Some Christians try to avoid television shows that promote ideas that are in conflict with Christianity, but I prefer to watch with a theologically critical eye. I guess I like to take on challenges like that, but if you are more inclined to avoid conflicts, that’s fine as well. One popular show these days is called The Good Place, which is in its fourth and final season (I’ll avoid any major spoilers for those who haven’t been watching). The Good Place blatantly rejects Christianity, but I enjoy it, first of all because the comedy is golden, but also because if you watch it critically, you can pick up on what Hollywood thinks about some big questions in life. I wouldn’t be surprised if many have fallen for some false teachings while watching, but if Christians are equipped to watch critically, I think they might be able to understand better why this show is contrary to the Bible and which untruths specifically are being promoted.
I have concluded that The Good Place is a mythology for moralistic therapeutic deism. That’s a mouthful, so first I would like to describe what the show is about, then I will define the terms “mythology” and “moralistic therapeutic deism” to show why The Good Place meets this description.
The Good Place
The show begins with Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) waking up in waiting room and being called into the office of an immortal architect named Michael (Ted Danson). Michael tells her that she has died, but has gone to The Good Place, which is a paradise specifically designed for pleasure. She is matched with a soul mate named Chidi Anagonye (William Jackson Harper), who was an ethics professor in life and is able to provide philosophical insight as the show goes on. In the first episode, it comes out that Eleanor is there by mistake, but in the second episode, Chidi agrees to teach her to become a better person.
As the show goes on, we learn more about the afterlife according to The Good Place. Everyone has a point system to keep track of all the good and bad things that they do in life. Good people go to The Good Place, while bad people go to The Bad Place to be tortured. Then there is The Medium Place for medium people. There is a pantheon of immortal beings that carry out various tasks: architects design Good Places, demons torture people in the bad place, accountants keep track of people’s merit, and artificial intelligence units called “Janet” help with miscellaneous tasks.
Mythology
What is a myth? We often use the word, myth, to describe something that isn’t true, but when we talk about genres of literature, a myth is something bigger. Generally speaking, myths are stories that are not historically factual, but are constructed to express a society’s values. They are often characterized by gods and demigods and often deal with topics like origins or moral conflicts between deities. Examples include the Babylonian creation myth, Enûma Eliš, or the Iliad and Odyssey epics. Interestingly, Satanists and liberals treat the Genesis 1–3 as a myth. Seriously. Read The Satanic Bible and N.T. Wright and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
A mythology is the collected myths of a society. When we talk about Norse Mythology, we aren’t talking about one particular Norse myth, but rather the pantheon of Norse Gods whose characters are developed in multiple stories.
The Good Place fits the description of mythology. It shows the relationships and conflicts between mortals and immortals. It is developed around this grand theme of the afterlife and several related subdoctrines. It is also important that everyone who watches The Good Place knows that it isn’t really an accurate depiction of the afterlife even if it does touch on the big issues in a thoughtful way.
Moralistic Therapeutic Deism
Deism is the belief in a god or gods that do not intervene with the affairs of man. Like a kid winding up a toy car and letting it go across the floor, a god (or gods) created the universe and let it go its course. We are on our own. A moralistic deism submits that we should live according to some sort of moral code in the meantime and a moralistic therapeutic deism use the morals and deism to make people feel good, happy, and secure.
This worldview does not seek to resolve man’s inherent lack of righteousness by imputed righteousness through faith in Christ, nor is it about growth and sanctification of the justified, nor about loving a God who loves us. Instead it is about a subjective well-being for the here and now. Moralistic therapeutic deism has crept into Christianity, hasn’t it? And if we aren’t careful, shows like The Good Place will promote it even further in the Church if we are ill equipped to spot it for what it is… but syncretism is a rant for another post.
Anyhow, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD) is a term that was coined by the sociologists, Christian Smith and Melina Lundquist Denton, to describe the worldview of teenagers in 2005. They summarize it in five points:
1. A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.1
Smith and Denton’s conclusions were based on their 2005 study of American teenagers. If you were between the ages of 13 and 19 in 2005, then in 2019, you are between the ages of 27 and 33. We have to allow for the possibility that there has been some shift in the past 14 years as millennials have moved from teenager status to adult status. We should also consider that the creator of The Good Place, Michael Schur, is a Gen Xer as probably are most contributors to the show.
Regardless, I would tend to think that MTD is not the invention of millennials in their teenage years, but is the outgrowth of something much more deeply rooted in society that extends to the older generation and still carries on to this day. That said, let’s compare the five points of MTD with the ideology presented in The Good Place.
