Jean Baker asked me to consider writing about the process of learning to talk about God in the 21st century. I think this is a great idea and the next few columns will be devoted to expanding that thought. This month I want to start with what it feels like to talk TO God in the 21st century. This is a tale of two television shows that envision what it is like to talk to God.
First, I want to talk about Joan of Arcadia. Two summers ago I painted the interior of my home, mostly on Friday nights so I could watch Joan of Arcadia. The most obvious adjective for the show is sincere. Everyone was sincere and Joan was a good kid who never violated anyone's expectations of her, even God's. Sure she disappointed them but she never, even in doing God's will, turned her back completely on her social paradigm. This is the view I think we all want of God, that we will never be startled out of our comfort zone and that God wants us to comprehend his will.
As for Wonder Falls, I doubt many of you have ever heard of it. I hadn't until it showed up from Netflix but I found it far and away does a better job of depicting how I feel God interacts with me and the whole world. Jaye, our heroine had defied every expectation that her family, friends and coworkers have ever had for her. Her family is wildly successful – her mother is an author, her father is a surgeon, her brother is an atheist getting a doctoral degree in comparative religion and her sister is an immigration attorney. Jaye is nouveau poor. She has a philosophy degree from Brown University, works in a gift shop in Niagra Falls and lives in a trailer. Jaye raises self-righteous indignation to an art form; right up to telling people to stop calling her a hero for catching a baby. Unlike Joan who interacts with God through different people each week, God speaks to Jaye through clearly inanimate objects-defective wax lions, brass monkey book ends and wind-up penguins. In every episode Jaye is asked by God to defy social norms, like withhold someones mis-delivered social security checks or reveal a historical lie that has made someone famous. Every time Jaye tries to do what God asks the situation gets noticeably worse, but in the course of events, something bigger and better and beyond expectation happens for the person that Jaye interacts with.
God identifies himself to Joan and patiently guides her through the steps she needs to take, even if he won't always tell her why. God won't even admit that he isn't Satan to Jaye because she must exercise her free will. She does, and she grumbles the whole way.
This is what the bible tells us it is like to interact with God. But because we know the stories in the bible so well, they seem normative, and because we keep them in the bible, we forget how they describe non-normative events for their time. Interacting with God takes us outside ourselves, and God doesn't always or often choose someone sincere and well meaning to spread his message to us. Paul's letter to the Corinthians about being fools for God (see 1 Corinthians, chapter 1) is oft quoted but perhaps rarely understood. God is trying to break us out of our complacency, to experience a paradigm shift that embraces the other. How often do we not listen to someone because they aren't Christian and so infer that God would not speak through them? How often do we not speak or act because we do not believe we are powerful enough for God to speak through us? How often do we not do so because what God needs for us to say is neither polite nor politic?
When we are self-righteous (when we think of ourselves before others), we are not able to build the kingdom of God. Being self-righteous happens when we think we are right to the exclusion of all others, but it also happens when we think that God wouldn't work through us. Are you letting God work through you?
Joan of Arcadia had two seasons and they have a fan site www.joanofarcadia.com if you are interested. Wonderfalls had one season and their fan site name says it all www.savewonderfalls.com.
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