Anyway, on TTTT, three people would line
up before a panel of four people (who were supposedly famous but we weren’t
sure why) and those three people would all say they were someone who had done
something interesting . . . and they would all give the same name. Then the
panel of sort-of-famous people would take turns questioning the contestants
about who they supposedly were until they had to vote on who they thought was
really the person they said they were. Then the contestants won money if they
convinced the panel they were the person they really weren’t. I think the show
should have been called To Tell a Lie.
I love my DVR. It works as a net to stand
guard over the TV line-up and snag shows as they air through the week so that I
can view them according to my own schedule. When people ask me when or on what
channel a certain show airs, I’m totally blank. I just know that at some point
it’ll turn up on my DVR. And I’ll sit down and catch up.
A couple of days ago I was catching up on
my shows. I watched CBS’s Sunday Morning
(the best show on TV these days) and
saw the story of the woman who was the girl in the picture taken during the
Vietnam War. She was about nine years old and photographed nude, running from a
napalm explosion with burns all down her body, the clothes having been burned
off her back. The photographer had taken the picture with her running toward
him and then thrown down his camera to rescue her.
Jane Pauley interviewed Kim for the show,
a woman now fifty-two years old. As she told her story, Kim gave her testimony
to the amazing transformative power of Jesus Christ. In the depths of her pain
and bitterness as a young woman, she had come across a New Testament Bible and
became a Christian. It changed her heart.
I was struck at the openness with which
she confessed the name of Jesus. No generalizations. No political correctness. Simply speaking the truth.
A little later I watched one of my
favorite sitcoms, Black-ish. I love
this show because it breaks down barriers. I know it’s not everyone’s fave, but
I love it.
This week’s episode surprised me. Some
white friends of the Johnsons (the African American family) invited them to
their church. So the Johnson family went. They were surprised the first Sunday
at how comfortable they felt; the music was fun and the sermon was lite. When
their friends invited them back, they accepted. They did not find it as . . .
inspiring? . . . the next week. The music was exactly the same and they
wondered if the pastor was stuck on the same analogies.
So they played the “culture card.” That’s
right. They told their friends that it was a culture thing . . . that they
needed to be in their own culturally specific church. So their friends asked if
they could come along to their church
the following Sunday.
And they did. They all went to the
African American church that the Johnsons usually went to only on Easter and
Christmas. For the first time, they experienced “their own” church and it went
on and on and on . . . over four hours!
But in wrapping up the show, the Johnsons
had a discussion about the overall church experience. They compared it to
buying the mattress they were lying on. They hadn’t settled on the first or
second mattress they tested; they kept hunting until they found the one that
worked for them. Why not do the same thing with church?
Not a spiritual breakthrough. But this?
An honest and funny view of Christian church (including a satirical but honest
commentary on Jewish identity in the workplace) . . . on network television?
Then I watched an episode of Ellen recorded a few weeks ago when she
interviewed Trai Byers of Empire, another
show that I enjoy. There in his interview, he boldly gave his Christian
testimony. No mincing of words. No downplaying the truth. Honestly glorifying
God in heaven for His divine work and thanking Jesus Christ for his grace.
I began to see a pattern.
Our country has a ton of problems.
Practically everywhere you look, you can find something wrong that needs
fixing. I won’t even start a list here because it would just be the tip of an
enormous problem iceberg.
But many people are beginning to
recognize the Truth and speak it out: Jesus
Christ changes life. When we come to Jesus . . . when we bring him our
broken selves . . . we become something—someone—different
and we are never more the same.
And it is not because we just decide to
be better or try harder. It is because of
Jesus.
Makes me think of the Kurt Carr song . .
.
Demons have to
flee when I say Jesus.
Sickness has to
heal when I say Jesus.
Every knee
shall bow before
And every
tongue proclaim
With worthy
praise,
The matchless
name of
Jesus!
Something
happens when we call Your name . . .
Jesus!
Oh
the power in Your name!
When
I call upon Your name,
The
very atmosphere will have to change.
We’ll
be transformed,
We’ll
never be the same
By
the power of Your holy name . . .
Jesus!
That’s a truth worth telling.
