{"id":236,"date":"2009-08-17T14:20:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-17T14:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2009\/08\/the-wire-and-the-reality-of-evil.html"},"modified":"2009-08-17T14:20:00","modified_gmt":"2009-08-17T14:20:00","slug":"the-wire-and-the-reality-of-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/08\/the-wire-and-the-reality-of-evil.html","title":{"rendered":"The Wire and the Reality of Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--StartFragment-->  <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Peter and I watch TV the way other people go to the movies. We watch about once a week, always together. It is always an event. We pick one show at a time. Years ago, it was Survivor. Then The West Wing. Then Lost, interspersed by summer series to make up the long stretches without any new episodes. Last summer we blazed through two seasons of 24. This summer, we started watching The Wire.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The Wire was an HBO series that started in 2002 and was highly acclaimed throughout its five seasons. I heartily endorse it too, but it keeps me up at night. It keeps me up at night because it is very realistic\u2014all the scenes are shot on location and some of the actors are from the streets of Baltimore and it was created by a former reporter from the Baltimore Sun who knew the city inside and out. It is very realistic, and the bad guys are winning.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Lots of shows deal with good and evil. But for the most part, the good guys win. Jack Bauer in 24 dismantles the bomb in the end. The President is saved from assassination. The kidnapped daughter gets rescued. Even when good guys die, I can fall back on the knowledge that this is a heavily fictionalized construction of reality. This isn\u2019t how it really works.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">But The Wire is different. Here, the good guys are few and far between, and they probably aren\u2019t going to make it. It leaves me longing for change. Longing for something, someone, somehow to break into the mess of poverty and drugs and guns and greed and make it all different. It makes me long for God\u2019s presence to be more tangible. And it makes me wonder whether I have avoided the reality of evil for too long. <\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">\n<p>  <!--EndFragment--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Peter and I watch TV the way other people go to the movies. We watch about once a week, always together. It is always an event. We pick one show at a time. Years ago, it was Survivor. Then The West Wing. Then Lost, interspersed by summer series to make up the long stretches without&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-down-syndrome"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Wire and the Reality of Evil - Thin Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/08\/the-wire-and-the-reality-of-evil.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Wire and the Reality of Evil - Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Peter and I watch TV the way other people go to the movies. We watch about once a week, always together. It is always an event. We pick one show at a time. Years ago, it was Survivor. Then The West Wing. Then Lost, interspersed by summer series to make up the long stretches without&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/08\/the-wire-and-the-reality-of-evil.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-08-17T14:20:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"amyjuliabecker\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Wire and the Reality of Evil - Thin Places","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2009\/08\/the-wire-and-the-reality-of-evil.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Wire and the Reality of Evil - Thin Places","og_description":"Peter and I watch TV the way other people go to the movies. 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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}