Would Jesus Watch Reality TV?

By Erik Walker Wikstrom
Unitarian Universalist minister

I've been watching ABC's summer smash hit Wipeout -- the show where contestants face ridiculously overstuffed obstacles only to be splashed, smashed, and crashed for our viewing pleasure. Week after week the hosts make fun of people as they fall or, rather, are knocked down, over and over again. The winner limps home with $50,000, which should be just about enough to cover her or his chiropractic and physical therapy bills.

My wife watches the show with me sometimes, but she doesn't enjoy it nearly as much as i do. She is a massage therapist, and can't get past the damage the contestants are doing to their bodies. "These people are really hurting themselves," she'll say to me, as I chortle. And when I burst out in a belly laugh at a particularly spectacular wipeout she's been known to say, "You're scary," before rolling over and going to bed.

Yet recently I got to thinking: Would Jesus watch Wipeout? Would Ghandi? St. Francis? Mother Theresa? Does the Dalai Lama? And then, of course, the real question - should I?

The Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Buddhist monk, poet, and peace activist, has reinterpreted the traditional Buddhist Fifth Precept. Instead of being a proscription against "consuming intoxicants" or "poison," Nhat Hanh has recast it as a prescription for "mindful consumption," and includes in this avoidance of "items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs, magazines, books, films and conversations." Perhaps a show that really is about nothing more than mocking people who are getting the stuffing knocked out of them would probably make the list.

To be sure, the folks who appear on Wipeout are not helpless victims of abuse. They know what they're getting into and at any point they can call it quits. And yet, as is obvious throughout the show, knowing what they were getting into and actually getting down into it are two different things--as is so often the case in life. The look on the contestants faces as they encounter the various obstacles makes it clear that while they might have known what they were getting into they had no idea what it would entail. And the bravado they show at the beginning of the course transforms into a grim determination on the faces of the few who make it to the finals. The reality of this reality show is that these folks are hurting by the time they're done.

Jesus is remembered in the Christian Scriptures as saying that whatever we do to "the least of these" we do to him and that each and every person is our neighbor who we should love "as ourselves." Why should I think this doesn't apply to contestants on a game show as well? It may seem like "harmless fun," yet I can't help but wonder if they're not the only ones who are getting hurt week after week.

Erik Walker Wikstrom is a Unitarian Universalist minister who lives in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts. He is the author of "Teacher, Guide, Companion: Rediscovering Jesus in a Secular World and Simply Pray: A Modern Spiritual Practice to Deepen Your Life."

By Erik Walker Wikstrom |  September 4, 2009; 12:51 AM ET Save & Share:                 
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