Saving Grace, Religion with sex, guns, and rock and roll

The first episode of Saving Grace opens with Holly Hunter's character straddling her partner on the Oklahoma City Police Department on the edge of her bed, writhing in ecstasy. It's not the opening you would expect from a show arranged around religion and redemption.

The scene vividly establishes that Hunter's Grace Hanadarko is careening out of control toward a bad end. And it looks like she's found that end when she hits a black man while driving drunk after a long drinking session at a local bar. As she squats over him and tries to apply first aid, she says "Dear God, please help me." Suddenly, there appears a disheveled man in unkempt clothes who tells her that God sent her. He turns out to be an angel named Earl and he tells Grace that she's headed for hell and that he's there to help her avoid it.

But instead of the typical "goody two-shoes" approach to salvation where the condemned decides to be nice and everyone lives happily ever after, Saving Grace goes far deeper than that. Grace is a complex character, deeply noble and good, but deeply flawed. She has a self-destructive streak that runs as deep as her commitment as a cop and a hard-boiled sweetness that manifests itself more often than you'd guess.

As the series unfolds, Grace lies, drinks, and screws practically every man in the state of Oklahoma. And the layers are slowly peeled back to reveal that Grace, has good reason to be messed up. She was raped as a child by her priest. That set her on a course of rebellion and slow-motion self-destruction, and with each step, her guilt rose and her self-worth fell. When her sister asked her to help out on morning, Grace was too hungover. As a result, her sister wound up in the Murrah Building when it was attacked and her nephew, whom Grace adores, has no mother.

It's not Grace's actions that condemn her, it's her view of herself as beyond redemption. She engages in high-risk behaviors, living on the edge, because she's running from her past and the pain of her decisions. God's not choosing to condemn Grace; Grace is choosing it for herself. God is just obliging.

Earl's counsel to Grace is softly judgemental, but rarely condemning. And at the end of the day, Earl is more concerned with healing Grace's soul than listing her sins. It's a slow tedious process, and Grace's choices aren't likely to endear the show to those who loved Highway to Heaven. Many would view it as profane and blasphemous, combining the vulgar with God's goodness.

But if I didn't find myself in the profane and the blasphemous, I wouldn't find myself needing God. If I were good, Jesus wouldn't need to have died on the cross. The coarseness of the show is required to provide a counterpoint to the grace. Grace isn't grace if it exists everywhere.

God is always knocking at the door, but we have to answer it. This is a basic premise of redemptive religion. Augustine was a party boy before he found God. Grace is a contemporary version of that story.

Jesus in the media

It's become fashionable among Christians to complain that popular society is antagonistic to Christianity. Actually, it's been fashionable to register this complaint since before the Beatles proclaimed that they were more popular than God.

And in fairness, it might have been true then, but it's certainly not true any more. A number of instances make the anti-Christian argument difficult to defend, including, but not limited to:

• The ongoing success of U2, one of the most prolific and resilient bands in the rock and post-rock eras. U2 has been charting singles since 1980, and the themes of their songs, and sometimes the content itself, is blatantly Christian. Many of its biggest hits, including In the Name of Love, One, and Vertigo have Christian references. Another well-known U2 song, 40, is based on Psalm 40. The bands members, Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen, Jr., have all publicly opined on their religious beliefs.
• Saving Grace, starring Holly Hunter is about a hard-living female cop in Oklahoma City who's been given one last chance to avoid hell: assistance from an angel named Earl. Grace is a gritty character whose life is dominated by sex, drugs, booze, and more sex. But she's also a very good cop and a caring person who can't quite accept the grace to leave behind the emotional scars of her past.
• In the late 1980s, a band called Depeche Mode charged a hit called Personal Jesus. Included in the lyrics: Your own personal Jesus, someone to hear your prayers, someone who cares. The song has been covered by Johnny Cash and--irony of ironies--Marilyn Manson.
• The Passion of the Christ, in spite of its graphically blood climax, is one of the top-grossing movies of all time.
• The Chronicles of Narnia have been released in a series of mainstream movies with good actors and advanced special effects.

In short, while there is resistance to Jesus and Christianity in current American culture, there's also a set of contemporary efforts to treat religious--often Christian questions with honor and care. It's my intent to investigate some of those efforts, expound on their meaning, and let you decide.