Say what?

I really try not to watch TV as I’m pretty sure that some programs are designed to suck away IQ points as I stare at the screen.

I occasionally allow myself to be drawn into a drama, and most often it is because I see in the story things that I deal with all the time in my life as a pastor. For example, I recently got hooked on a drama called “Damages” which is shown on the FX channel, though I think the season is soon to end.

The show focuses on a law practice, an easy target for a pastor or anyone else given that there are only about 12 million lawyer jokes circulating through the world at any given time. It is taking every bit of my self-control not to list my favorite one here.

In watching this series, I realized two things. First, serial TV is no different now than when I was an undergraduate hooked on soaps in the late 70s; if you can see the occasional episode, you can keep up with the plot. The second realization is that the reason these series flourish is because they encourage paranoia in relationships.

One of the main characters in Damage, as portrayed by Glenn Close, the principal partner in the law firm, tells another character that the key to life is never to trust anyone else completely. How sad. If we cannot trust anyone, how can we ever hope to have a healthy relationship? Every relationship in this drama is based on mistrust, and as I remember my days in the corporate world, before I finally said yes to the call to ministry, I can imagine that things have only become more cutthroat than they were then.

Our relationships will not be healthy unless we are willing to do two things, two things that are interrelated. We must be both willing to be honest, and willing to be vulnerable because we are honest. In my work as a pastoral counselor, I see too many people who function in a constant passive-aggressive mode, a way of being that is toxic to honest and helpful communication. There’s a reason that the second testament offered testimony on living together successfully, and that testimony said that you always go directly to the person with whom you have a problem, even if it means taking others with you to document the problems. Issues must be dealt with directly, or they will become like infections and kill us from the inside.