God in the Box

4 filmmakers, a box, and the most controversial subject in the world, set off on a 10 day 8 city tour across the United States to ask people two profound questions: Who is God to you? And what does it look like? Where did this brilliant idea come from? On a road trip to Tucson Nathan Lang, Nick Calderon, Troy Browder and Jim Manley were talking about they poor state of reality television, and like all good entrepreneurs they knew all they needed was a good idea, they were in luck Nathan had it- “God in the Box”.

The plan…build a box, add video, a stool, a pad of paper and let people share honestly and openly about God. God of all things - the topic which more wars have been fought over than any other topic in the world. When I asked Nick Calderon if he knew what they were getting themselves into, and the profoundness of this project, he answered: that they had no clue, nor did they have a clue how great this project would turn out, it was truly enlightening!

So they set out in their RV with their God Box, which is often referred to as the main character, to get inside people’s heads and to figure out their basic concept of God. The boys are pretty tight lipped about this documentary, as it has yet to be released, but they did tell me that what people came up with was astounding - the differences in their opinions, thoughts, ideas and concepts were shocking. The passion behind this topic was far beyond anyone’s expectations. While watching the documentary previews I heard a lot profound and heart-felt statements, but the most upsetting statement I heard was “What God means to me is trouble in the world”. It broke my heart actually. Really I think it to be the exact opposite of how God would want to be defined. The neatest thing happened while I was doing the research for this article. My youngest son, Gavin 10, reminded me that the actual box from God in the Box was parked at our neighborhood church for weeks. Crazy, I must have passed it like 100 times, each time wondering what it was all about. Now, to be writing a story on it - is it odd or is it God?

While interviewing Nick, he said to me that he learned more from the questions that he did from the answers. I get it, there are so many more questions about God that aren't unanswered. He also told me that he found great comfort in knowing that he wasn’t the only one full of questions. I think if we’re all honest, we’re all full of questions. With the state of the nation how could we not be. This amazing documentary is in post production as we speak! I absolutely cannot wait to see it! What I’m hoping, this film is actually about is taking God out of the box. It seems to me that we have been putting God in a box for way to long . What happened? Is it not time to ask ourselves if we are a country built on God, where has he gone? And with the state of our country what it is today, would it not be in our best interest to put him back in charge

So I guess Nick was right - it is all about the question. It’s hard to look at all the suffering in the world - cancer, Aids, suffering children, floods? And still have faith, but if we start questioning God on the bad stuff then do we not have to start questioning him on all of the good, like the fact the sun comes up every morning. I could go on and on with questions -what about this? What about that? How come this is happening? How come that is happening?- But I don’t want to because I think God is Love and there is no question about that. We may not always understand why or how it works, but I think that if we all just made a conscious effort to love each other just a little bit more, this world would become a whole lot better place!

To see a sneak peak of this film visit their site at www.godinthebox.com