I spent a rare evening watching TV the other night. As networks do, they promoted the living daylights out of their fall lineup. At the top of the heap: “Television’s number one new drama, ‘Evil.’”
So successful is their search engine optimization, that if you Google “Evil,” at the top of the list is this "American drama series." As if evil itself were a distinctly American value or cultural distinctive. Or is that actually the truth?
93% of Google users like this new TV show and Rotten Tomatoes gives it a respectable rating of 81%. One reviewer describes it as “Like ‘X-Files’ for spiritual and supernatural phenomena.”
Not having seen an episode, I’ll not comment on the content. My issue is with the title. CBS deliberately chose this wording entirely confident that "Evil" would be intriguing—even favorable—-to a vast swathe of Americans. And apparently, it is.
That, folks, is a problem.
It is one thing for evil to be present in society—what society could ever claim to have ever been free of its claws? It is quite another to celebrate it. Which is what television is doing.
Jesus prayed, "Deliver us from evil." But increasingly, our culture is drawn to it. Far from the maxim, to "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil," we embrace it, engage it, and enjoy it.
As Francis Schaefer asked so many years ago, "How should we then live?" Philippians 4:8 cuts right to the chase:
“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”
God help America when evil is “an American Drama.”