion and marriage.

The creators and writers of this movie were also the ones who made The 40 year Old Virgin, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Superbad. All of these movies are brilliant because they have beautiful meanings hidden behind a superficial context of humour and more often than not, coarse humour. In The 40 Year Old Virgin a guy decides to wait to have sex until he is married. In Knocked Up they decide to keep their mistake. Superbad is all about friendship and th awkwardness of high school. The first time I watched one of these movies I was astounded by the dynamic contrast of great moral messages and the erroneously crude, but funny material. At first I was a bit offended, but as the movie continued I saw that this was not the typical rude, bathroom humour, crude for crudities sake movie. I learned more about life from this movie than any other this year. My friend Cortland honestly says that it changed his life. He says the movies are both funny and heartwarming.

I feel like a lot of Christians dismiss anything that is not overtly religous. If a song or a movie has a cuss word in it, than it probably isn't worth watching. But I see God in these movies. I see God in the broken, fractured lives of the characters in Knocked Up. I see meaning in the friendship of two people struggling to make life work. If you believe in the Kingdom, is there really such a thing as secularism? If you believe in God, than honestly, where is God not?