Hi, friends. This week, I wanted to share something a little different. As some of you might know, I’m working on a graduate certificate in Christian Studies at Fuller Seminary. In this program, you get to pretty much design your own course of study, and my focus has been on theology, arts, and culture.
For my latest class, Theology and Film, our final assignment was to write a paper that put a movie of our choice ‘in dialogue’ with the book of Ecclesiastes. As it happens, my favorite movie of all time is The Big Lebowski, and one of its most celebrated lines is a direct reference to Ecclesiastes.
“The Dude abides.”
I spent a lot of time on this paper, and had a blast writing it. And not to brag, but I an A to boot. It seemed a shame that only my professor and a few close family members and friends would ever get the chance to read it, and so I wanted to share it here on In Progress.
If I had to define my ‘whole schtick’ these days, it’s trying to find ways God and his truth shine through in unexpected places. To me, The Big Lebowski is a prime example. If you’ve seen it, I hope this paper might help you see it in a new light. If you haven’t seen it, stop what you are doing and watch it immediately. It’s delightful!
If you don’t think Jeffrey ‘the Dude’ Lebowski models a biblical way of living, get ready to have your mind blown! Thanks for reading, and hope you enjoy!
Rolling with the Dude and Qoheleth: The Big Lebowski in Dialogue with Ecclesiastes
Jonathan Busch
TC530: Theology and Film
June, 2025
Introduction
At a glance, The Big Lebowski (1998) might not seem like it has much to say to a Christian audience. Between copious drug and alcohol use, a parade of unsavory characters, a plot in which no one learns any lessons, and its famously prodigious use of the f-word, it’s a movie the typical youth pastor would have steered us away from as teenagers in the late-‘90s. Fortunately, my church leaders did not do a good enough job in this regard, and so one evening during my senior year, perhaps providentially, I wandered into a theater with a handful of friends to watch “some bowling movie by the guys who did Fargo.” As you might surmise, we had no idea what we were getting into, but we were completely enthralled. From 1999 to 2003, I became a sort of ‘Lebowski evangelist’ at Gordon College, owning a copy of the film (on VHS!) and watching it countless times with anyone willing to give it a chance.
A “Christian” Approach to The Big Lebowski and Beyond
The Big Lebowski requires what Detweiller, Johnston, and Calloway call “ethical patience” (2019, 189). Ralph Basui Watkins, another Fuller alum, uses the same phrase to describe a helpful approach to hip-hop music (2011). These authors encourage us to reverse the hermeneutical flow, not judging movies or songs against an existing, limited theology, but seeking to build theologies out of such artifacts that may speak to specific cultures, contexts, and circumstances in profound ways that arguably transcend the natural limitations of Scripture. “Films are our new myths, stories that grapple with the most fundamental of human dilemmas and attempt to answer big existential questions such as where did we come from?, how ought we live?, how did the world begin?, and what happens after we die?” (Solano 2019, 26).
This approach can be critical to engaging with those outside of and/or hostile to the church and meaningfully expand our own applied theology. Still, our reverence for film can be taken too far when we idolize artists and their work. Ted Turnau rightly warns readers to take care that reverse hermeneutics augment rather than supplant Biblical foundations. “...Christians of every era, when confronted with the spirit of the age, are called not to uncritical celebration of that spirit, but rather to critical discernment of it,” he writes. “…We need critical engagement with postmodernism that neither summarily dismisses it nor dotes on it” (Turnau 2012, 177-78).
Artists’ works and lives are inherently flawed, incomplete reflections that God, in his love, nevertheless shines through. We call celebrities “idols” all the time, and we don’t need to look far to find false or fallen ones, from Woody Allen to P. Diddy and countless others. Still, Christians should approach film and popular culture from a place of appreciation and humility, recognizing that the contemporary church has largely lost its moral high ground, not just through the proliferation of postmodern philosophy, but through its own prominent, public sin.
