I've been a fan of Dexter since season one, and I'm pretty excited that this season is going to feature Dexter's struggles with the concept of god (or God). Not that I'm convinced the show will handle the topic all that well, as I don't think campy serial killer comedy is the place to really parse natural or special revelation, but if last night is an indication, it'll at least be fun.
***Spoiler Alert*** Dexter is about to kill a man who murdered his own wife, the only hot girl who was ever nice to Dexter in high school, and made it look like a suicide. The following conversation ensues:
Dexter: What would Jesus have done? Seriously now. How do you reconcile your belief in a higher power – in a god – with what you’ve done?
Victim: What difference does it make?
Dexter: I’m just curious.
Victim: So, what – I’m supposed to defend my beliefs to you?
Dexter: If you don’t mind.
Victim: Look… I mean… Everyone makes mistakes. They do things they shouldn’t do. And… they’re only human. But God forgives us.
Dexter: Really? It’s as simple as that? You kill someone, and God forgives you for it?
Victim: Yes!
Dexter: So I can kill you, and God will forgive me?
Victim: Well, no!
Dexter: But you just said he would!
Victim: You have to truly repent.
It gets funnier from there, trust me, and the absurdity of God as protector is revealed when Dexter plunges the knife into the man. It's a little too simplified and a little too snarky, but the writers are on to something here. Dexter spends a good bit of the episode trying to understand why anyone believes in this bizarre concept, and he asks sincere questions. Most of the questions are met with utter confusion, ignorance, and answers that clearly contradict. This is truly not unlike asking people about their beliefs, especially those who nominally believe or believe a narrow set of answers that have been provided by a book or pastor or other trusted religious figure.
The question he asks (how do you reconcile...) is one I ask my students, and it's one I struggled with as evangelical and evangelical pastor and not-so-evangelical emergentish leader person. My cynical self claims that most of the people I know do exactly as much as they can safely get away with, especially in areas where they fully intend to be self-indulgent. (Yes, this includes me.) There are areas in all our lives where it's not difficult to succeed at being virtuous. I snarkily posted on fb today that a lack of options does not equal virtue. This was a response to a man who couldn't get laid in a whorehouse with cash in his pocket crowing about his lifetime of fidelity to his wife. If no one wants to fuck you, it ain't virtuous to be faithful; it's the status quo or the longest damn drought since Jezebel and Ahab. The not so cynical side wants to believe that people can or even tend to be largely virtuous. (I really don't believe this very often.)
One of my complaints on the way out of the faith was that forgiveness as envisioned in evangelical circles had become an escape hatch. No change of life is required, except in certain unimportant areas (premarital sex being the most notable), and forgiveness is the currency of a therapeutic deism that only wanders into theism when God really needs to fucking show up and answer my prayer. It's the answer the man gives when pushed to consider his own life; it's not necessary for me to truly repent, but if I need my neighbor to do so, I'll reintroduce the binding clause.
The most amazing disconnect is between what Jesus says and what evangelicals say he means. Clearly, the easiest way to figure out how forgiveness, repentance, virtue, and salvation are related is to simply read the Sermon on the Mount. Rather than take it seriously, though, evangelicals and fundamentalists are taught that it's not really there to serve as a guide; rather, it's to lead us to despair so that we will rely on salvation through Jesus. Wow. I wonder if silly Jesus knew that when he was actually practicing rather successfully the things he "suggested." What then are we supposed to do? How will we know what is right and wrong? If you aren't going to take the words of your Lord seriously, how will I take you seriously? All hermeneutics becomes an exercise in justification of particular desires or the excusing of particular weaknesses. The hard stuff is interpreted away under a rubric of grace, and the answers given to difficult questions become labyrinthine inasmuch as the answerer really doesn't want to wander down the only path that will take him out of the maze of ethical confusion. The asker is left to wonder if the answerer understands what it is he's actually supposed to believe, understands what sort of behavior is actually Christian, and understands how a commitment to the hermeneutics of power and/or convenience has robbed the Church of their only legitimate witness.
Dexter should serve as a pretty good conversation starter in Christian education circles this season. One hopes they actually watch and then have the courage to reach for the difficult answers. After all, if it was me being caricatured like that, I'd want a powerful witness to point to, but the Church has abandoned Jesus because his words are too hard and therby abandoned the only meaningful witness we cynics give a shit about: how do you live?
