I posted on
There has been a bit of a
On the other hand, you’ve got perpetually offended Muslims – offended at the Burger King ice cream lid and insisting it be recalled. (It was.) Offended by the Red Cross – soon to be replaced by the Red Crescent and the Red Crystal in many places. They’re offended by “Jewish” cookies. Plush toy pigs, pig figurines and piggy banks are disappearing in offices and even story time at schools in England due to Muslim ultra-sensitivity.
Is that the lead that Christians want to follow, living in a state of perpetual outrage and offense because the culture, which we already know is evil, is not compatible with our beliefs? Do we want to try to achieve change by brute force – huge numbers of us calling, emailing, and writing on this or that cause to force them to comply with our demands – or do we want to persuade others to join our side by seeing the inherent rightness and superiority of what we believe?
Jesus may have thrown the moneychangers out of the temple, but we aren’t Jesus, and Hollywood and the idiot box are not the temple. Rather than react to this show, and others like it, why don’t we respond to it? Invite your neighbors over for a bible study during that time. Or spend that hour alone or with a group of like-minded Christians in prayer for a lost world.
To be fair, the Jesus in the show isn’t supposed to be Jesus. It’s supposed to be how Daniel would expect Jesus to respond to him. It’s portraying his own internal conversation with Jesus based on his own conception of Jesus. It’s not supposed to be Jesus really being there and talking to Daniel. So it’s a little unfair to complain about the show’s portrayal of Jesus as being unlike Jesus. It’s not even supposed to be Jesus. That’s why they made him so stereotypical in appearance and morally much more like a mainline liberal pastor than the Jesus of the Bible. I wish they made this more explicit, though. I’m not sure I would have gotten it from watching it. (I heard it in an interview with the show’s creator.) And that itself is something worth complaining about.
I also want to mention one other thing he said. He doesn’t see this as representing the typical Christian minister or the typical Christian. He sees it as a real family with real problems, and Daniel happens to be devoutly Christian. He compares this to the stereotypical gay characters all over sitcomes nowadays, and he wishes they would just have people who are normal people in any way who happen to be gay without trying to fit stereotypes. He misunderstands Christianity a good deal if he thinks someone can just happen to be Christian without it defining everything else about them, but this is where he’s coming from in portraying a family with serious problems who happen to be Christian.b
In addition to that, I’d like to say that when the main character is a minister, that does make Christianity the central focus of the show. If he wants a real family with real problems, who happen to be Christian, make the central character an accountant or garbage collector or any other job. When the entire family is ostensibly Christian even if you don’t see them talking to Jesus, and they each have a major issue (alcoholism, drug dealing, etc.) then that’s going pretty far to claim it’s not contributing to a stereotype.
As much as I hate/love the smarmy 7th Heaven (stopped watching a few years ago), that addressed major issues in a non-offensive manner. All of the problems were not IN the family, and not at the same time.