Devil in the Details...

I'm going to go a little of script on this one simply because it kind of blends into my other blog where in I talk about modern media.  I don't normally discuss television in this blog, but I felt this time I had to address something important.

Watching causal television for a Christian, and especially for a Catholic can be a mine field of temptation and depravity.  Without a doubt if you start scrolling through your channel listings you will find something that celebrates moral ambiguity, hedonism, any one of the seven deadly sins (probably all of them).  Prime time programing is a veritable kaleidoscope of everything to avoid as a devout follower of Christ and his church.

In a separate post I talked about the show “Preacher”, and now I want to look the broader spectrum of supernatural-faith based media.  Now a healthy portion of the spiritual elite will decry the show “Lucifer” as being poison for your spirit, and maybe they aren’t wrong.  Depending on how you take the show.

If you approach shows like “Preacher”, “Lucifer”, “Supernatural”, and many others like them for what they are; escapist entertainment, you should be fine.  Obviously these aren’t shows that you should let young children watch (Supernatural being the marginally safest of the programs), but adults and Christians need to approach them with a grain of salt.

Season 2 of “Lucifer” and Season 11 of “Supernatural” introduce a similar character into both of their respective self-contained mythologies; God’s female counterpart.

The concept isn’t that great of a leap from an Eastern religion point of view.  Many faiths around the world recognize a binary creation system, a balance of equal and opposite forces.  Good and evil, light and dark, above and below, and male and female.   This faith system stems from observing biology in the world as most creatures (humans included) require both male and female contributions to create life.  “Supernatural” introduces this system with presenting to the audience “God’s sister” who was presumably locked up at the start of creation because she was too powerful of an opposing force.  The angels in that series even acknowledge her, with one calling her “Aunty Amara”, clearing spelling out her sibling relationship to God.

“Lucifer” Season 2 spins it a different way, presenting the female counterpart as “God’s ex-wife.”  There is a basis for the female counterpart in ancient texts, going back before the split between Israel and Islam, but even still modern interpretations of both faiths exclude the “God’s wife” part.

Further confounding the concepts (setting aside briefly a binary god) is the fact that Christ is nowhere to be found in either show.  “Supernatural” makes the occasional reference to Christ, “Preacher” despite being centered around a Christian community never talks about Christ, and “Lucifer” never mentions him either.  These two concepts, the inclusion of an all but forgotten Eastern concept of a binary deity and the exclusion of Christ is extremely important for the Christian viewer because it sets down one basic rule you should remember before going into these shows…

These shows do not exist in your reality.

While that should be the “no-brainer” of no brainers, it’s important to establish that because too many people don’t take the time to study their own faith.  American culture is very much “spoon fed” when it comes to broader concepts of faith and history.  We know what we are told, but don’t bother to dig any deeper, and every body of faith is guilty of this.  The risk here isn’t that these shows will present the world with an alternative view of God or question God’s supreme divine authority over the universe.  The risk is that the average person will take fiction as fact. 

Both “Lucifer” and “Supernatural” pull heavily from Jewish lore, Islam, and a bevy of other religions, but tend to shy away from Christianity.  This explains Christ’s reduced or omitted influence in the storylines.  If Christ were to show up in either one in all his glory or actually be acknowledged as the way, the truth, and the light, it would up end the basis for the shows.  For “Supernatural” the whole point is that humans have to do everything, and there is no talk of salvation.  For “Lucifer” it would upset the whole dynamic and bring out the major question “If Lucifer didn’t like Hell, why not just ask Christ for redemption?”

Further, you have to look at the way they portray God in these shows.  He’s presented as absent and manipulative as opposed to a loving Father of creation, far from the omniscient and omnipresent deity Christians have faith in.  Essentially these shows do to God, what ancient Greek’s and Romans did to their deities…they made him human.  Human based deities are, just easier to write stories about.  They have faults, failings, desires, and make mistakes.  At one point in “Supernatural” God looks like he’s going to die.  The shows apply human rules to celestial figures because that’s easier for an audience to grab on to mentally, but that is not what Christians and Catholics believe.

As I said earlier these programs will pull from any random faith they can find to fill out their internal mythology and that’s important to remember, because they are cherry picking their background.  If you want to find out more about your faith, don’t tune into prime time television unless it’s EWTN.  Dig into scholarly works; talk with priests and deacons and RCIA instructors.  These shows are works of fiction and only serve the devil if you forget that specific point.

For more of my thoughts on "Preacher" click here.

http://michaelbauchbrainwaves.blogspot.com/2017/07/season-1-round-up-preacher.html  

Thanks for reading.