Apparently, the writers of NBC’s hospital drama, ER, are reading their Bible. They liberally seasoned last night’s departure of long-time star, Maura Tierney who played Dr. Abby Lockhart, with lengthy citations from the Book of Job. And although they never identified the source of the moving poetry that was voiced over the dramatic scenes, they did include close ups of Dr. Lockhart packing up the Bible she seems to have kept in her locker all these years. Interesting given that there was never any previous hint of her being a particularly religious person. But that, I suspect, was their point. At least I hope it was.

The Bible doesn’t belong to any one group, and the idea that a seemingly non-religious person would choose to keep one around is quite beautiful. Why should such inspiring material be left exclusively to those attached to a particular faith or church? And what do we even mean when we use word like “religious” and “non-religious”? It seems to me that a world of could would be accomplished by opening up those categories.
Experience teaches me that too often; we use words like “non-religious” to describe differently religious, and “religious” to describe folks who are religious like we are. And the Abby Lockhart’s of the worlds are the victims because they end up not trusting their own deep religiosity because it doesn’t fit into someone else’s box. But I bet that God has a pretty big box, so perhaps we should expand our definitions.
Seems to me, for example, that keeping a Bible around at all times is a pretty religious act, whatever one calls oneself, and that nobody should be able to take that away even if they happen not to approve of how an individual expresses their religiosity. But the writers of last night’s episode did not stop there.

The passages used in the show were those questions which god puts to Job as a way of making him appreciate how much he has not seen and how limited is knowledge. But those same passages were dropped in last night in ways that did just the opposite. They celebrated the experiences of 10 years in the ER at County General, and acknowledged the wisdom that was gained along the way.
God’s questions to Job could be heard as elevating human experience, not minimizing it. They could be understood as a poem celebrating that we, like God, have in fact created and beheld profound things in our lives, and that we should appreciate that fact. Abby experiences the depth and power of her own work, and that is not a path into arrogance or hubris as some religious types fear. Instead, it provides the strength for her to move on to the next stage in her life.
In Hebrew, we would say to the writers of last night episode of ER, yafeh darashtem, you have taught well. Who says we would be better off with less God and religion in the public square? It just depends on what counts as the presence of God and Religion.