1. A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
The Good Place does not really refer to anyone as “God,” but remember that we are analyzing it as a mythology of MTD, so there is plenty of wiggle room within the confines of the myth genre. The Good Place is more related to the afterlife than creation, so we see more about architects creating paradise than earth.
That humans are being watched over is evident with the meticulous (and goofy) convention of recording human lives on ticker tape. There is also The Book of Dougs, containing a record of the lives of everyone named Doug, which sits in the accounting office where immortals are busy nonstop watching human behavior and calculating who is meritorious enough for The Good Place and who should go to The Medium Place or The Bad Place.
2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
In the opening scene, Eleanor asks which religion was right and Michael answers that “every religion guessed about 5%.” There is a pluralistic aspect, in which anyone can end up in The Good Place regardless of whether he is Christian, Muslim, Hindu, etc., so long as his points add up enough, but on the other hand everyone is still mostly wrong.
One gets the sense that The Good Place offers comfort to its audience, as a collective shortcoming of faith offers an alternative solution: works. Christianity is the complete opposite, as a collective shortcoming of works offers an alternative solution: faith.
Moralistic therapeutic deism, as with many forms of pluralism, seems to offer comfort to all who behave, but what does the Apostle Paul say?
Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up—if in fact the dead do not rise. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. (1 Cor 15:12–19 NKJV)
Moralistic deism may be therapeutic to the non-Christian, but to syncretize it with Christianity is to undermine the Christian’s hope on a fundamental level.
3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
Nobody wants to go to The Bad Place. If you look at those who “should” be there, it is always the ones who are despised, people who have nothing that they should feel good about themselves for. If you look at the kinds of deeds that merit The Good Place, these are things that should make people feel good about themselves.
If you eat vegan, you get 432.04 points. Never discussed veganism unprompted: +9885.55. Began to compose social media post about David Bowie dying then thought “the world doesn’t need to hear my thoughts on David Bowie dying”: +224.19.
Likewise, if you blow your nose by pressing down on one nostril and exhaling, you lose 1.44 points. Stiff a waitress: -6.83. Disturb coral reef with flipper: -53.83. Commit genocide: -433115.25.
The Biblical view of paradise is men glorifying a holy God for eternity. God is the center, not man. In The Good Place, man and his feelings become central. Michael describes The Good Place, “You know the way you feel when you see a picture of two otters holding hands? That’s how you’re going to feel every day.”
4. God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
While the immortals keep close tabs on men, they monitor from a distance and do not want to participate on earth. The only reason that an immortal would go to earth is if there was a serious problem that needed to be resolved. In one episode, some humans tell the immortal, Judge Gen (Maya Rudolph), that the point system is unfair and ask her to go to earth to see how bad it is. After much protesting, she agrees and after a few seconds on earth she returns in disgust of how bad it is.
Biblicists study the Bible to understand God and His plan for the ages and respond with appropriate worship and service of God who is worthy. The MTD mythologists would rather have a pantheon that studies us and comes to help us when we are in trouble. The Bible is God-centered and MTD is man-centered.
By the way, if you ever get the feeling that your church has become too man-centered, you might want to look around for signs of moralistic therapeutic deism.
5. Good people go to heaven when they die.
This is the bottom line of MTD ethics and eschatology. The technical terms of “heaven” and “hell” are downplayed in favor of the more comical Good Place, Bad Place, and Medium Place, but it still focuses on our merits.
I think an honest analysis of our own merits would be far from therapeutic. It is easy to point to Hitler or Stalin and say, “I am better than he is.” But, is it sufficient to compare ourselves to the bad guys? Perhaps a more basic question is, “How can we determine that they are bad unless there is some standard for good?”
The whole moralistic therapeutic deistic philosophy dances around this one problem: if we accept God as the standard of good, then there is no way that we can attain this goodness by our own merit. Fortunately, God offers a way. We naturally lack righteousness, so rather than expecting us to become good, He gives us righteousness contingent on our faith in Christ on the basis of Christ’s work at Calvary.
Conclusion
Moralistic therapeutic deism is America’s worldview and it has worked its way into the church. It is a tough fight if we expect people to go to a single sermon on Sunday and be equipped to defend themselves against the promotions of MTD that will take place from the comfort of their own living rooms. Let’s apply theological discernment when watching television.
By the way, if therapy is what you are looking for, then the Bible has the answers, not moralistic therapeutic deism.
- Christian Smith and Melina Lundquist Denton, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 162–163. Avalaible online here.
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