Comments on: Christian TV: Looking for Jesus in All the Wrong Places

By: Thomas Rondy

Thomas Rondy — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 06:30:50 +0000

Until “Desperate Housewives” aired, “Joan of Arcadia” was my favorite show.

By: Sam

Sam — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 06:28:41 +0000

Anybody ever see “Joan of Arcadia?” Girl sees god all the time (well, weekly anyway), god challenges her to do something, she struggles. It was actually a fairly tolerable version of religious thought. Also pretty good on teenage kid issues.

What drives me bonkers about both fundamentalists and strict atheists is that neither can appreciate that Truth doesn’t have to be non-fiction.

The truest book about boyhood in the galaxy is Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer.” How much of that could one kid actually do? He’d just die of exhaustion by his 14th birthday. It sure tells the Truth, though.

Likewise with the Bible. If you’ve ever played a game of “Telephone” you get an idea of how accurate it’s likely to be. How many people have the slightest clue of the environmental/contextual filters those stories went through in the millenia when they were oral traditions? Of course, the good old Catholic Church asserts that the Holy Spirit guided each author. There’s a great logical device.

That doesn’t affect in the slightest the Bible’s degree of Truth.

For myself, the whole area and broad swaths around it are so fraught and filled with icky people that I’d rather look for Truth (including spiritual) elsewhere.

By: Raku

Raku — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 22:57:23 +0000

Okay, I’ll come clean. (well, it’s a discussion on Xianity. What else can I do?) I have seen Seventh Heaven. More than once. I admit, I find Protestants very exotic, even though I grew up surrounded by them. Wait, you can have a religious leader who’s married with a family instead of horribly sexually frustrated and repressed men and their female sidekicks? Wait, your congregation makes decisions, and not some old guy in Rome?? Wait, Sunday school is fun??? Wait, you get to eat real bread and not recycled styrofoam coffee cups?? Your pastors talk about stuff that actually makes sense? It’s bright enough to see things inside? What? C’mon, what kind of church is that???

However, I’ve never seen Touched by an Angel, so I am unable to compare the two. Seventh Heaven does deal with rather Xian-prickly issues like teenage pregnancy, divorce, breaking various commandments, delinquency, crime, etc., and I guess they do it pretty well. It’s kind of like Full House, with a Xian bent. Moderately squeaky clean.

By: Mike Godesky

Mike Godesky — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 15:19:45 +0000

Hey, what about Seventh Heaven? That’s been on so long, I think it’s drifted into soap opera territory. I’m not gonna get into what issues are dealt with on the show, though, because then I’d have to admit to having seen it. Which I haven’t. Of course.

To tell the truth, I actually hadn’t thought of Seventh Heaven until the other day when I saw it was going off the air. As I understand it, it would likely fall under the same category as Touched by an Angel. But I don’t really want to comment on it because I haven’t watched it that much either.

The good Father refers to himself 13 times in this quote. Me thinks, he thinks, he’s God.

Since when did sharing one’s personal experiences become the same as delusions of apotheosis? I’m sure this would come as a surprise to His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, who during his first message at the end of Mass with Cardinal electors on April 20, referenced himself more than 65 times. But really, who’s counting?

And biblical stories are not outdated, it’s the people who have strayed far from reality of living close to the Earth.

I don’t know if you actually read my whole article, but I never made the claim that Biblical stories are outdated. In fact, the whole point of the article is that they’re NOT outdated. They actually serve a very important function in our society. The problem is that any time somebody puts out a story about Christianity with even the slightest bit of depth or philosophical rigor, it gets killed by conservative Christians.

By: Rick Larson

Rick Larson — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 01:27:57 +0000

The good Father refers to himself 13 times in this quote. Me thinks, he thinks, he’s God.

And biblical stories are not outdated, it’s the people who have strayed far from reality of living close to the Earth.

By: Raku

Raku — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 19:25:05 +0000

Hey, what about Seventh Heaven? That’s been on so long, I think it’s drifted into soap opera territory. I’m not gonna get into what issues are dealt with on the show, though, because then I’d have to admit to having seen it. Which I haven’t. Of course.

By: Mike Godesky

Mike Godesky — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 01:33:10 +0000

On a side note, it’s worth mentioning that another new NBC show, My Name is Earl, has cleverly managed to circumvent the problem outlined above. The show, about a sleazy redneck who discovers karma and decides to make up for everything he’s ever done wrong, deals with a lot of the same issues as those Christian shows. But because it never mentions Christianity specifically, it is able to fly in under the radar of religious conservatives. While not exactly on the same level as Nothing Sacred, it’s still a lot more thought provoking that your average TV sitcom.