ER shoots- and hits the post!
Though I preferred Chicago Hope when the two shows originally debuted, I've always been a fan of ER. Somehow, through the years, the changing cast has managed to keep my interest.
Last night, ER had a remarkable episode. Part of the story involved an intramural hockey game between two squads of ER docs from County General- including Neela (!) who does double-duty as first a hotshot center and an emergency goalie. As a life-long, second generation hockey fan, I really enjoyed that part of the plot- despite the predictable outcome (everybody ending up as ER patients when Neela gets tired of Morris's trash talking, jumps him- and a brawl ensues).
But the main dramatic thrust of the episode concerned Dr. Robert Truman, a physician dying of cancer who was trying to atone for a career spent administering lethal injections to condemned prisoners at Statesville. It seems that he botched an injection, requiring a second dose of the chemicals. This one worked- but evidence later was discovered exonerating the man.
Believing that God had sent him a sign which he had ignored, and knowing that he'd killed an innocent man, Dr. Truman became obsessed with somehow atoning for his "sin" to the families of the men he'd helped execute. Most accepted his help, financial or otherwise. But one widow with a little boy resisted- and perceived him as a stalker.
Confronting him on the shores of Lake Michigan, the woman wasn't watching when her son- gathering water samples for a school science project- fell into the frigid lake. Truman rescued him. As they arrived at County General, Truman cried out to the doctors to save the boy, or he himself would go to hell.
Julia the Chaplain- a recurring character in recent episodes- was of absolutely no use to Truman, who had found no peace in praying the Rosary while waiting for news of the boy. Offering only the kind of shallow, sunny pseudo-psychological help available to a chaplain who prides herself in lacking the answers the people she deals with so desperately need, Julia only added to Truman's pain. He lashed out, telling her to leave him alone and send a real chaplain who believed in heaven and hell.
I found it curious that the staff at County General- operating in Chicago, one of the most Catholic cities in the United States- shouldn't have included specifically a Catholic chaplain. I found it even stranger that nobody thought to pick up the phone, call a Catholic priest, and ask that priest to address Truman's spiritual condition within the context of his own faith, if necessary offering penance and absolution. Were this a real incident rather than a fictional story, the word "negligence" would come to mind.
Better still, of course, would have been for somebody- anybody- to have pointed out that while Catholicism (rightly, in my view) frowns upon capital punishment at a time at which alternative and more readily reversible forms of punishment exist, it historically (again, rightly) has defended capital punishment as a penalty specifically endorsed in both Testaments and by the mainstream of historical Christian thought. Somebody- anybody- should have pointed out that God, Who is not the Author of confusion, is both more plain-spoken and more just than to have sent a "sign" of a prisoner's innocence in the form of a botched injection, and expected it to be understood as such at the time.
Best still, of course, would have been for somebody- again, anybody- to have simply spoken the genuine, biblical Gospel to that broken and pathetically contrite man. God's Word does not return to Him empty. Granted, it would have been best if it could have been provided in the context of actual pastoral counseling. But that Word- presented not in the form of inclusive, sunny New Age pablum but of the funky, down-to-earth, bloody authority of the Cross, was finally all Truman needed.
He didn't get it. But at least he got some help- not from the seminary trained veteran of the Ashram who had failed him as a chaplain, but from Dr. Pratt, who- upon interrupting an attempt by Truman to administer himself a lethal dose of potassium chloride- pointed out that God had directed Truman's steps in such a way as to put him at the lake shore at the very moment he had to be in order to save the life of the son of that man he'd executed. "To save one life,I took all those others? It doesn't make sense," Truman objected.
I wanted to quote Hebrews 11:1 to him. Pratt didn't do that- quite. But he did make essentially the same point: "It isn't supposed to make sense. That's why it's called "faith."
It wasn't clear how much help this was to Dr. Truman. Hopefully it was some.
Three cheers for ER in making the point that people dealing with down-to-earth- realities like sin and suffering and sickness and death need something more the than generic, inclusive pablum "mainstream" American religion has to offer. I thought last night of my friend Mollie Ziegler Hemingway and her book, Losing Our Religion, in which she argues a premise I've agreed with for decades: that we have an unofficial established religion in this country, First Amendment or no, whose primary creedal affirmation is precisely the kind of inclusive, anticreedal, superficial crap that was all Julie could offer Dr. Truman. I'm all too familiar with that trivial and finally useless theology of the cop out from my years in the ELCA. Even in a work of fiction, it pulls my cork to see suffering people made to do with a placebo when their broken hearts and souls need the good, strong, offensive medicine of the Cross.
Even Pratt didn't offer that. But at least he gave Truman something: a God big enough not to necessarily submit to our demand that He make sense, holding out at least the theoretical possibility of a divine, forgiving love so outrageous and unreasonable as to absorb our guilt into the Lover Himself.
