Last week, on the opening day of Noah, as the credits rolled, a friend who happened to be sitting near my wife and I in the theater turned to me and said: “What was with that Noah getting drunk and laying naked on the beach? I don’t remember reading that in the Bible.”

Strangely, that scene was one of the few things from Noah that WAS in the Bible.

Genesis 9: 20 Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. 21 When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. 23 But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backward and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.

Okay, so it was a tent, not a cave. I can live with that. But with most Christians, I was somewhat appalled by Darren Aranofsky’s loose interpretation of the rest of the Noah story. In fact, it wasn’t an interpretation of the story at all, it was just flat out made up. The account of Noah is spread through chapters 6, 7, 8, and 9 of Genesis and is one of the most detailed stories in the Bible. There is very little interpreting to be done and DA altered major portions and thematic elements for reasons I can only guess. No less than five times Genesis says “…Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives…” You can’t interpret that to be “…Noah and his sons and his wife and his eldest son’s wife…” Unless you can interpret 2+2 to be equal to five. It isn’t about interpretation, it is about honesty and we know where DA stands on that.

However, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that while Mr. Aranofsky might be in some spiritual hot water for intentionally altering God’s revealed word, it has little effect on anyone else. Altering the story doesn’t change the story. And if it causes even one person who doesn’t read the Bible regularly (me included) to read the actual account of Noah in Genesis (which I did following the movie) then I call it a win for God. Aren’t we constantly trying to get people to pick up a Bible? Well done DA!

It also gives Christians a chance to distinguish themselves from their Islamic counterparts. Christians often get called out for hating homosexuals and being hard on adulterers and the like. For some reason, though, Muslims get a pass even though they put homosexuals and adulterers to death. It’s been hundreds of years since Christians did that but it happens every day across the Middle East. Salman Rushdie had to live in exile for years because he called elements of the Koran into question. Over the past few years numerous writers and cartoonists have received death sentences for infractions as seemingly innocuous as drawing a cartoon of Mohammed. How have Christians responded to DA’s butchery of the Noah story? Criticism. Blogs. Refusing to go see it. Way to go Christians!

In the end, though, this all does shine a light on a major problem with modern Christianity. As a faithful Christian I am surrounded by, and often participate in, a lot of handwringing about the Godlessness that has enveloped our society.  We fear our way of life will end. We fear God will destroy our nation. After all, he’s done it before. But is that really where our focus needs to be?

First off, God said he would have saved Sodom for ten righteous men. Even in the worst of U.S. cities there are more than ten righteous men. In our nation as a whole there are millions of faithful men and women. Do you think God’s forgotten us? Where is your faith?

And THAT is where the drama in Noah should have come from. The story didn’t need an evil king or a lack of resources to have dramatic tension. Noah and his family were the last people on Earth! They were adrift in a planet-wide sea. Millions had just perished. No evil king is needed! Can you imagine how terrifying that would be? If DA can imagine rock creatures (which I didn’t really have a problem with) certainly he could have imagined what it would have been like on the Ark. That is my problem with the story – Darren Aronofsky missed the entire point. And if we aren’t careful, so will we.

So as we think on Noah, and what it would mean to be lost at sea as the sole remaining element of humanity, lets remember what I think might be the single most powerful element of the story of Noah and one of the most powerful verses in all the bible. An enduring trait of God that remains as applicable to us today as it did to Noah, our greatest of grandfathers, some 5,000 years ago.

Genesis 8:1

But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and the livestock that were with him in the ark, and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.

John C. Brewer