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In Patch Adams (1998), the eponymous doctor (Robin Williams, Shadyac's third mega-star!) heals with humor and humanism. He lets the poor come to his clinic free of charge. His detractors work to remove his license, forcing him to fight for his cause. When it can't get any worse, Adams' girlfriend dies. He storms out to a cliff to hurl himself off. For the first time in a Shadyac film, a character speaks directly to God.

"So what now, huh?" Adams asks God. "What do you want from me? I could do it. We both know you wouldn't stop me. So answer me, please. Tell me what you're doing. Okay. Let's look at the logic. You create man. Man suffers enormous amounts of pain and dies. Maybe you should have had a few more brainstorming sessions prior to Creation. You rested on the 7th day. Maybe you should have spent that day on compassion … You know what? You're not worth it."

Magically, a butterfly appears.

Shadyac's first overtly supernatural film, Dragonfly (2002), concerns a widowed doctor, Joseph Darrow, who gets messages from his dead wife via his patients who have near-death experiences. Shadyac told an interviewer that the story "is intended to be a modern-day parable, where the message and meaning lie in the story. Here's a doctor who doesn't believe in anything after death, but through strange circumstances finds faith in what he can't see, and no one else around him will believe. The key is to think parable. Christians miss so much when they condemn things without being open to the overall message. Yes, we have the Bible, but we don't know everything. Obviously God does work in mysterious ways."

Dragonfly marked the first time Shadyac didn't get his first choice in casting: Harrison Ford turned down the role, which went to Kevin Costner instead. Ford would surely have brought more wit to the role than Costner's half-baked sleepwalker. But the story also suffers from predictability and obviousness, and it ended up being Shadyac's first box office failure.

He wisely returned to comedy for his next film—and to his golden goose, Jim Carrey, with his most supernatural film to date, one that even featured God as a main character.

Having paid his dues with his comedic track record, Shadyac was allowed to explore more explicitly spiritual terrain, a place where Hollywood angels fear to tread. But the risk proved worthwhile: his next movie became one of the top-50 grossing films of all time.

A postmodern parable, Bruce Almighty (2003) features Carrey as TV news reporter Bruce Nolan, who loses the anchor position to his archrival, Evan Baxter (Steve Carell).

The film opens with a disgruntled Bruce complaining to God in the grand tradition of Job, Jonah and Jacob: "Why do you hate me?" God, played by Morgan Freeman, answers by letting Bruce be God for a day.

Bruce Almighty pulls out all the stops with allusions to Scripture: Bruce walks on water, parts his tomato soup, turns water to wine, and logs on to yahweh.com to check his e-mail for prayers from his aptly named girlfriend/roommate Grace (Jennifer Aniston).

"I am Bruce Almighty," he says to himself. "My will be done!" Bruce uses his supernatural powers to turn Grace on sexually and to turn Evan into his puppet, making a fool out of him on live television. But Bruce turns into something else; his ego swells to match his power, which leads Grace to break up with him. He witnesses her intercessory prayer for him (one of Aniston's finest moments), tries to force her to fall back in love with him, and finds that he is powerless.

Bruce asks God, "How do you make somebody love you without affecting free will?" God says, "Welcome to my world, son." The whole of the Bible—especially as summarized by Shadyac near the top of this article—is wrapped up in those two lines.

Bruce humbles himself, allowing Grace the freedom to love and to be loved, and allowing grace, in the form of graciousness and gratitude, back into his life. And, as all good couples do at the end of a comedy, they marry. When you take Shadyac at his word and look at the entire journey, Bruce Almighty is, so far, his clearest version of the love story that is at the heart of Scripture.

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