When 84% of the world believes in a Higher Power, it’s strange that film still hasn’t discovered how to represent the spiritual experience.

Considering how far we’ve come in filmmaking, it’s surprising that no movie has managed to fully represent the personal religious experience. When we can show things that never existed with CGI, why can’t we depict a feeling that has existed in human civilization since the dawn of time?

I consider myself a religious person. But as a Baha’i, I don’t see the experience of any religious person properly represented anywhere. There are elements of it here or there, but I’ve never walked away from a movie feeling like it understood my relationship with God, and how my religion affects the decisions I make on a day-to-day basis.

Even published writers I’ve spoken to that are Christian or Muslim struggle to know how to properly depict what’s one of the — if not the — most important parts of their lives, in a way that’s both realistic and respectful.

It’s important to point out that while I make references to specific religions, or specific ideas of what/who God is in this article, that’s just because that’s what I’m familiar with. No matter what your religion or beliefs are, I still feel like our conversations, thoughts, and dreams don’t really exist in the fictional world. It seems that in film, it’s much easier to escape conversations of the spiritual altogether.

It’s about more than culture

There are a lot of movies that show religious culture. Many movies that touch on things that have happened in religion, on the relationship between the people and religious authority, on cultural expectations, and the contradictions that exist in religious organizations.

But these are hardly ever in a positive light. While it’s important to tell the stories that people have tried to cover up — like Spotlight, for example, or Disobedience, we come away from these movies with a profound sense of skepticism, not only towards the organizational or cultural aspects of religion, but towards religion itself. (It’s not that these movies shouldn’t be made — they should be — but there’s nothing to balance them out.)

Because that’s not what religion is. The physical manifestation of religion is only a fraction of the spiritual experience. And it’s not what makes people feel the profound sense of love religion inspires, or what keeps them strong in seemingly impossible situations.

A humanized God never works

God has been played by a multitude of actors over the years, usually in comedies. Important figures of some religions have also been played by actors, with varying degrees of success. But it’s clear that a humanized God in movies never leads to an accurate depiction of one’s relationship with a Higher Power.

Maybe that’s what makes it so hard to show on film. When you don’t know what something looks like — or even understand exactly what it is — how could you possibly depict it accurately? Someone’s relationship with the spiritual could never be played out so explicitly as a conversation with Morgan Freeman, no matter how heartwarming it is.

And when it comes to representing religious figures… well, it often ends up feeling like a watered-down version of the real thing (whatever the “real thing” is; isn’t that one of the biggest questions in religion, anyway?). In the case of Christianity, few filmmakers set out to make a scientifically accurate depiction of Jesus’ race, and even if they do, no actor is really talented enough to portray the personality of someone who revolutionized the world not just in a tangible way, but in a profoundly spiritual way.

It can’t be its own genre

Probably the biggest misconception about religion in film is that it has to be its own genre. People don’t want to see ‘religious movies,’ because in reality, religion isn’t something that people live separately from their day-to-day lives. It’s something that is a part of every aspect of their lives.

Believing in something bigger than us serves as a moral compass that defines the kinds of choices we make. And for many of us, prayer, meditation, and reflection do play a big part in the making of those decisions. If I were a character in an action film, or a horror film, or even a romance, there would be many moments in which my spiritual beliefs would come into play — and not in a “pray-because-I’m-absolutely-desperate” way, either… it’s just a part of who I am (or who I try to be).

And then there are religious movies… which are almost all bad: they’re either unnecessarily cheesy, or preaching at you. Can we have a genre film like any other that just takes the spiritual part of our lives into account, like every other part of life?

So far, we’ve only seen glimpses

That’s not to say that there aren’t moments in film where it feels like we get a taste of those spiritual feelings. Personally, I’ve felt that awe, love, and overwhelming beauty in a handful of films and TV shows over the years: most recently, Sense8 (although not what people would consider a “religious” show), with its depiction of the interconnectedness of people from all around the world, and the profound love that can unite them. I also felt it in Life of Pi, in a more explicit way, when we see Pi’s journey searching for universal truth, and experience the allegory of the tiger — possibly one of the most profound comments on the existence of God in recent cinema.

Some historical films also manage to capture it, perhaps because they are committed to showing the inspirational, real-life sacrifices people have made for their beliefs. The Mission, with its Jesuit priests’ sincere love for God, which makes them understand the humanity of Native American peoples when no one else would; The Nativity Story, which shows the struggles Mary and Joseph went through leading up to Jesus’ birth; and even Silence — a movie that will scar any religious person, but that still feels painfully accurate in a way that’s rare in film.

While religion is a universal experience in some ways, it’s also a profoundly personal one. Everybody nurtures their own spirituality in their own way, regardless of what religion they belong to. But maybe the misunderstandings that stem from religion, the disunity that has been caused, can begin to heal when we see it as more than just a means to material ends — when we assign a more personal value to it even in film, and stop thinking of it as a means to power or greed.

Why aren’t we better at this?

We can create entire worlds from CGI. We can make movies in a variety of languages, sometimes many at a time. We can bring back the dead and have them star in present-day movies. We can spend millions of dollars on a show, and travel the world to shoot in multiple countries. We can make people believe in phenomena that doesn’t even exist. So why can’t we portray religion in an accurate way?

Is it that religion is considered too divisive a topic (whereas we’re still making a bunch of films about war and the 2016 election)?

Is it that the majority of countries that have a monopoly on filmmaking are secular?

Is it that filmmakers are terrified of portraying religion in a non-cynical way, because they don’t want to have a conversation about it?

Is it that we’ve started thinking of religion as an extremely private thing, too private to show on screen (…which is crazy, considering how much Hollywood loves shock value)?

Or is it that we just don’t understand how to showcase such a powerful, non-material experience, and we just have to get better at making movies? Are we just not that good at portraying immaterial things?

Maybe it’s all of these things. And maybe we should be asking more of these questions.