'Good omens' is bad theology and worse morality

www.americanthinker.com

I made the mistake of watching Prime Video's Good Omens all the way through, having been initially deceived into thinking it was just a clever comedic take on heaven and hell. It was. But the message and some of the blasphemous scenes should have told me to look away. I didn't, and now I wish I could wash my eyeballs and brain with lye. But I have recovered. Here is why it may be a good idea to avoid self-contamination.

First, what is good: David Tennant, Michael Sheen and Jon Hamm gave stellar comedic performances, as did some other well-known BBC actors such as Miranda Richardson and others. The special effects were wonderful, the music, the funny characters. But the overt anti-Christian message comes across loud and clear: there is a contemptuous presentation of the joys of being gay and godless. It presents an indifferent and unreachable God, the very opposite of what Christianity teaches, and it portrays the gay lifestyle as normal and to be desired. In essence, "love is love", which it isn't.

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Angels and demons are depicted as bumbling, indifferent, and incompetent. They stumble through a bureaucratic void as they control humanity from "upstairs" and "downstairs".

This portrayal strips away any notion of God’s self-revelation and self-sacrificing nature.

Instead of God being holy, the series replaces God's sovereignty with human values. What is most valued here are friendship and wokery, elevating homosexual relationships to the level of that which truly saves humanity. The series is a mockery of God’s order and instead presents a scenario where good and evil are trivialized or made interchangeable, and biblical events are altered to question accurate interpretations of Scripture.

In Good Omens, the writers found comedic value in a graphic, bloody crucifixion scene, with people making jokes about Jesus being crucified for "saying nice things." Later in the series, Jesus is portrayed by a teenage, curly-haired minority member – somewhere between Middle Eastern and black - whereas the crucifixion scene shows him as a white, full-grown, mature male. The biblically astute will recognize many faux pas.

The series twists God's order further by altering Scripture to conform to the writers' bastardized notion of what the Bible actually says. This satire is a post-Christian notion of all that the writers believe to be missing in the Christian worldview: Angels are feckless, and demons are redeemable through their interactions with human beings. It promotes self-gratification and narcissism over our freely given responsibilities to a loving, personal, holy God.

There are myriad verses to show that God is indeed knowable through revelation, not absent and indifferent. There are many verses that talk about angels and demons not being the least bit morally ambiguous, as they are presented in Good Omens. And finally, there are many, many verses showing that good and evil are indeed not interchangeable, that the Apocalypse is not a farcical bureaucratic screw-up, nor is the End Times revelation a cosmic joke, but a sovereignly orchestrated and purposeful culmination of history.

The Bible reveals that history is moving toward restoration, not ultimate chaos and/or divine indifference. At the end of the series (spoiler alert), God, who is depicted as a black woman dressed in an all-white Elvis-type getup, recreates the universe without God or Satan, and everyone is blissfully happy, including the two gay men who used to be the angel "Aziraphale" and the Devil, and the lesbian couple across the street.

Good Omens is the perfect example of Uncle Screwtape's advice to Wormwood on how to deceive the unsaved and even the Christian by presenting anti-God arguments in pretty wrapping, in this case, the TV series, Good Omens.

The acting is superb, the writing is excellent, the visuals are captivating. It is tied up in an attractive box and bow, but the message is demonic: You don't need God because He is cruel and doesn't understand human beings' desires to be godless, and further, He is sadistic and confused, and you deserve happiness in whatever way you choose to grab it.

That is the rub: God fully understands what human beings are like, which is why the Cross gives them a chance at redemption and the assurance of a life lived in God's protection and service. The Devil has always wrapped his sins in pretty packaging and has been remarkably successful selling it to even intelligent people.

Good Omens uses Christian imagery for satire, but its theological framework diverges significantly from biblical teaching on God’s nature, the moral order, the End Times and, instead uses the stale old atheist argument that "a good God wouldn't…." (fill in the blank).

I hated myself for enjoying some of the very funny comedy bits but was not swayed in any way by the overt or hidden wokery. The spiritually discerning Christian will immediately see what is going on with the God-bashing and Christian-bashing. The rest will think nothing of it, and that is a satanic victory.