Nevertheless, authors like Justin Brierley point to a resurgence of belief in God in the West, and a general longing for faith surging up through an almost post-postmodern cultural moment (2023). With all this in mind, movies—even those as irreverent as The Big Lebowski—can serve as entry points for deeper existential ponderings.
“Takin’ ‘er Easy for All Us Sinners”: The Dude as Qoheleth
There is something widely yet enigmatically appealing about the Dude. He’s not handsome, successful, talented, or impressive by any conventional standard, yet he embodies something admirable, even enviable. “The film has inspired such a passionate fan base that a new religion has emerged: Dudeism and The Church of the Latter-Day Dude” (Solano 2019, 117).
Why such reverence? The Dude is no hero, the Stranger tells us, “cuz what’s a hero?” immediately undermining the archetypal “hero’s journey” that propels most movie plots. The Dude rescues no one, solves no real problems, and learns no real lessons. He doesn’t change, he abides. Still, the Stranger suggests that the Dude gets it in a way most do not. He is more than just a man; he is “the man for his time and place.” But why does the Stranger hold the Dude, of all people, in such high esteem? What could such a man possibly have to teach us?
An insightful article on the movie fansite Screenrant explains the Biblical significance of the Dude’s famous final line, “The Dude abides,” as “an obscure reference to the book of Ecclesiastes” (Sherlock, McCormick, and Lealos 2024). The authors analyze the connection between Ecclesiastes and the Dude’s aura keenly, writing, “…As kingdoms rise and fall, the ground they’re built on is the only constant. The Dude is saying that he’s more like the earth that kingdoms are built on than the conquerors who build them” (ibid.).
The Dude falls into an archetype known as the slacker-hero. We might be tempted to dismiss this as a fleeting phenomenon of the famously cynical 1990s, but Fred Ashe posits that “A strain of the American psyche has always sought deliverance from duty. …To identify with the slacker hero is to deny, if only imaginatively, our complicity in the dehumanizing world of consumption and competition” (2009, 43). Ashe locates one of the earliest examples of the slacker-hero in Rip Van Winkle, described as “one of those happy mortals of foolish, well-oiled dispositions, who take the world easy” (ibid., 48, emphasis added). The Dude’s disposition also calls to mind poet Walt Whitman declaring, “Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am, stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary…” (1855).
Like Qoheleth, the Dude is a proponent of going with the flow, “taking it easy.” The film opens and closes with a tumbleweed rolling in the wind, evoking Ecclesiastes 1:6: “The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course” (NIV). The Dude is a tumbleweed; his willingness to simply drift, especially in his ultra-competitive, success-driven context of Los Angeles, makes the Dude iconoclastic, perhaps even messianic. “Given the American Western flavor of the movie’s frame tale, the Dude arguably serves as a national savior” (Ashe 2009, 41). Taking it easy is the Dude’s guiding principle. When he implores Walter to “just take it easy, man,” Walter snaps back, “That’s your answer to everything, Dude!” But the Stranger ultimately affirms the Dude’s mentality, saying, “It’s good to know that he’s out there, taking ‘er easy for all us sinners.”
Some might take issue with the idea that the antidote to sin is “taking ‘er easy,” rather than more traditional ideas like repentance, redemption, liberation, or justice. But this suggestion is consistent with Ecclesiastes, as the Teacher reminds us that even striving after justice, wisdom, and righteousness are ultimately futile endeavors. “All share a common destiny—the righteous and the wicked, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, those who offer sacrifices and those who do not” (9:2). The Teacher goes on just five verses later to encourage the enjoyment of earthly pleasures. “Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do” (9:7). These are God’s gifts for our fleeting days. For the Dude, these pleasures include white Russians, marijuana, leisurely baths, and bowling, all manifestations of “taking ‘er easy.”
