In Response to "Grilled Cheesus"

I acutally started this blog quite a while ago, but I still feel as strongly about it and would like to finish the thoughts that made me write the first draft.

This note is in response to the episode "Grilled Cheesus," a "Glee" episode that brings up, as so often happens these days, the issue of homosexuality and the Church's response to it. It's a discussion that is ultimately precisely what you would expect of the limits of a one-hour show-- cursory and ultimately frustrating.

This is not to say that I disliked the episode. On the contrary, I'm a big fan of the show and thought that it did (as it usually does) bring up very good questions about some controversial issues facing us today, questions that hopefully prompt us to continue to engage each other with a purpose to understand.
What sets off the episode is Finn's discovery of the image of Jesus Christ on his grilled sandwich. Finn is inspired to "pray," but his prayers are the bargaining type of prayers, the "tit for tat" kind that some people associate as meaningful communication with the Creator. When circumstances transpire that make Finn think that his prayers are being answered, he keeps up his prayer routine.

At the same time, Kurt's father suffers a heart attack and aneurism that put him into a coma. Kurt's friends offer their condolences and prayers, which Kurt rejects with not a little disdain with the explanation that his rejection of God stems from the belief that God made him gay, but then told God's people that homosexuality was against God's will. Let's set aside for one moment the idea that not all Christians believe that God created homosexuality and that this more conservative set would therefore disagree with Kurt's statement, because there would find no contradiction in their interpretation of biblical law. And that, conversely, the more liberal strain of Christians who accept homosexuality as another expression of human love would not be the ones to condemn Kurt. Kurt defies his friend's beliefs and ultimately distances himself from them emotionally, including his closest friends, who also happen to be Christian.

The third situation involves the cheer coach, the ever fabulous and funny Jane Lynch. Her character is the ultimate product of what happens when bargaining prayer doesn't produce the kind of results that we would like but we refuse to understand the reason for it. She recounts how, when she was little, she prayed to God to make her handicapable sister "better," although what I understand by "better" as the show uses the term is that she be "normal," like other people. God didn't "answer" this prayer, and Sue's response to it is a deep and life-long bitterness. The problem with this type of prayer is not only that it functions as a petition for God to perform magical and not just miraculous acts, but that it also denies the validity of any person's life as it is, their ability to impact the lives of others and history in general because of, and not in spite of, their shortcomings as we see them. It fails to acknowledge our limited view of the world, and hides our ultimately deep-rooted desire for justice as a more universal concept. It hides the deep depravity of people and their potential for discrimination and violence. It hides the role that we humans play in the formation of our reality.

At the end of the episode, Finn and the guidance counselor have a great conversation. Finn tells Emma that he's dissapointed because he felt that he had a direct line to God and that he felt that God was listening. She does a good job of responding with what I think is an ultimate truth in our lives. The situations that Finn describes-- getting to second base with his girlfriend, winning the football game-- are in large part due to the actions of the people involved in them. I'm not denying that prayer is a vital factor in our lives. But Emma points out what Jack Reimer in his "Poem to Prayer" and Ken Blue in his book "Power to Heal" also address in their writings. It is that is that while we cannot always define the ultimate "why" of the existence of injustice and disease, we have been endowed with the potential and the desire to uproot both those out of lives, through science, word, deed, and prayer. She tells him that the big questions of life are difficult precisely because they are big and messy and complicated and everyone struggles with them, but it is for that reason that we must continue to struggle through them. Ultimately, what I think her character is trying to say, is that it's not really very productive to ever think that we have the definitive answer to any dileof theese issues.

I think that even though the show raises some good questions and some good points about how people (teenagers in particular) nowadays understand religion, it ultimately does a poor job at a fair, balanced debate about the subject. This is my challenge to theologians and teachers, including myself.

Kurt's argument about his understanding of the Church's position reminded me of Plato's argument about the idea of Good; Plato argues against the myths that portray God as malevolent, petty, jealous. This would contradict the notion that God is the ultimate expression of Good, and therefore, Plato argues, either one or the other must be true. In the book of James in the New Testament, the author says that God does not tempt humans because God is not tempted by evil, either. People are tempted by their own desires for fame, or wealth or recognition. I think that we can agree that these things are true.

Is this the contradictory theology what we've taught kids, though? Is this what they hear when we talk theology at them or with them? That our faith is a set of contradictions, and that God mocks what God has created? "Glee" does a good job of portraying the inconsistencies, drama, and limited understanding of teenagers living in America, and so Kurt doesn't give credit where credit is due: several of the glee members are protrayed as Christians, and all of them as friends who have wholeheartedly embraced Kurt without judgment; it seems churlish to paint them with the same brush as those who are less tolerant when that is clearly not the case.

In the end, the show does a good job of opening a Pandora's box, which is, I suppose, about all that we can expect from a one-hour musical dromedy, which sole purpose is not theological reflection. The episode treated this topic as it does most others, provoking a conversation by offering counter-arguments that allow the audience to pick sides and hopefully pick up the thread of conversation and continue weaving a discourse. These questions are now floating about, plaguing me and hopefully plaguing others. But I hope that, like the real Greek myth, the one spirit left behind, the spirit of Hope, encourages us to keep trying, living and loving and making sense of the tangle and mess of this conversation.