It's Like That...

And I don't know where to look
My words just break and melt
Please just save me from this darkness
--Snow Patrol Make This Go On Forever (From last night's Grey's)

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I love Scrubs and I love Grey's Anatomy. They're the only prime time shows I watch.

If you have also kept up with both, you may have noticed that Scrubs, an NBC show, has been taking subtle pot-shots at ABC's Grey's off and on this season. Little things like talking about how there aren't that many pretty people on the staff of any hospital and insinuating that the device of using the main character's voice-over was a ripoff. Perhaps the harshest came in one of J.D.'s monologues earlier in the season where he said something to the effect that reality never presents us with people whose situations provide us a perfect metaphor to help us understand our own.

And it's true, Grey's Anatomy does this quite often. One character is facing something in their life then along comes a patient whose life situations, while different, gives the doctor insight into what really should be done. Last night it was the little girl, who lost her mom and wet herself and latched on to the first person who looked like they could help, a doctor nonetheless, Dr. Meredith Grey.

Metaphorical mirrors abound in Seattle.

But this is what I love about Fiction of any kind. It's so NOT real, but it makes gratuitous use of literary devices to speak into our every day, dirt-and-sweat lives.

And this is also what I loved about the last fifteen minutes of last night's show (Grey's, that is.) If you ever want a big fat metaphor for the perilous situation the Christian tradition tells us we are all in, then go to ABC.com and watch the last segment of the show.

Something happened, and things are not as they were. An accident (Scripture would call in sin,) has happened and now we are all going to die unless someone Who is able can help us. Sure there's laughter and relationships and gentle moments, but we are all terminal and about to drown. We need help, and we need it right now.

I think for years the predominant worldview permeating pop-culture is that everything is fine, have fun and celebrate because everything is fine. But it does no good to pretend things are fine when they aren't. That peppy doctor looked shell-shocked in the waiting room because she was ill equiped to deal with real life where everyone needs help.

But, in the case of humanity, help has been granted. David's "Rescue me!" found all over the Psalms turned into Paul's proclamation in Colossians that "God rescued us from dead-end alleys and dark dungeons."

Things aren't fine, but they will be. We just have to work hard.

Alright, enough of the "God in Grey's Anatomy" sermon...