Culture Clash: The Dude vs “Achievement”
Considering the film through a cultural framework, the Dude’s entire ethos is offensive to American ideals of hard work and “achievement.” “The Dude drifts through life guided by no personal code more tangible than the desire to live free of care. He rejects such traditional markers of American selfhood as family, career, religion, even his given name” (Ashe 2009, 54). Ecclesiastes likewise pushes against concepts like the Protestant Work Ethic, the Self-Made Man, and the American Dream. “...All toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind” (4:4).
If America is about making a name for oneself and leaving a legacy, Ecclesiastes bluntly reminds us that both will be forgotten (1:11, 2:11). As the Dude confronts the cultural ideals that surround him, so Ecclesiastes systematically shoots down respect markers of its cultural context: riches, wisdom, even righteousness.
This clash of ideals is best articulated through the Dude’s contentious meeting with the other Jeffrey Lebowski, the (alleged) millionaire. Lebowski berates the Dude for being unemployed and shabbily dressed, accuses him of grifting, and finally insults the whole 60’s counterculture movement, shouting, “Your revolution is over, Mr. Lebowski. Condolences. The bums lost!” Later, Maude Lebowski echoes Ecclesiastes when she tells the Dude, “Father’s weakness is vanity,” and we discover that Lebowski is no millionaire. “The money is all the foundation’s.” Lebowski’s fraudulence seems to be a clear dig at the American myths the Dude rejects and possibly a reflection on the fakeness endemic to Hollywood, specifically.
“...Being Very Un-Dude”: The Folly of Striving and Scheming
From an auteur perspective, we can note that most Coen films revolve around schemes gone awry: Llewelyn taking the duffle bag in No Country for Old Men, Jerry Lundegard orchestrating his wife’s kidnapping in Fargo, Hi and Ed stealing a baby in Raising Arizona, and the blackmail plot in Burn After Reading. Other, sadder plots explore the tragedies of characters striving futilely after different life goals: Llewyn Davis’s doomed quest for recognition in the folk scene, Barton Fink’s blown opportunity as a Hollywood screenwriter, Larry Gopnik’s struggle to become A Serious Man, Norville Barnes’ rapid ascent and spectacular downfall in The Hudsucker Proxy.
The Dude is decidedly not a striver. “Everything that happened in the movie – all the violence and intimidation and threats of death – got in the way of what the Dude would rather be doing: nothing” (Sherlock, et. al. 2024). The Dude does not chase success, but neither does he strive after justice or righteousness apart from allegiance to his personal ethos. He was a kind of activist at one point, “occupying various administration buildings” and co-authoring the original Port Huron Statement, “not the compromised second draft.” But as the Dude tells Lebowski’s simpering, long-suffering assistant Brandt, he doesn’t remember most of it, and it’s unclear if the Dude’s antiauthoritarian streak is based on any deeper grievance than the establishment’s tendency to harsh his mellow.
If the Dude has a guiding principle beyond “taking ‘er easy,” it might be closest to “do no harm.” But the Dude stumbles in adhering to his own dogma, and this is where all the Dude’s troubles begin. The author of Ecclesiastes reminds us that even striving for justice can be folly (5:8). And so while the Dude’s desire for restitution for his soiled rug is not wrong, it is ill-fated nonetheless. When the Dude’s request is rejected, he hatches a scheme of his own. “The old man told me to take any rug in the house,” Dude breezily informs Brandt, and off he goes with a rug that does not belong to him. The Dude thus entangles himself with an unseemly bunch of schemers and goes on to suffer for it.
When Walter strongarms the Dude into his scheme to steal the ransom money Lebowski has entrusted the Dude to deliver, the Dude becomes further embroiled with Lebowski, Bunny, Jackie Treehorn, and the nihilists. The Dude must take some agency if only to bring his taxing ordeal to an end, but like the tumbleweed in the wind, or the pins in the alley, the Dude is mostly tossed to and fro and knocked about by forces beyond his control. He’s caught up in Bunny’s debt, the nihilists’ kidnapping scheme, Walter’s scheme to steal Lebowski’s ransom money, Lebowski’s scheme to defraud his family’s nonprofit foundation, and even Maude’s scheme to become impregnated by a man she doesn’t “have to see socially or will have any interest in raising a child himself.” We get the sense throughout that the Dude would much rather all of this not be happening, although, admittedly, at times, he does seem to relish the intrigue of it all, along with his role in said intrigue.
