TV Land goes to church

"I didn't make it to church this week, because I was sick, but I did watch a lot of tv..."

Recently a few of my favorite shows have gone where TV usually doesn’t dare to go… to church. That’s right, both the musical comedy Glee and my personal favorite witty and sarcastic show Community have dealt with religion in the past few weeks. It has been interesting and frankly a little startling to hear what mainstream media thinks about religion, God and church.

To start with we have Glee’s episode, “Grilled Cheesus” that centers on Kurt, the shows openly gay character, as his father is in the hospital—and on Finn the quarterback, who sees an image of Jesus in his grilled cheese sandwich. If this is already sounding a little sacrilegious to you, hang on.

During the episode Finn believes God hears his prayers because of his grilled cheesus and Kurt is encouraged by friends to turn to God in his time of need.

Kurt’s protest against prayer and going to church made me cringe, “Churches don't think very much of gay people. Or women. Or science.”

At first I was offended, but as I thought about it I couldn’t really fight with that statement. Sure it is a blanket statement that stereotypes Christians, but troughout the years the church has given non-believers reason to think exactly what Kurt thought.

However, what impacted me most about Kurt’s statement was how sad it was! I know Glee is fiction, but how often in real life do you think people turn away from God, the only One who can help them, because the church has shown a united front of hate and judgment rather than love and forgiveness?

John 3:17 “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”


Then there is Finn, who views Christianity more as a superstition than a religion... little less as an actual relationship! Again, have we as Christans perpetrated this idea? If I'm good God hears my prayers, if I disobey He punishes me. No wonder Finn thought an image of Jesus in his grilled cheese could be a sign from a God who behaves so much like a human.

Another thing that bothered me about this episode of Glee was the Christian character’s seemingly weak faith. Basically, she thought you should believe in God, believe in something, but she admitted she could be wrong in what she believed.

Glee’s episode on religion overall was moving and a little disconcerting, but had at least one beautiful thing to say about faith. Bitter and sardonic cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester explained why she didn’t believe in God (He let her down by not healing her mentally “handicapable” sister, Jean, or protecting Jean from the mocking of others) but Sue concedes to let her sister pray for her when Jean states “I don’t believe God makes mistakes”. After that conversation with Jean, Sue also stops trying to make the Glee club abandon songs about faith.



Okay, if by some strange chance you are still reading this long post, we move on to Community’s episode, “Messianic Myths and Ancient Peoples”. In this episode Shirley, the show’s Christian character, decides to make a YouTube video with a Christian theme when she realizes that only 9 people went to her church the day before and over a 17 million people have watched a YouTube video on farting. That alone is a sobering thought.

However, things go awry when Abed (my favorite character) decides to make the video and places himself in the position of being an actual savior. Yeah that’s right, he begins to act like he is Jesus. *uncomfortable pause* And I thought Jesus on a sandwich was bad.

This show has an unfortunate history of poking fun at any religion as being something weak-minded people believe in. And Shirley’s character is often so fixed on her own beliefs she is completely insensitive to others. For example; after Abed quotes the Bible during a quarrel with Shirley, she asks him, “Did you just Scripture me, Muslim?” (funny though). So the show was going down its usual path with Shirley behaving somewhat “un-Christian” in trying to stop the making of the film and Abed being flat out ridiculous in gathering his followers.

However, again I could hardly blame them. Don’t we as Christians often seem ignorant of others beliefs and self-righteousness in our own? I mean, I do believe that there is only one way to God and that is through Jesus Christ, however there is away to communicate this message with love and wisdom... and the modern church doesn’t always do that.

Matthew 10:16 “Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.”

The episode did end on good note to me though. As Abed realizes his movie is awful, he prays that God will take it away from him (in a kind of “garden of Gethsemane” scene) and Shirley overhears him. In the end Shirley chooses to look like a villain by destroying Abed’s film. Shirley looks like the bad guy and Abed looks like the victim. She takes the fall to help her friend, but Abed realizes what she’s done for him and they make up. To me this was Shirley finally practicing what she preaches and it ended very sweetly.



Overall TV doesn’t have a lot of good to say about Christians and faith. However, is it Christians that have caused this? If you read the book of Romans about Jews (the religious people of the day) and gentiles (the people without God’s law) and see it as the modern day relation of believers to unbelievers, you see that maybe the world’s opinion of us lays on our shoulders.

Romans 2:24 “As it is written: ‘God's name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you."

So while I can’t say watching my beloved TV shows mock the things that are my core and basic beliefs, I think it is good for Christian’s to realize what we look like to the outside world. This way we can ask ourselves, “Okay, if the world has a wrong and mostly negative view of believers how much of that is my fault and what can I do about it?”

Yes, as Christians we are going to be persecuted by the world, but let's make sure it is for living as Christ did, not because we deserve it. Maybe it is time that we start presenting the message of Christ as it was intended, as the gospel, as God's "good news".