What We Learned from “The Office”: Pt. 3

Religion (and a Lot Else) is Misunderstood

It was going to be a big party with my friends to watch the Season 4 premiere. I had just gotten married and my wife and I had just moved for grad school and found a new group of friends and fellow Office fans. And the Season 3 finale really left us wondering if Jim and Pam were finally getting together. But we were a bit worried, because the preview synopsis indicated that there’d be a tour of all the characters’ respective religions. In our hopes to have a laughing good time like we had come to expect, might we be encountering some sad sacrilege instead?

Turns out, not at all. There wasn’t much talk, positive of negative, about religion. So it remained misunderstood. Such is a sad reality of our culture that it reflects.

Up until that episode, the only appearance of religion was in the character of Angela, a caricature of uber-conservative  Christianity, most similar to a first century Pharisee. Likely from a somewhat Amish background, Angela mostly wore clothes made for life-size colonial dolls and vehemently disavowed most forms of pop culture and general happiness. Her seeming cold and heartless (and hypocritical) personality maintained a front against all hostile and gracious attempts against it (save for her dozens of cats) until her short-changing and scandalous  divorce from the state senator broke her, and she warned Andy Bernard to not “let pride destroy his life.”   

Toby was a seminary dropout who rushed into a marriage that ended in a messy divorce. Occasionally, you see patience and grace in his role in Human Resources and the handling/counseling of Michael’s issues and his personally insulting and oppressive behavior. However, Toby struggled for years to forgive his ex-wife (and God, who doesn’t deserve the blame), and we slowly see the pent-up bitterness spill out as melancholy resignation. I’ve met a few Tobys in my life.

Stanley Hudson is a twice-divorced unbelieving Catholic. Kelly Kapoor comes from a Hindu family and worships the shallowest parts of pop culture. Phyllis Vance is a nominal Lutheran who married a Unitarian. Oscar Martinez refrained from saying “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance and, more than likely, disagrees with most churches’ stances on politics and sexuality.

Aside from these occasional and random caricatures and mentions of religion, the biggest interaction happens when Jim and Pam (also nominal Christians, at best) have their daughter get christened, likely in Pam’s childhood church. The entire office attends the Sunday morning service at the traditional and liturgical sanctuary, and gets accidentally invited (along with the rest of the attending congregation) to Jim and Pam’s families’ private reception.  The office workers meet a group of congregants about to head off to an impoverished part of Mexico to build a school. It’s in this experience where we see each character interact with the notion of a church and its mission.

The idea of a Mexico missions trip seems very implausible, to say the least, to the office workers. Ryan mocks their abstinence from alcohol, and Kevin and Stanley are only frustrated about the food they haven’t been able to eat, due to the unexpected guests. Michael wants to see similar community and charity in the office and chides his workers for their mockery. He and Andy then want to join the community and its charitable mission to Mexico and hop on the bus, but both realize quickly they can’t make that type of disciplined self-sacrifice.

That episode seemingly showed the Truth, teachings, community, charity and even flaws of the Church in a sad-but-accurate implausible light, but it also seemed to purposely show the sad reality of the ethnocentricism, narrow-mindedness, materialism and self-centeredness pervasive in a culture that struggles to understand or accept the Church. As the culture and Church continue to grow apart while living together, impractical tensions and unnecessary scuffles can be prevented with more honest, humble and gracious conversation. Sadly, we don’t see that much in The Office, also when it comes to issues of race, sexuality, politics, culture, etc.

And that’s sadly because we don’t see such honest, humble and gracious conversations that much in society. There ought to be more gentle talk and less angry yelling, or else Michael Scott’s level of knowledge and wisdom when it comes to very common personal issues will likely become the norm. 

Next (and Lastly): All Relationships Can End in Grace