Unreversing the Hermeneutic: Where the Dude Falls Short
The Dude exemplifies a way of life closely aligned with the teachings and philosophy of Ecclesiastes, but the Dude remains out of step with the Teacher in a few important ways. While the Dude’s “do no harm” ethic may apply to “things done,” his “things left undone” are worth considering. First, Qoheleth instructs his readers to “find enjoyment in all their hard work” (5:18) as “a person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil” (2:24). The Dude avoids not just employment, but all exertion. Without a kidnapping to solve, it’s hard to imagine what the Dude does in the long hours between bowling tournaments. Second, the Dude does not live a lifestyle that shows any reverance for—let alone obedience to—God, as Qoheleth calls for (12:13). If the Stranger is God, the Dude does not revere or even recognize him, and responds to his request to use fewer “cuss words” by swearing at him. Notably, the Stranger is not hurt by this, only amused. Like David or Jacob, the Dude seems to be loved and favored despite himself. Third, the Dude’s carelessness likely has unseen ripple effects. His failure to pay rent causes harm to his pushover landlord, Marty, even as the Dude proves a loyal friend by attending his interpretive dance recital. The Dude also seems to have no qualms about driving under the influence. His drinking a beer while smoking a joint while driving is played for laughs, but the Dude could really hurt someone this way.
A Coen character who more fully embodies the wisdom of Ecclesiastes is Marge Gunderson, the steadfast, pregnant cop from Fargo. She is someone the Stranger might rightfully regard as a hero, enjoying her work, her life with her spouse, and the simple pleasures that life offers. “There’s more to life than a little money, ya know,” she informs the murderous kidnapper she’s just arrested, practically channeling Qoheleth. “Don’t ya know that? And here you are, and it’s a beautiful day.”
Whether our Dude is a teacher, prophet, or national savior, he is an imperfect one, a man who embodies an ideal but doesn’t always live up to it. His example is not one that, like Jesus’, should compel us to fall to our knees in reverence; his is attainable, even surpassable. Maybe, instead of being just like the Dude, we can take the best of what the Dude has to teach us, apply it to our lives, and do more. Rejecting America’s false gods—money, fame, success, power—we might begin our journey toward becoming ‘achievers’ for Christ.
References
Ashe, Fred. 2009. “The Really Big Sleep: Jeffrey Lebowski as the Second Coming of Rip Van Winkle.” Essay. In The Year’s Work in Lebowski Studies, 41–57. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.
Brierley, Justin. 2023. The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God: Why New Atheism Grew Old and Secular Thinkers Are Considering Christianity Again. Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale Elevate.
Johnston, Robert K., Craig Detweiler, and Kutter Callaway. 2019. Deep Focus: Film and Theology in Dialogue. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Publishing Group.
Sherlock, Ben, Colin McCormick, and Shawn S. Lealos. “The Big Lebowski: What ‘The Dude Abides’ Means.” ScreenRant, October 30, 2024. https://screenrant.com/the-big-lebowski-what-dude-abides-means/.
Solano, Jeanette Reedy. 2022. Religion and Film: The Basics. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Turnau, Ted. 2012. Popologetics: Popular Culture in Christian Perspective. Phillipsburg, N.J.: P & R Pub.
Watkins, Ralph C. 2011. Hip-Hop Redemption: Finding God in the Rhythm and the Rhyme. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic.
Whitman, Walt. 1855. “Song of Myself, 4.” Poets.Org. Academy of American Poets. August 9, 2019. https://poets.org/poem/song-myself-4.