By Mike Poteet
Having generated a lot of interest with a “sneak peek” of its pilot episode last spring, Fox’s comedy Glee made a big entrance earlier this month, with more than seven million viewers tuning in for the first regular episode. These early numbers, compared with numerous glowing reviews from critics, predict that the series will be a winner. Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker, for instance, says Glee is “so good—so funny, so bulging with vibrant characters—that it blasts past any defenses you might put up against it. Glee will not stop until it wins you over utterly.”
Ironically, this “winning” series is supposedly all about “losers.” (The logo the show uses in ads, in fact, replaces the title’s second letter with the L-shaped, hand-on-forehead sign!) Glee follows teacher Will Schuester (Matthew Morrison) as he tries to revitalize the glee club at McKinley High School in Lima, Ohio. But the students who join the show choir tend to be the school’s social outsiders—from unpopular but undeniably talented Rachel (Lea Michele) to wheelchair-bound bully target Artie (Kevin McHale)—and even to Finn (Cory Monteith), a football player whose fellow athletes shun him when he joins the choir.
Although rejected by many of their peers—and even by some of their adult teachers, especially cheerleading squad coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch)—as “losers,” the members of Glee, with Will’s encouragement, discover their real worth. Even though Coach Sylvester warns Will “not to treat these kids like something they’re not,” Will believes that “his kids” are special.
Teens watching Glee will be able to relate to the characters’ desire to feel special. They can also probably relate to the sometimes vicious high school social structure—Coach Sylvester calls it a “caste system.” Though perhaps not to the comically exaggerated degree on Glee, American adolescents do tend to divide themselves into “winners” and “losers,” insiders and outsiders. Sometimes the divisions are subtle; at other times, they are painfully obvious, and those who fail to fit in can experience significant pain. Sometimes they may choose to suffer silently; at other times, they may lash out, verbally or violently. While many people expressed a firm resolve to eradicate cliques and bullying in the wake of the terrible Columbine high school shooting a decade ago, these divisions seem to be an inevitable part of the American school experience.
While the church can’t eradicate the school “caste system,” it can proclaim a powerfully counter-cultural message to its young people. It can reassure youth that their fundamental value lies in their identity as children of God. Created in God’s own image (see Genesis 1:27), “fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14), Christian teens may say, along with the apostle Paul, that they “live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). The church can announce that, in the kingdom of God, those the world rejects as “losers” are celebrated as “winners”! The biblical songs of both Samuel’s mother Hannah (see 1 Samuel 2:1-10) and Jesus’ mother Mary (see Luke 1:46-55) exult in the promise that God does not share the status priorities of human society. God protects the vulnerable and lifts up the humble. God is at work among the “weak” of the world (see 1 Corinthians 1:26-31). In its ministry with youth, the church today can demonstrate the radical reversal of “losers’” fortunes that God has promised for that tomorrow when God’s kingdom is fully realized on earth.
From the September 27, 2009 issue of LinC (Living in Christ)
