House of God

If you aren't familiar with the television show "House" then permit me to summarize by saying that he is a doctor with an extremely acerbic personality, which is the basis of the show. He's a flawed genius, who uses everybody far more than he heals his patients.

In fact, his entire personality is based on the disgust of humanity, which is strangely ironic in that his entire career/passion/life is built on diagnosing, and subsequently curing (if possible) people of strange and rare diseases.

While pondering the show recently, and more than the show, I was actually pondering why I am growing cold toward it . . . and I came to the conclusion that I am actually starting to lose interest due to the very basic premise of it: the fact that House sees all of humanity as vain, greedy, lying, covetous, ruinous, selfish, and perverted. Every last person.

Which begins to wear thin after a few seasons. At first it was funny, now . . . not so much.

But many, if not most, of you will quite accurately tell me that, in fact, House is correct on his assessment of humanity. And I would not disagree. He's right. Each and every one of us is a user of people, a liar, a miscreant, a malcontent. We all manipulate to get what we want. Our desires are often solely for personal gain.

To put it simply, Dr House sees us the way Jesus Christ sees us - through our masks, through our veneer of humanity, for the base person inside. Both of them see us nakedly, openly, all our secrets out in the open, all our desires laid bare.

The difference of course is that our God loves us anyway. He sees us precisely, and loves us anyway. Which is probably why my love for God increases steadily every day and while my desire to watch the show wanes quickly over time.

House, being human (and don't worry, I'm not forgetting that he's actually a fictional character) simply cannot bring himself to that godlike level of compassion.

And you might ask me, "How do you know that God sees us with that amount of compassionate love?"

To which I would reply, "He'd HAVE to - because if God did not love us like that, He would only see us the way Dr House sees us, and turn away from us with disgust and disdain. Which would probably lead to this planet plummeting wildly into the sun to wipe the universe of the scourge of us."

To which you might respond, "Well, why would you want to believe that there is a God at all?"

To which I would reply, "Do you really want House to be the only one in on the joke?"