Mmmm....afternoon tv.

I got sucked in yesterday. I couldn’t help it. My wife, her friends, and all of our male, homosexual friends have been addicted to this American phenomenon for a long time. I, for my part, have avoided it like the plague. The “crack cocaine” of mid-afternoon television to which I refer is none other than Oprah.

Most of the time I find her show to be nothing but nonsensical, emotional drivel with no real meat or substance. She got in trouble in Texas for being anti-meat, as a matter of fact. She pushes a kind of feel-good, pseudo-spirituality that has no real basis in reality on no real impact on the lives of its adherents. We get nothing from her but flowery statements of “feed your spirit”, “live for tomorrow”, and other such fodder for framed inspirational posters in office cubicles where people have no hope of escape and no direction for their lives. That stuff makes sense to them as they rush home to watch their favorite “afternoon prophet”, Tivo’d earlier in the day. They sit on their couches, chain smoking cigarettes, petting their 15 cats, and eating a bag of Oreos covered in ½ gallon of ice cream. Am I generalizing? Yes. Am I exaggerating? Yes. But only a bit. She represents an American Dream that can be summed up in an hour talk show. I find any dream like that to be suspicious at best and downright dangerous at its worst.

That said, there are bright points where an episode stands out as both relevant and powerful. My wife was watching a Tivo’d episode yesterday, featuring Ellie Weisel and a number of high school essayists. The students had all won a contest organized by Oprah in which they had to write an essay about the impact of Ellie Weisel’s novel, Night, on today’s society. Night has been one of my favorite novels for a long time. At the very least, there is probably no novel that has impacted me more. The essays were excellent. She even had two students from American schools who had survived the slaughter in Rwanda. As small children, younger than my 7-year-old daughter, they had seen their families slaughtered, other children hacked apart, women raped and killed, and other such heinous atrocities. One of the young girls was convinced her family was dead. Oprah reunited them on her show. They had not seen one another in 12 years, since the daughter had escaped to a refugee camp. I will admit, it was too much for me. I cried very hard.

I also found myself becoming very angry. Ellie Weisel has been speaking and writing for years to help the people of the world to declare, “Never Again!” to the slaughter of innocents. Yet, the slaughter continues. We have not learned. I also felt convicted. I am focused on trying to finish my basement, planning for a vacation, going camping, working to make more money, and other such trivial pursuits, while people all over the world are dying from murder, AIDS, starvation, ethnic cleansing, and the ignorance and apathy of the rest of the world. The Vineyard Churches have recently dissolved their International Consortium for no better reason than that they couldn’t get along. WOW! I am a Vineyard pastor, and I love my family, but this is inexcusable. Yes, I know, there are people in the trenches doing good work, but we need to have a visible, global presence as the Church of God. I am not only speaking to Vineyard, but to the Church. How can the Kingdom advance? We speak of the Father’s Heart for the Nations, but we seem to be very far from the heart of the Father on this issue. It took Oprah to show me the light. World missions is about standing between the innocent and their attackers, between the woman and the machete. Whether she is rich or poor, Christian or Muslim, black or white, we have to step in to be salt and light. We have to reconcile with our brothers before bringing the sacrifice of praise to the altar. How can we be a worshipping church, when we can’t even get along with other believing leaders?

We all need to start watching Oprah. She will show us the way. But seriously, the Spirit is moving right now through the world. When that girl was reunited with her family on the show, she raised her hands in praise to Jesus. What a statement from someone who’s concerns for the Kingdom of God in the world are much more profound than ours seem to be.