Believe Me

So after our talks about Christian movies in our past few classes, I was reminded of this film I saw a while back called Believe Me. I re-watched it today, so now I’m going to talk about it.

So here’s the premise. Sam is a college senior who gets a surprise tuition bill. He needs to get money fast, so he enlists three of his friends to help him and they create a fake Christian charity project, knowing that Christians will want to give money to what they think is a good cause. During the course of their scam, they try to teach themselves how to act like Christians (or what they think Christians are like, at least). But as the team goes along and some of them begin to question if they should continue scamming people, they learn more about what real Christianity is and isn’t from genuine believers and from people who only claim to be Christians.

Now I’m not sure if I would call Believe Me a Christian film, but it deals with a lot of Christian themes and with problems with the ways Christians sometimes act. It’s essentially a satire about how a lot of modern-day Christians (specifically those who only claim to be Christians) act and really tries to get you to think about your faith and what you believe.

So one thing I appreciated about this film was that it didn’t portray all Christians as “the good guys.” When you begin to realize that some of Christians the four college scammers are working with are faking their faith just as much as the scammers are, it does a really good job showing that in the real world not everyone who claims to be a Christian is a Christian. However, that doesn’t mean that every Christian is a faker either. The movie also has some characters who clearly follow Jesus and want to live for him. One character in particular, Callie, is a character who has a heart for God and wants to make disciples. But even she has struggles. There’s a point where she wonders whether her work has created any true Christians and when she finds out that Sam and his friends are scamming everyone, she has a lot of trouble forgiving him.

By the end of the film, (Spoilers!) you don’t see Sam or any of his friends get saved or decide to follow Jesus. I like this because while Sam’s character has progressed a lot, he’s not quite to the point where I could buy him deciding to follow Jesus yet, so I’m glad they don’t force it. Instead, Sam gives back the stolen money and you’re left wondering what Sam will do next and where he will be going on his spiritual journey. And more importantly, it leaves you thinking not just about him but about your own faith. It gets you to question why you believe what you believe. Are you believing or doing something just because that’s what others are doing or because you truly believe it?

While I’ve said a lot of good things about this film, it is far from perfect. There are a few characters who I don’t think are written or portrayed very well. For example, Gabriel, the worship leader who is doing his job more for his own glory than God’s, is not that well-formed of a character. The movie seems to change its mind a few times on who exactly his character is and what it wants us to think about him. There a few ideas dealing with Christians and the Christian faith that I don’t think the movie handles well, or could have at least been handled better.

Overall though, I’d say this is film that is worth watching for any Christian who wants to be challenged about why they believe what they believe. But would a non-Christian like or at least appreciate this film? I’m not really sure. I think that there are definitely parts that non-Christians would enjoy as much or even more than Christians, but as a whole I can’t really say. In the end, it's not that perfect Christian film that finally gets it all right, but it definitely seems like an improvement over most Christian films nowadays.