Real Housewives

Is there a log in your eye?
It was almost noon. After 6 months without watching TV at home (we don’t pay for cable so we finally bought an antenna), I thought I’d watch the news at midday. I have been sewing shawls all morning to raise funds for the transitional house we run in McKinney, TX and it was time to take a coffee break. So, I prepared my coffee and turned on the TV. Instead of the news however, there was what look like a promotion for a later program. Women arguing over lunch at a fancy restaurant and individually shown later criticizing each other. After what I thought was the commercial, one by one the women were presented. Dressed like they were going to a wedding or some formal party, adorned with what looks like expensive jewelry and posing like models (I guess one of their illusions) each one was introduced with a motto. “If you mess with my family, you mess with me” I think one of them said – and the only one I can remember. Then the name of the program came up, Real Housewives of New Jersey. When I realized that the only channel I could get with my antenna was not having the news but this show instead, I turned off the TV. I did so commenting out loud, “Who has such an empty, meaningless life that has to watch a show so full of crap? Who lives such a pathetic life that has to sit in front of the TV to live vicariously through these women? What can you learn from watching so much vanity and crap? I went back to my sewing putting aside my longing for a break.

Later that evening, the women ministry in our church had “Dinner and a Movie” and I decided to go and join the ladies. If the movie wasn’t great, at least there will be food. (I was thinking on homemade sweets.) Sure enough, the deserts did not disappoint me. I even took some home for breakfast the next day. (Yes, I care more for deserts than wholesome food.) After the movie, there was a Q&A section. One of the questions dealt with what the main character in the movie had to do to get her marriage out of the stagnated state that it was. Someone answered, “Less TV more sex”. A lady from a corner of the room responded, “No if I have to give up my program. No ONE messes with my time for Real Housewives.” I quietly gasp. I know this woman! She sits with her husband in the pew behind me at church. I had her kid in my Sunday class. Oh my God! She is one of those who watches that show!

Everyone laughed at what she said and the hostess moved on with the next question. I left the place remembering that this lady had said in the Bible class she only had read the Bible three times that week. “And my husband (who was absent that day), I think he read it 3 times too. He is trying” she said when the Bible teacher asked each one of us how many times had we been on the Word that week. I went home that night and read the Bible and went to sleep very tired. The next morning during my devotional I prayed for the lady and later my husband, Sam calls me. He is working out of town and the night before I did not call him since I got home late and tired. After talking about his day, he asked me how was the movie and I proceeded to tell him about the housewives program I had thought so detrimental and vain and my question, “who watches that show” to find a person who does that same night IN OUR WOMEN GROUP! He laughed. He doesn’t know her – hardly remembers anybody he hasn’t talked more than three times, his own words – but said “Wow”. I told him, “Oh it doesn’t stop there. As I was praying this morning, she came to mind and I prayed for her. See on my mind I was thinking, this person only reads her Bible 3 times a week and when asked how many times her husband and her prayed together that week, she said not once. But she has time to watch this sick show about other people having fancy lunches that costs more than a dinner for two, badmouthing each other when the other is not present, having boob jobs and trying to show off who has more money.” As my husband listened, I continued, “The thing is that as I prayed I did not realize I was judging her. I’m feeling more spiritual than her, superior if you may because I take 2-3 hours each day reading the Bible and praying. But the Spirit reminded me, ‘Do not look at the speck in her eye but the log in yours’. You know, Sam we read the Bible at night but we don’t kneel before the Lord to pray before falling asleep as we used to. Lately we just say ‘Thank you Lord for this day’ as we closed the Bible and turn off the light or hold hands there in bed and pray for 3 minutes. That’s my log.” Sam went “Ouch!” I said, “There is more. I immediately as the Spirit rebuked me, I reasoned, ‘well it is a speck too in my eye because I do so many other things so this is a small thing’. I found myself categorizing, justifying but the Spirit told me, ‘Those who has received more, more is demanded of them’. In other words, I know better. Even the cows kneel before going down to sleep.” Sam repeated, “Ouch! Ouch! That’s hurting.”

So, after praying for her, I had to start praying for forgiveness. I still do not approve of the show but I’m not here to judge – like I tell my incarcerated students – I’m here to teach and correct as the Lord gives me with love not judgment. I do not know this lady well enough – I don’t even know her name though I know her husband’s since she always talking about him - to approach her in the subject like I would do with one of my closer friends and offer some advice on balancing TV and spiritual life. In being careful in what we watch because after all, what do I learn from such a program as ‘Real Housewives’? But since I don’t know her, then I shall pray for enlightenment in her life and that she gets to know Christ better; not looking at how often she reads the Bible and prays but just pray for her and her family. Her accountability in those areas is to the Lord not us. I prayed for whatever emptiness there is in her life be filled by the Holy Spirit and all her needs be supplied by HE who died for us all. I don’t have a speck. I have a log and that day I started working on removing it by going back to my old tradition that I stopped years ago, go on my knees at the end of the day and spend sometime at the feet of the Master. I’m not saying you have to do the same. I’m just telling my log and how the Spirit revealed it to me. God is so merciful and we are not.