Hot on the heels of this morning's post, here's a powerful clip from an episode of NBC's "E.R." illustrating frustration with the pastoral idolization of theological uncertainty:
“I need answers! I want a real chaplain who believes in a real God and a real hell!”
HT: Trevin Wax
4 comments:
Just saw this on Justin Taylor's blog. Great stuff.
wow... thats the kind of writing that I think most tv shows, and movies for that matter, are lacking. I can only imagine the torment that so many people are going through as they lay on their deathbeds. That whole feel-good, new-age religion wears off once someone gets close to death.
That's....heavy stuff. I know this may take it farther than the original idea, but could it be that on some level, that's what a lot of people today are thinking, on some level? I know I'd be tired of maybe's and I thinks. I want yes/no and solid answers. I'd say this video should make us remember just how simple and direct our message is.
I saw this live and it was powerful. The background is that this guy worked for years on death row, executing people. The woman is the hospital chaplain.
He was so wrought with guilt that he was going to the families of the people he had helped execute and trying to make amends, one by one. He would give some money or something. He saved the life of a boy who's father had been one of the men he helped kill.
This chaplain is quite liberal, embracing all sorts of 'spiritual' things and ideas (and sleeping with one of the doc's). She has this smug air about her, one who embraces all sorts of spiritual things. Tolerant and inclusive and therefore superior to old school ways.
I don't know if the writers were trying to make a point about the failings of religion with this spot, but what they did instead was brilliantly illustrate the failings of man's reasoning over the powerful truth of the gospel.
What this man needed was an unvarnished, unapologetic picture of Jesus crucified and risen again. That was his only hope, not spiritual sounding introspective mutterings.
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