CSI Religion

 My father and I love watching British cop shows. Recently, we have run into a trend that pops up occasionally in TV. It is what we like to call, CSI Religion. CSI Religion refers to how religious people are portrayed in the media. Especially prevalent in shows like Law and Order and its British equivalent programs. Annoying and slightly offensive, this can make or break an episode for us.

For those of you that watch CSI, try and remember if you have ever seen a normal religious person on the show. Most of the time they are either A) a completely insane person who rambles religiously and performs weird actions. B) A manipulative ass who is using religion to gain power, women, protection, or some other gain. C) Someone who is preachy or self-righteous and either hinders the police or harasses people based on some moral issue. Or, D) That person who is “deeply devoted” and is not quite completely insane, but spends the entire episode showing off how religious they are. And none of them, I repeat, not one of them, actually sounds or acts like a Christian. Seriously. We do not go around saying that the dead woman who got an abortion died because “a life for a life”. We do not go around saying that the murder victim needs to be punished for her sin. We do not sit in interrogation rooms and declare that “God allows the righteous to suffer at the hands of their enemies” and then devolve into prayer for six hours. We do not quote scripture every five minutes. We just do not sound like that. We are normal people. We go to school, work, the shopping market, the same as you do. I do not know any Christian that has ever acted this way. It becomes incredibly aggravating to see yourself always portrayed in this light. The religious person is ALWAYS a crazy, overly devoted, or jerk of a person. And they almost always end up as the killer or at least helping the bad guys some way. The only saving grace is that occasionally a main character is religious, but that is normally used to either act as a plot point or a foil. And on top of that, they are usually hesitant or uninformed about their faith. Religion itself is almost always an engine to get across some political agenda like abortion, or the “horrible affects of strict religious rules” such as Cindy being driven to crime by her parents restrictions. Restrictions, by the by, that most Christians do not actually live by.

CSI Religion is not depicting religion. It is depicting how people THINK religion looks. The dialogue is written by people who do not actually know any Christians, and are therefore going off of what they think a Christian would say. They think to themselves, “You know what would go great here? Some wack job religious people! That would totally get across my point about how people do not respect gay rights!” Of course, they just kinda assume how a Christian would act. The problem is they read the stories on the internet and media of people who stand around with picket signs, or who scream at random employees. Then they use that as a basis for their religious character. Most of us do not do that though. Yeah there are some crazy people, but we are not all like this. The average Christian is defiantly not going to act like that. It would be really nice for once, if there was a show that portrayed us as normal people, because it really can make the episode unpleasant and difficult to watch. It feels like they just take a negative stereotype to prove a point and do not even bother trying to give a real representation of a Christian. With all the resources at their disposal, would it really be that hard?

-BlackFox

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