Through a friend, Raisin and I were introduced to a TV series called Joan of Arcadia. It is about a high school student named Joan Girardi, who keeps running into God in the form of various people. God tells her to do things, and she does them, often after much protest. In one episode God tells her what would have happened had she not followed orders, but the rest of the time we have to figure it out ourselves. Sometimes it’s pretty obscure.
God is portrayed in various ways: a child, a trash collector, a cafeteria worker. Scripture of any sort is never mentioned (unless you count Bob Dylan’s lyrics). It’s a remarkable portrayal of an American God: friendly, pushy in a good way, not favoring any religious tradition, never an obvious authority figure. God could be anyone.
Maybe that’s why it bothers me. For Joan, God is other, to be sure, but not wholly other, not so different from the rest of us that anyone passing by would notice. That does not fit the Judaeo-Christian conception of God, whose presence makes the face of Moses shine for days, who nearly blinds Paul for life, and whose glory manifested in Jesus Christ makes dozing disciples sit bolt upright and has Peter speaking gibberish. Had that God appeared to Joan of Arcadia, she wouldn’t be rolling her eyes.
God can become too other, of course. That’s the Deist trap, the watchmaker God who wound up the universe and then sat back, never to interact with it again. At the other extreme is the too immanent God, who is part of all of us and everything that is and no greater than The Force indwelling the universe. That’s pantheism, another favorite American religion, beloved of Hollywood (as in Star Wars and Avatar). I do believe that God is within us through the Holy Spirit, but all of creation does not equal all of God. God is both indwelling and other, and to deny one or the other is to deny the biblical witness.
Joan’s story never connects with a larger story, at least not a Judaeo-Christian one. I understand why a secular TV series could not do that. Yet that is precisely what we are called to do as Christians. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul links the story of Moses to the story of Christ to his own story and that of the Corinthians. It’s what preachers and prophets are supposed to do, but every Bible-reading Christian should be doing it, too. Few of us will see the full glory of God in this life, but all of us can be transformed by God. We can be so transformed that some of God’s glory shines through us to enlighten the world. And if God does happen to show up, don't roll your eyes.
Last Epiphany: Exodus 34:29-35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
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2 comments:
As you know, I am a fan of JofA. Me, a person who does not own a television and has not been to a movie for two or three years. I happened on an episode of the show while visiting my sister a few years back, and was sufficiently intrigued to buy the DVDs of the series. I spent more time than I should have on a JofA fansite discussing the show, and even wrote some JofA fan fiction, which was not very good but was my first essay in that medium. For the most part, I have moved on from that, but JofA meant much to me for several years.
Nonetheless, I agree that you have noted a critical flaw in the show's premise. Where is the Tradition? Or more precisely, why are neither Joan nor "God" connected to it? The Tradition lurks in the background, in the persons of a Roman Catholic priest and a Rabbi (father of Joan's friend Grace). But the only time that I can recall the Tradition being engaged in any significant way was the episode where Grace has her Bat Mitzvah, resisting it every step of the way but in the end recognizing that something is there. It is the tenth episode of Season Two, "The Book of Questions." Even here, the closest Grace (and the series) comes is this:
The Rabbi says "Today we pass the torah from generation to generation as it has been handed down for thousands of years. This torah is being entrusted to you, Grace, with all it contains, the tradition, the history, the beauty, the pain, the struggle, and most of all... the mystery."
When Grace speaks a bit later, she says "when you handed me the Torah, it hit me that... this [the Bat Mitzvah] is a genius way of attacking adulthood. I mean, this scroll... there are no easy answers in here. It's basically a book of questions... something that makes us keep searching for a way to make sense of this mess. And just dealing with a lot of questions, that takes a lot of guts when there's no guarantee that there will be answers."
This seems true to me, as far as it goes. But that isn't very far. And it ignores the fact that Scripture, Torah most of all, is quite specific about certain things, and gives an answer: in Old Testament terms, a God who is in covenant with his people, through thick and thin, a covenant made manifest in Passover and Exodus, through exile and beyond. Most of all, the questions receive a definitive Answer in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. "For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen" (II Cor. 1:20).
Yes, the show is too much a depiction of a touchy-feely non-demanding and good-natured "American god," as you describe, divorced from any ongoing tradition or community. But I became engaged with it because of the dynamics of Joan's interactions with God, complete with the teenage eye-rolling, and the equally interesting journey toward faith of Joan's mother (and perhaps her father, had the show lasted a few more years).
One of the constants of the show that might be missed at first is that no matter what God asks of her, Joan does it. She may complain about it, she may get it wrong and have far to go to get it turned around right, but in the end she does it. And through her obedience, people are healed in a variety of ways.
May we do as well.
Great post, John. Thanks!
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