I have pretty much gotten to the place that i don't expect the media to depict Christians as anything other than idiots, fundamentalist freaks, or as people with a simple, narrow-minded and bigoted world view. Unfortunately this is the reality for Christians in the media, for the most part anyways. But every so often I see things that frustrate me!
There are three shows that Mac and I try to make sure we watch because we enjoy then: House, Shark and CSI (Las Vegas). Shark doesn't tend to deal with religion at all, but faith and religion are semi-frequent themes in the other two shows. This past week on CSI (i'm sorry if i ruin this for you) featured the case of an entire family that was murdered, save for one girl who was apparently kidnapped. The first suspect in the case was a man who had formerly been convicted for sexual crimes (sorry, can't remember what) and the crime scene matched his prior "handy work." Well one the investigators caught up with this man he was now a reverend, serving the broken in society. Of course, the investigators don't trust this "new persona" and continue to investigate him. Now I really really wish he was just a run of the mill pastor, but, of course, he is performing (and documenting) exorcisms on people!! Give me a break!! This is NOT a usual part of ministry these days!! (Its not that maybe they aren't needed in some cases, but in Canada they don't seem to be the norm.) Anyways, the show completely depicted this pastor as a lunatic and at the end of the show, he throws the once-missing girl over the balcony in order to free her of the demons. And as he's arrested, all he's saying is "I saved her."
GIVE ME A BREAK!!!! First of all, if an exorcism is needed, it has nothing to do with the person performing the exorcism -- any "success" is purely derived from the person and authority of Jesus Christ and Him a lone! And pastors are not demented lunatics!! Please CSI, for once, could you have some "real" pastors on you show? I remember a nun who killed a woman, and other religious people who have done bad things on that show.... nothing even slightly realistic to life. CSI has made the Madame of a S&M brothel look normal and well adjusted, but pastors are always the lunatics with the issues!
At least with House, there's always skepticism about faith, but it is portrayed in a somewhat more balanced perspective. The character with faith is naive maybe, but usually not an idiot (although there was one show where a young 15 yr old had the ability to divinely cure people, but his powers turned out to come from having genital herpes).
bah! common people!!
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2 comments:
House had a few Christian references last week as well.
I hate all that CSI stuff but we watched a Law and Order re-run that had a religious nut kill a teacher that taught creation (oh and had unlawful knowledge of his daughter) in a school - the religious nut was found not guilty by reason of insanity!
wow... gotta love religion being a "reason of insanity"!
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