Dogma was, for me, at the same time both a very interesting and a very flawed film. Very succinctly, the plot concerns the progress of two "fallen" angels who are attempting to exploit a loophole in Church law (the dogma of the title) which will reverse their "fallen" status and return them to heaven. As this will render God fallible if they are successful and cause the universe to immediately cease to exist, the stakes are high with vested interests on both sides of the cosmic divide. The thing that interested me most about the movie was its portrayal of God. Significant in itself and indicative of the cultural shift away from Modernism is the very fact that in a movie such as this, made for the MTV generation, God’s existence is assumed and needs not be constructed or contested for. For the audience of Dogma the presence and existence of the supra-natural and transcendent is an a priori given - as Nicholas Cage’s angelic character in City of Angels so perfectly put it with a shrug - "some things are true whether you believe in them or not." The question that lies incessantly beneath the surface of Dogma is not "Does God exist"? (as in Modernism) but "Where is God?" and "Why won’t he / she come / appear / do anything"? The theme reminded me instantly of the ‘Divine Intervention’ scene in Pulp Fiction where Jules and Vincent are fired at by a six shot "hand cannon" with the bullets miraculously missing them both. Jules insists "This was a miracle" too which Vincent scoffs "God came down and stopped the bullets"? Again the existence of God is assumed - the question is "Why did God act on this occasion"? JULES:  "I felt the touch of God. God got involved" VINCENT:  "But why"? JULES:  "That I do not know." At the very beginning of Dogma we hear a Priest pleading with his congregation to give generously to the cause of an unknown homeless man who has been viciously bashed on a city street and now lies in a coma in hospital. As is the case in that great democracy of the USA if you don’t have the money to pay for medical care you don’t get it, and so this destitute man will have his life support turned off unless someone pays for his ongoing care. At the end of the film we find that God was in fact present from the very beginning - incarnate in fact in the form of this same homeless man lying in a coma in hospital. When the necessary funds are raised God makes an appearance - though she looks a lot like Alanis Morrisette - admiring flowers, standing on her head, and performing somersaults.     The God portrayed in Dogma is one who is both like us and near to us. So near in fact, and so much like us, that she is easily missed - just as the majority of the people of Jesus’ time rejected him because he was so much like them ("Isn’t this Joseph the carpenter’s son"?) The enduring mystery (and scandal) of Christianity is that the carpenter’s son is God revealed in human form and likeness (the technical word is "incarnate" = in the flesh). And there is another, radical, aspect of the Incarnation - the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ is the God who comes to us, not in great power and glory, but in weakness and humility, as an infant, entirely dependent on a human mother. Just as the God portrayed in Dogma is, for most of the movie, weak and powerless and completely dependent on human beings.   The other interesting thing about God, as portrayed in Dogma, is that she only becomes visible and is seen and recognised after an act of kindness and compassion by one group of human beings toward another. There are some subtle lessons in this for us all. "Where is God"? the characters in the movie ask - Only as far away as the next person the answer seems to be, Right there in the old man lying in a coma... In the broken, the poor, the addicted, the imprisoned and afflicted who are all around you, every day. As the parable teaches us -  "the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’ (Matthew 25:37-40 NRSV). An important aspect of the way God is revealed to us emerges. God is near to us and among us. God is made known and enters the story of our lives in acts of kindness, mercy, compassion, and love, one to another. A quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer gathers up the point well - "The God who is with us is the God who forsakes us (Mark 15:34). The God who makes us live in this world without using him as a working hypothesis is the God before whom we are ever standing. Before God and with him we live without God. God allows himself to be edged out of the world and onto the cross. God is weak and powerless in the world, and that is exactly the way the only way, in which he can be with us and help us... It is not by his omnipotence that Christ helps us, but by his weakness and suffering." (In Letters and Papers From Prison, 1944).