The One-Eyed Bully

The One-Eyed Bully

It’s not persecution, but we are being bullied. Dick Wolfe is the chief bully; there are others. Dick Wolf is the producer of “Law and Order: SVU” and as he says, “Every episode sends a message.” We might also say that every episode sends a brass knuckle message.

Here’s how the bully works: he portrays Christians, church people, and pastors in such a way so as to create the impression among viewers, “I don’t want to be one of them or associate with them or even listen to them.”

The program uses several characterizations to do the brass knuckle bullying. In one program, the ministers and church people have King James speech patterns. When they speak, their words and tone aren’t normal. Out of the blue, they quote Scripture, with “thees” and “thous” all over the place, and are always very clear on knowing God’s will and say so, to the supercilious looks of the serious and straight-thinking detectives, who let the viewers know by the way they give each other an all-knowing look, as if to say, “They’re strange; we don’t agree with them, but let’s let them talk.”

They speak in an odd tone; it’s stilted, artificial, not the way normal people talk, way too formal, and with an arrogance which says, “We’re better than you,” so that the viewer automatically doesn’t like them. Who would?

There is an alternative characterization: have them talk as if their mouths are full of southern fried grits. Make them out to be ignorant, hick rednecks with gun racks in their pick-ups. We all “know” those people are dangerous.

If they’re not supercilious, they’re downright dangerous. In one episode, a church-going, Scripture-quoting, know-it-all father decides that it’s God’s will that he be the shepherd who leads his family to heaven, and the way to do that, God has told him, is to shoot his wife in the back of the head while she sleeps, take his daughter out in the country and kill her, then head off to his mother’s house and lead her to heaven too. (Carefully placed on the wall of his bedroom is a cross, framed just right in the camera angle so the viewers can see it.) Subtly is not the strong suit on “Law and Order,” the brass knuckles are out.

One can bet that when a “church person” shows up on “Law and Order,” the “mystery” is solved: they’re guilty as sin, complicit in secret sin, or up to some sin. Make the bet and you’ll be right every time.

Not to be outdone, “Cold Case” on CBS had an episode featuring Christian teenagers who pledged themselves to purity until marriage. They have their meetings on campus with an older adult who turns out to be up to something—he’s perverted. However, not content to have the leader as a pervert and the teens odd by the vocabulary the writers put in the script, “Cold Case” climaxes the program with the teens stoning (get the subtle reference to the Old Testament?) a wayward member of their club.

The viewer comes away with the impression that these weirdoes are to be avoided at all costs because they’re either stupid or dangerous, maybe both.

But there’s more to it than that. One might conclude that there’s something else in the intent of programs like “Law and Order” and “Cold Case” and that is to bully and intimidate the Christian to shut him down, to make it so that if one were to witness, he might be seen as “them,” “those people” who are stupid and/or dangerous. So, before the believer takes a stand for Christ, the bully will make him think twice, since he doesn’t want people to think that he’s one of “them.”

No, it’s not persecution. Persecution is when the government knocks on your door in the middle of the night and breaks it down and hauls you off because you’re a believer. But it is an attempt to marginalize, to intimidate, and to bully you into a silent submission. “You can talk about your faith all you want in your stained-glass auditoria, but don’t you dare bring it outside.” Thus speaketh the bully.

What to do? Put on the full armor of God; suit up, and ask God to give you the confident boldness to declare the gospel. The world has always tried to bully the believer. The one-eyed bully is only its more recent tool.

Dr. Mike Halsey, Pastor

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