I don't know anything about John Krasinski's personal life, and I don't want to. But this blog is about something he said, not as character Jim Halpert, but as himself.
As I mentioned in last Sunday's Manhattan Declaration class, I have a love-hate relationship with television's The Office, and a statement by actor Krasinski came into our discussion last Sunday.
The discussion was about point one of the Declaration: defending traditional marriage. One of the dangers of the Manhattan Declaration (as a good friend recently pointed out) is that people will see it as merely another call to right wing political action. It is so much deeper than that. We should already know we can't preserve tradtional marriage by just legislating what is legal and what is not. All it will take is a 51% majority to redefine marriage legally, and we who support traditional marriage are losing the hearts and minds of America at breakneck pace.
If we are going to persuade Americans to support traditional marriage legally, those who are on the fence or waffling must see those of us who fear God celebrating, endorsing, advocating, sacrifically supporting, and unflinchingly extolling traditional marriage. In word and in deed. For me this past week, it meant three conversations with good friends on this very subject: consoling and encouraging a Christian wife, counseling and admonishing her husband, and helping a young theologian wrestle with scriptural priorities regarding marriage as it should be taught among believers. It meant making a couple of personal decisions based on how they would impact my dear spouse. We don't have to look for these opportunities; they come up daily.
Back to Krasinski. Never mind why I watch The Office...I just do. I discovered on Hulu.com that there are interviews with the characters, and I recently watched an interview with Krasinski and Jenna Fischer, who plays his wife. In the interview, which concerned the recent episode in which the character played by Fischer gives birth to their first child, the discussion gets around to the decision by the writers to have Pam (Fischer's character) discover she's pregnant before the two are married (although the marriage is already planned). Krasinski refers to this choice on the part of the writers as "gutsy...brave...courageous" at various points in the interview.
If you're still with me, I want you to bear with a tedious break down of what is being done and said here.
1. First of all, it's just silly to say that was "courageous," in light of the increasingly casual attitude toward sex and extra-marital pregnancy in our culture. Movies have been painting this as a common condition for fifty years, and television has not been far behind. Although you and I would like to think we have a better quality of friendships and acquaintances than any of the charaters we might see in popular media, which of us has not had a good friend (or relative) who revealed that she was pregnant and unmarried? What's courageous about illustrating something the culture has already accepted as inevitable (if not normative)?
2. But in Krasinski's defense, there is a reason he said that. In many respects, Jim and Pam are depicted as the "voices of reason" in The Office, certainly the most likeable of the strange menagerie of personalities. Fischer alludes to this herself in the interview. In that respect, Krasinski may have felt it was "courageous" of the writers to depict this "flaw" in the two most stable characters in the series. Except that no one watching will regard it as a flaw! (Okay, maybe just Steve Johnson and I). It is precisely because Pam and Jim have become our favorites that no one will think badly of them for this ("After all, they are already in a committed relationship and planning their wedding!"). And once again television has worked its subtle magic on our minds, causing us to rationalize a behavior we know to be against God's design because we don't want to offend our friends, Pam and Jim - who don't exist!
3. If you think I'm over the top there, I also watched an interview with two of the writers for the series, Jonathan Hughes and Nate Federman, in which they blatantly talk about staging and filming techniques which "force" the viewer to respond in the ways in they want him or her to respond. This is manipulation. And it works powerfully! Consider what is said of Simon the sorceror in Acts 9:11... "They followed him because he had amazed them for a long time with his magic."
What are the take-aways for those of us who are "Manhattan Declarationists"? (or just Christians?)
1. Don't be taken in yourself. If you believe you are being manipulated by media to look on sin with approval, stop watching. Or watch selectively (as I do) with a view toward discussing the implications with trusted fellow believers. Frankly, I need to know the voices who are influencing the generation I am seeking to disciple. The two writers I mentioned above are in their early thirties. I actually first learned of The Office on the blog of a pastor I respect. Sun Tzu, in The Art of War, said "Know thy enemy."
2. Earn the right to be heard. Show by acts of love and service that you will go the extra mile to support the institution of marriage as God designed it. For many of us, that means supporting Crisis Pregnancy or Bethany House, but there are other closer-to-home ways, as well. Start with some of those people whom we admitted to knowing above, those who are not living in accordance with God's plan. Be a friend and helper without condemning, all the while being a witness for he truth.
3. In the words of the Manhattan Declaration, be a witness for the truth. When you have earned the right to be heard, speak unapologetically for Godly marriage. Don't depend on what you imagine by conservative tradition to be Godly marriage, study it. I recommend pastor Douglas Wilson's Reforming Marriage for starters.
One last shot at John Krasinski. He can't help it. His liberal education and affinity for the popular culture of his own upbringing have led him to imagine that anything that challenges what he was taught to be an archaic view of marriage (out-dated tradition, sterile status quo, hypocritical Victorianism) needs to be shaken up. So anyone who would do that shaking (his thirty-something writer peers) is courageous to him. God deliver us from phony heroes.
Now go out and be a real hero, in God's terms.
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