deird1 | (Reply)

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Have I ever told you about my the biggest missed opportunity of my life? I went to a Christian university when I was 24. If I had gone straight to the same university right out of high school, and got into their Talbot Honors Program (which I totally would have), I would have met Joss Whedon my senior year. That year they had a seminar on the nature of evil and redemption, using Dante's Inferno - and the Angel arc on Buffy as texts. I think the episodes they screened were Angel, School Hard, Lie to Me, What's My Line I and II, Surprise, Innocence, Passion, Becoming I and II, and Amends).

In the spring of 2006, Joss wasn't doing much. The Big Damn Movie was over, and the Whedon Renaissance started with Dr. Horrible hadn't yet begun. So when a Christian school a half hour out of Los Angeles asked if he'd come talk, he said yes. So the nature of evil was being taught at a Christian school by an avowed atheist, and I don't find anything incongruent with that. And it would probably have been a good thing that I didn't take that class, because I would have spent the entirety of it defending Spike and telling everyone he has an even better, messier, more real redemption story, and calling Angel a weenie.

Which doesn't have much to do with your post, but it does show that I can completely understand exactly what you're talking about. What really got me out of a few spells of deep depression was television. To misquote Chariots of Fire, when I discovered a new television show, I felt God's pleasure. And while I can say television saved me, you really gotta wonder who orchestrated television to become such a large part of my life. And that's why I never gave up on Christ. American evangelical Christianity? Yes. But Christ? No.

Thank you so much for sharing this. It is amazingly eloquent, and you are such a good storyteller!