Some fine thoughts on the episode are found here.
Last night, ER had a remarkable episode. Part of the story involved an intramural hockey game between two squads of ER docs from County General- including Neela (!) who does double-duty as first a hotshot center and an emergency goalie. As a life-long, second generation hockey fan, I really enjoyed that part of the plot- despite the predictable outcome (everybody ending up as ER patients when Neela gets tired of Morris's trash talking, jumps him- and a brawl ensues).
But the main dramatic thrust of the episode concerned Dr. Robert Truman, a physician dying of cancer who was trying to atone for a career spent administering lethal injections to condemned prisoners at Statesville. It seems that he botched an injection, requiring a second dose of the chemicals. This one worked- but evidence later was discovered exonerating the man.
Believing that God had sent him a sign which he had ignored, and knowing that he'd killed an innocent man, Dr. Truman became obsessed with somehow atoning for his "sin" to the families of the men he'd helped execute. Most accepted his help, financial or otherwise. But one widow with a little boy resisted- and perceived him as a stalker.
Confronting him on the shores of Lake Michigan, the woman wasn't watching when her son- gathering water samples for a school science project- fell into the frigid lake. Truman rescued him. As they arrived at County General, Truman cried out to the doctors to save the boy, or he himself would go to hell.
Julia the Chaplain- a recurring character in recent episodes- was of absolutely no use to Truman, who had found no peace in praying the Rosary while waiting for news of the boy. Offering only the kind of shallow, sunny pseudo-psychological help available to a chaplain who prides herself in lacking the answers the people she deals with so desperately need, Julia only added to Truman's pain. He lashed out, telling her to leave him alone and send a real chaplain who believed in heaven and hell.
I found it curious that the staff at County General- operating in Chicago, one of the most Catholic cities in the United States- shouldn't have included specifically a Catholic chaplain. I found it even stranger that nobody thought to pick up the phone, call a Catholic priest, and ask that priest to address Truman's spiritual condition within the context of his own faith, if necessary offering penance and absolution. Were this a real incident rather than a fictional story, the word "negligence" would come to mind.
Better still, of course, would have been for somebody- anybody- to have pointed out that while Catholicism (rightly, in my view) frowns upon capital punishment at a time at which alternative and more readily reversible forms of punishment exist, it historically (again, rightly) has defended capital punishment as a penalty specifically endorsed in both Testaments and by the mainstream of historical Christian thought. Somebody- anybody- should have pointed out that God, Who is not the Author of confusion, is both more plain-spoken and more just than to have sent a "sign" of a prisoner's innocence in the form of a botched injection, and expected it to be understood as such at the time.
Best still, of course, would have been for somebody- again, anybody- to have simply spoken the genuine, biblical Gospel to that broken and pathetically contrite man. God's Word does not return to Him empty. Granted, it would have been best if it could have been provided in the context of actual pastoral counseling. But that Word- presented not in the form of inclusive, sunny New Age pablum but of the funky, down-to-earth, bloody authority of the Cross, was finally all Truman needed.
He didn't get it. But at least he got some help- not from the seminary trained veteran of the Ashram who had failed him as a chaplain, but from Dr. Pratt, who- upon interrupting an attempt by Truman to administer himself a lethal dose of potassium chloride- pointed out that God had directed Truman's steps in such a way as to put him at the lake shore at the very moment he had to be in order to save the life of the son of that man he'd executed. "To save one life,I took all those others? It doesn't make sense," Truman objected.
I wanted to quote Hebrews 11:1 to him. Pratt didn't do that- quite. But he did make essentially the same point: "It isn't supposed to make sense. That's why it's called "faith."
It wasn't clear how much help this was to Dr. Truman. Hopefully it was some.
Three cheers for ER in making the point that people dealing with down-to-earth- realities like sin and suffering and sickness and death need something more the than generic, inclusive pablum "mainstream" American religion has to offer. I thought last night of my friend Mollie Ziegler Hemingway and her book, Losing Our Religion, in which she argues a premise I've agreed with for decades: that we have an unofficial established religion in this country, First Amendment or no, whose primary creedal affirmation is precisely the kind of inclusive, anticreedal, superficial crap that was all Julie could offer Dr. Truman. I'm all too familiar with that trivial and finally useless theology of the cop out from my years in the ELCA. Even in a work of fiction, it pulls my cork to see suffering people made to do with a placebo when their broken hearts and souls need the good, strong, offensive medicine of the Cross.
Even Pratt didn't offer that. But at least he gave Truman something: a God big enough not to necessarily submit to our demand that He make sense, holding out at least the theoretical possibility of a divine, forgiving love so outrageous and unreasonable as to absorb our guilt into the Lover Himself.
Some fine thoughts on the episode are found here.
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