(Skip forward in video to 3:20 and watch until the end.)
What Shawn reveals is my generations view of God. Christian Smith reveals through his analysis in the book Soul Searching that my generation believes in a God who is moralistic, therapeutic, deism. (See Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church.) God essentially wants us to be good people (moralistic), and in doing so, he will step away from his absence of this earth (deism) and help us in our needs (therapeutic).
God is there to help us when we need it, but otherwise he is absent, and all he asks of us is to be good people. I think Shawn Hunter’s desperation, his prayer to God, reveals that his relationship with God is distant, but what he really wants is the help from God (in that moment) and people like Mr. Turner to help him become the person he is supposed to be. I appreciated this clip for showing what so many people my age believe about God.
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See also: Saint Patrick and the Liberal Arts: An Antidote to Therapeutic, Moralistic, Deism.
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