God Spoke to Me as I Watched “Bull” (Prime)
I thoroughly enjoyed the show called “Bull” because it took a classic crime genre and added a twist – it was from the perspective of a legal company that specialized in selecting juries that would give the desired result, using a combination of psychology and technology. So if a lawyer or client had a particularly hard case, they would hire the brilliant and brash Dr. Bull and his team to help.
Overall the show is fairly clean. There’s a few episodes/scenes that I skipped due to content matter, and there’s some talk about sex and innuendo, but overall the show was really good.
One episode however really stuck out to me, one about a teenage kid who helped his girlfriend euthanize herself. Benny, the lawyer on Dr Bull’s team is Catholic, and he was against representing/helping this boy. This leads to an angry discussion with Bull, as he feels Benny isn’t being paid to think, he just needs to do his job.
To this, Benny said, “I have a point of view and I am concerned that it doesn’t dovetail with our client’s. I’ve been a practicing Catholic my whole life, and suicide…suicide is a mortal sin. Sanctity of life. No one can take a person’s life, even their own, except for God. Sorry, but that’s just what I believe”. Inwardly I cheered Benny on for standing up for his beliefs and for standing up to Bull.
Bull forcefully replied: “I am not asking you to go out and kill somebody, I’m asking you to go into a courtroom. As a matter of fact, I’m paying you to go into a court of law and save a boy’s life. What kind of god do you pray to?”
Implied throughout the episode is this idea that a good God wouldn’t want someone to suffer. And if we could do something to end someone’s suffering, we should!
A year ago my brother was going through a lot. He had a fever, could barely move, and was in extreme pain for weeks. He was hospitalized numerous times, for weeks on end. He was finally diagnosed with Still’s Disease, and praise God they have found the right meds to help him live much more normally! But it’s an ongoing disease and they don’t know if it will be something he struggles with for the rest of his life.
Watching him go through that was horrible. Over and over I asked God “why?” Why do this to him? Why allow this to a 21 year old, healthy man? Through this experience I realized my theology (understanding) of suffering was being challenged. What we went through as a family changed us and helped us to have way more compassion for others who are going through hard health situations.
If you had the power to stop someone from suffering, shouldn’t you do it? That was the message of this Bull episode, and I realized that in modern, Canadian culture our theology of suffering is simple: there is no value in suffering and it is to be avoided at all costs.
If this were true, then why in the heck wouldn’t everyone choose suicide? At the first light of hard things, why not give up?
I am SO GRATEFUL that Christianity has hope to offer to all of us who struggle, who suffer, who groan, and ask “why?” Even more than that, it amazes me that the God of the Universe left the perfection and peace of heaven to come and enter into our suffering – Jesus knows rejection, loss, grief, abuse, pain, and death, because He went through them all for us!
The Bible teaches us that suffering is temporary (1 Peter 5:10), that it produces endurance, patience, character and hope (Romans 5:3-5), that God can work good for us through suffering (Romans 8:28), that maturity/perfection only comes through suffering (James 1:2-4). What is more, suffering is promised to the Christian (John 16:33, 2 Tim 3:12) but relief is also promised through God (Revelation 21:4).
I would say that this is something I’m still working through. It seems like every year I realize how the assumptions of our culture are under my own struggles to trust God in the midst of hard things. And as uncomfortable as the episode of Bull was to watch, I think it’s cool that God used it to make me think more deeply about this topic.
If you’re suffering or struggling and you need someone to talk to, please don’t hesitate to message me! May we all know the suffering God a bit more through our own struggles!