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On the floor, Channel 4’s cult-based comedy Everyone Else Burns may seem to be a reasonably run-of-the-mill jibe at folks of religion. “Religious folks are bizarre.” Hardly revolutionary stuff in 2023.
But look beneath the posters and there is a far deeper, extra useful exploration of human nature occurring. Everyone Else Burns and, differently, the current movie Apostasy (2017), mirror on scared human beings looking for a way of goal and stability in an unsure world.
The household’s religiosity provides them entry to a neighborhood – in distinction to the stark loneliness of the secondary characters who make up their world.
David, the daddy in Everyone Else Burns, is clearly wonderful at his job however, alas, sees no worth in it in anyway. Instead, his sense of self-worth relies on non secular accomplishment. Compare that to the parable of the pharisee and tax collector in Luke 18 – how a lot true worth does Jesus place on non secular efficiency?
Fiona, the mom, is equally entrepreneurial – a recent image of the industrious spouse of noble character in Proverbs 31 – however her husband has no theology giving him trigger to rejoice her accomplishments.
Their daughter, Rachel, needs to go to college, however her mother and father are afraid she’ll be uncovered to all method of horrible issues and both endanger herself or lose her religion. Aaron, their son, is an inventive genius, however is proscribed to specific non secular imagery. And sure, specific in multiple sense.
The mother and father’ want to shelter their kids from the scary world ‘on the market’ (a noble goal) blinds them to the methods their household is likely to be warping their kids’s means to specific themselves (a tragic consequence).
Yes, reality and goodness matter. Yes, there are some elementary guidelines for a life properly lived. But we’re every created distinctive, with distinctive expertise, wishes, and aspirations. ‘Life in all its fullness’ doesn’t suggest robotic religiosity – it means doing as Jesus would in each sphere of life, from work to review to creativity and past.
Ultimately, the household do love one another and need the very best for one another. It’s simply that the foundations they’re residing by are stifling the relationships they’re residing in. This is not Christianity as Jesus taught it. It’s not the gospel, it is the regulation. Everyone Else Burns provides a piercing critique of what it appears to be like like ‘if we should not have love’ – if our yardstick for the great and godly life is box-ticking legalism.
Yes, non secular folks will be bizarre. But opposite to what you may anticipate, Everyone Else Burns pokes at our compassion and suggests we should not be too fast to sneer.”
Tim Yearsley is Head of Innovation on the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC).
