This post is dedicated to gear-girl, to make amends for my snobbery towards Grey's Anatomy.
From an essay in the NYT Book Review by Joe Queenan:
"Most of us are familiar with people who make a fetish out of quality: They read only good books, they see only good movies, they listen only to good music, they discuss politics only with good people, and they’re not shy about letting you know it. They think this makes them smarter and better than everybody else, but it doesn’t. It makes them mean and overly judgmental and miserly, as if taking 15 minutes to flip through “The Da Vinci Code” is a crime so monstrous, an offense in such flagrant violation of the sacred laws of intellectual time-management, that they will be cast out into the darkness by the Keepers of the Cultural Flame. In these people’s view, any time spent reading a bad book can never be recovered. They also act as if the rest of humanity is watching their time sheets."
I read this essay while waiting in a Forever 21 line that took (sorry I can't resist) FOREVER. I thought the piece was pretty funny, though I can't say I'm gonna run out and stock up on Harlequin Romances or anything Dan Brown.
But I do think God's trying to get to me because last night, the topic of study at small group centered on how it's so easy for us to confuse our own opinions, our good taste, or preferences or cultural practices with real faith. I felt my self-righteous confidence shrink with each passing minute of the study.
Whether we happen to vote Democrat, be a super talented artist, be socially suave, have money, not have money, be a racial majority, racial minority etc., we are tempted to think that those OTHER people have it ALL wrong. They CAN'T be as good a person or as close to God as ME since they prefer slow, dull, wordy hymns to emotionally charged worship music, since they voted for Bush, since they read trash, enjoy mediocre art, or own a house in the Hamptons AND a condo on Central Park West AND an estate in Europe...
But, if we let God take off our glasses of culture, class, time and space--what does the world really look like then? Who are the good guys and bad guys then?
It's true that there's nothing I can be or do to make myself more acceptable to God. Nothing--not giving more money away to the poor, not going to Africa to save the orphans, not being well-read or concerned about justice. Those things are good things, but as C.S. Lewis says, let's not be fools and confuse good things with the BEST thing: Jesus died so I could be free from DOING STUFF to make God accept me, AND from doing stuff to make people accept me.
So to all the Grey's Anatomy fans out there whom I've been tempted to dismiss: I still think the show is crap but just because you watch it doesn't mean I'm better than you. I'm sorry for sometimes thinking that. Yikes. If I kept this up for awhile, I'd end up feeling pretty crap about myself--but--there it is, there's NOTHING I can do, good or bad to make myself more acceptable to God. Accepting this--can you imagine what that would be like?
