After reading comments from a couple of my friends that the A&E show Duck Dynasty was their new favorite I found some time last Friday night to view about 4 episodes. Cable is now chock full of reality shows showing real men doing real men stuff in the out-of-doors. There must be almost a dozen alone set in the rugged wilderness or stormy waters of Alaska. DD is filmed in the backwoods and bayous of Louisiana and follows the adventures of the Robertson family - bearded men, loyal women, cute kids - who made it rich by making and selling duck calls and decoys.
That night I woke up at about 4 in the morning with the jarring thought that what I had viewed was really much closer to a TV sitcom like the Beverly Hillbillys than it was to a true reality series. My father was friends with some good old boys who were furniture manufacturers based in North Carolina. He told me that a visit to one of their homes was just like the TV show. After chatting for awhile inside the biggest house on the block with the Mrs. he and Wayne would walk past "the fancy eating table" and take a nice walk around the property where they would find the various alcohol stashes hidden by Wayne. This was Bible Belt country and the women folk didn't believe in the devil's brew so the men folk would hide a jug of moonshine down a well or up in a tree. Then my dad would say; "And do you know what their favorite TV show is?" You guessed it.
I had been thinking about the Duck Dynasty show where Willie, the family CEO, had a meeting with a big chain store buyer. He is running late so he tears out of his mansion, pass the C Ment Pond, clothed in his best camouflage pants and boots, his camo shirt covered by an open white sports jacket, into a waiting helicopter which then takes off and lands in an open clearing in a swamp to pick up his father, the inventor of the Duck Commander duck call and creative genius of the whole lot of Robertsons, who was hunting and dressed in his wet and dirty camouflage outfit (without white sports jacket of course), flying then to the big city where the buyer informs the bearded boys that sales are great and he wants to increase by a factor of 10 the amount of duck calls, decoys, DVD's and clothing he is buying. "When can you fill the order?" "Tomorrow!" Willie assures the man (pan to shot of the father scratching his beard and rolling his eyes). Big order in hand Willie flies back to his huge warehouse/factory to tell the laid back bearded family and bearded backwoods friends that they now need to "automate", which they do with the typical Robertson mindset - it will be silly, it will be fun, in the end everyone will be Happy, Happy, Happy.
The Robertsons are real people with real beards who are making a lot of real money selling their hunting related stuff from the Bayous of Louisiana. Although it's my opinion that most of the situations the show films are actually scripted and edited, the Robertson philosophy of life is so strong and so genuine that everything they do seems believable. Each episode ends with the whole family sitting around the dinner table while a blessing is given, thanking God for all He has given. This does happen in their real life and although the producers edit out the "in Jesus name" ending of grace, mainstream America fills in the blanks and understands that this is a faith based family. That's why I find it a little disturbing that the A&E producers feel a need to edit out the "In Jesus name" phrase at the end of grace while trying to, by creative editing, make it appear that the straight laced family will swear from time to time in their misguided effort to appeal to the part of the country that wouldn't know where in a gun you would load a shot gun shell into.
In real life the beards lasted only through duck season but when the family posted their adventures on U Tube sales of their hunting products increased. A&E made it into a cable show and the beards stayed year round. In real life the family finances were quite modest until sales of the Duck Commander took off, but their faith was always solid. It turns out that most of the boys have been active for years in leading people to come to know Jesus as their personal Savior and Lord. I bet A&E won't pick that one up unless they can edit in a money hungry, Elmer Gantry type evangelist.
So anyway, when one wakes up at 4 in the morning in shock the neural connections start firing off in one's brain making it almost impossible to lapse back into that dark oblivion. I start thinking about the difference between believing fiction and discovering reality and, like the ghost of Christmas pass I see myself as an 8 year old talking to my mother while she is doing laundry. I asked her if there was really an Easter Bunny and she told me the truth. It took me about an hour before this thought occurred to me - 'If the Easter Bunny is fake then maybe I need to rethink this Santa thing'.
At least my revelation came a lot sooner than it did for a certain guy I know. Dan was the oldest of 12 children and was defending the truth of Santa to other classmates when he was in 8th grade. I mean, why would his parents lie about something like that? Needless to say he was horrible embarrassed when he found out the real deal. In 9th grade Dan entered a seminary located on a 200 acre wooded estate near the shoreline of Lake Michigan in nearby Saugatuck to train for the Catholic priesthood. He stayed with the other seminarians at the former estate manor house for a few years until his father died and he left the priesthood training because his family needed him.
The stay did provide Dan with a great story to tell any girls he was now happy to date. At night they would drive the back roads to the edge of the old estate. As they got out to walk Dan would start telling them a seminary story about "The Mellon Heads". It seems that many years ago the original owner had kept wild animals in special stone pits scattered throughout the property. Dan assured the girls that the animals were long gone but there was a local family whose children became afflicted with water on the brain. They eventually went "feral" and were known to roam those woods. After sharing a beer while walking around one of the old stone pits they would inevitably hear something in the woods and would have to run as fast as they could back to the car to escape the Mellon Heads.
Reality or fiction - Sometimes it takes awhile to figure it out. I read today that 56% of Americans under the age of 26 believe that the Bible teaches the same spiritual truths as all other religions. The article goes on to say that "people find it increasingly acceptable to define truth by their own standards. Right and wrong become a matter of personal conviction." The result is something that I've heard expressed twice in the last 2 days. A large portion of our youth that have come out of a church background have chosen to believe a negative picture of Christianity. The world beats hard on that drum and our kids learn the dance.
The great news is that The Holy Spirit has been finding a new generation of lost souls who have been brought back to the truth by finding a living Savior. They understand the walk and the talk of their peers and are learning the unchanging and eternal truths of the Word of God. These young men and women are being equipped to share the hope and joy and peace that only Jesus can provide.
Praise the Lord. Santa Clause is just a story but Jesus Christ is my glory!
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