Raymond and His Culture

(This particular essay was written by Kent’s less tongue-in-cheek brother.
I think his name is Ken B. True.)

Sometimes cultural insights come from entertaining sources. I found one in the March 18, 2002 episode of TV’s "Everybody Loves Raymond."

"Raymond" is a show centered around a "forty something" couple, their young children, the husband’s brother, and the husband’s parents who live just across the street in the suburbs of Long Island.

In this episode, Raymond’s wife Debra asks him to have "the talk" with their the young daughter, Alley. The parents think Alley wants to know "where babies come from." Now, having studied several books about talking to your children about sex, Raymond heads off to his daughter Alley’s room for "the talk."

However, when Ray arrives in his ever-so-cute little daughter’s room, he finds that she does not want to know how babies get here. She asks her father, "If we all go to heaven when we die, why does God put us here first?" After stumbling and stammering for some time, Ray finally offers her this ingenious, manufactured-on-the-spot theory: God is up in Heaven and it is very crowded up there - like Disneyworld. So God sends us to earth to ease the heavenly congestion!

Not quite satisfied with his own theory, Ray then retreats downstairs where he finds gathered his wife, his mother, his father, and his brother. When he explains the real question, everyone has a reaction.

Raymond’s father Frank is the first to offer another answer. It is to-the-point and cynical. Says Frank, "You’re born, you go to school, you go to work, you die."

Ray’s brother Robert tells the group that he has "spent many a night in bed thinking about life’s imponderables" such as this.

By now, Raymond and Debra are getting a little desperate to take an answer back upstairs to their daughter. Debra offers, "Let’s tell her that we are all here to help each other. It’s simple, it’s direct, and it will help her live her life."

Brother Robert doesn’t like that answer. It has to be more complex than that he thinks.

Mother Marie knows where to look for the answer to such a question. "It’s all in the Bible" she reminds everyone. Retrieving the family Bible, she opens to Genesis and begins to read, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." This does not, however, seem to be a direct answer to the question as posed. So Marie continues to scan the first couple of chapters of Genesis, and finally remarks, "It might take me a minute."

Still desperate for a good answer, Ray has an idea. He calls their priest. As Ray says, "It’s his job to know these things." Ray calls the priest. The priest is not home, so Ray leaves a message asking if the priest will get back to them right away on the meaning of life.

Brother Robert, still pondering the "imponderables" offers the suggestion that maybe there is no meaning of life for any of us. Maybe "we are like fruit flies."

Wife Debra moves into the philosophical mode. Perhaps, she thinks aloud, God intends for us to be never knowing the meaning of life but always searching for it.

Leaving the somewhat-less-than-enlightening discussion downstairs, Ray and Debra brace themselves as they enter the daughter’s room, ready to put forth the best answer they could come up with to the question, "Why are we here?" They find the daughter is not in her room. Instead, she is in the room of her two younger (and equally cute) brothers. The three of them are wrestling, rolling, and giggling in childhood innocence. When asked about her question, Alley replies, "What question?" She no longer remembers or cares.

The parents smile, glad they no longer need to answer the question.

As usual, the show was very funny, but it was also something else. It was a picture of modern, suburban Americans who have everything they need, most of what they want, but no clear idea what their lives mean. Take away all the humor, and you find most of the answers current in twenty-first century America to the question "Why are we here?"

Father Frank is the cynic who doesn’t care to think about it. He wants a snack and the TV remote control. Brother Robert is the thoughtful arm-chair philosopher who is lost in his scepticism. Wife Debra is a pragmatist who is mainly concerned with an answer that will "help live life." Even mother Marie, who turns to the Bible, has never taken the time to study the Bible enough to know what it says. To her the Bible is a kind of religious "cook book" that needs a better index. Finally, Raymond is a good American "consumer" of religious products. When you have a question, call "the minister" as you would the telephone repair man.

Raymond’s mother had the right idea. The answer to that question can be found in scripture - but scripture is not a "cook book." It requires time and effort to understand and apply - time and effort seldom given by denizens of American no-time-to-breath culture.

There are a lot of questions we would like to ask Raymond and his family - questions that should be asked in every family. Does everyone go to heaven? Is life just being born, working, and dying? (Is that all there is?) While helping each other is a good idea, is that the only reason we are here? Are we really like fruit flies? Does God not really want us to know why we are here? Is searching for truth but never finding it really a noble ideal?

Only a few generations ago many people could have answered little Alley’s question. That answer would have been along the lines that it pleased God Almighty to create us in His image to worship Him and enjoy Him forever. There are, however, many important "details" to this story, and some of the beauty is in those details.

Raymond’s TV family is a good reflection of the state of our society today. It is as though a "Christian explosion" happened at some time in the past, the echoes of which still linger in our culture. But the sound of that explosion is steadily fading.

Christians have a lot of work to do in our culture. There is a certain amount and kind of happiness floating around our world. Under it all, however, there is a fundamental emptiness and pointlessness in the lives of people who are busily, even desperately, in pursuit of something they-know-not-what. This mixed-up, even strangely and sadly amusing, state of affairs can be seen all around us - even in a very funny sitcom like "Everybody Loves Raymond." It is our calling to fix-up the mix-up, and it’s going to be a big job.