Unmotivated Stories on TV: They Suck

A big problem for TV writers right now is developing characters that have strong motivation. Police procedurals are filled with criminals who do things for ridiculous reasons. For example, I saw an episode of Bones set in a renaissance fair milieu.The plot as such was that a medieval enthusiast with in-depth knowledge of weaponry and combat gave a poorly-made sword from a fantasy movie to a girl he adored (anonymously - he was dressed as the Black Knight of Arthurian lore). She tried to sell the sword, which made him angry, so he killed her with a 16th century torture device. Police procedurals as a genre seem to be jumping the proverbial shark...

But this problem of motivation is not limited to procedurals. Eli Stone is one of the most (unintentionally) absurd TV shows on right now, and that's saying something. On the episode I saw tonight, the Christian parents of a girl killed in college object to their daughter's heart going into the body of an atheist because, get this... they don't want her daughter's heart going to hell. These parents talked about accepting Jesus and being saved, but apparently were Catholic also (I guess all Christians are alike?). At the end of the show, the mother consents to her daughter's heart saving the atheist. She says to Eli: we've heard that you have visions, and you're lucky. For the rest of us, we live in the dark. I choose to believe that our daughter is sending us a message that she would want this lady to have her heart. What a muddled confusion of motives! The mother acted like no Christian I've ever known: Protestant or Catholic. They may act better or worse, but the motive given is not based on anything except some idea in a writer's head. And the final relenting is idiotic. To say that "I choose to believe" is to say that it makes me feel better to make this decision, but I actually believe in nothing.

Experience, Word, and Truth

In the comments to the review of Frank Schaeffer's Crazy for God, TS asked a series of excellent questions. I would say that the questions here pertain not just to that post but also to this one at Deep Furrows: the Catholic priesthood: an inversion of the ancient system of gurus and shamans.

Upon reflection, I guess I see that there needs to be a balance between experience and Christian ideas lived without experience.

Does God promise us experience? Does he ask us to act on our experience or on His Word?

The notion of intermediaries seems to suggest otherwise. I've often wondered why God did not just physically appear to every person individually and say, "Hey, I exist!".

God chose to reveal Himself to only Moses on the mountain. The people's experience of God was somehow derivative. Jesus chose only Peter, James & John to witness the Transfiguration. Isn't there a part of us that must be content with ideas without lived experience, i.e. obedience without understanding?

Since Christian ideas are true I'm not sure how without experience we are worse than worthless in espousing them. Surely we do tremendous harm in triumphalism and in turning off unbelievers. But isn't it better that a society be closer to truth?