Psalm 62.

One of the results of too much free time was that I went back to Netflix to watch season 3 of “The Good Place.” The show is a comedy about the afterlife, but it is packed with clever observations of human nature and existential questions about our nature.

One of my favorite characters, Michael, is a demon who is now attached to a bunch of humans and who is very intrigued by human life. He frequently makes remarks about how fascinating humans are, mostly in an ironic way. In am attempt to plead with the judge of the universe to give four humans another chance to prove they can be good, he says to her:
“humans think they are making one choice, but they’re actually making dozens of choices they don’t even know they’re making.”

The judge another eternal being who’s never been to earth refuses his logic but upon his insistence, she goes to the earth to experience what humans do and how they live, and she comes back troubled: “Oh, brother, that was rough! Sheesh! Earth is mess y’all!”

In two short statements, two fictional characters summarize the state of our being and especially the current times we’re living in.

The choices we make today matter. And the choices we’ve made in the past have led us to where we were. We know that all of earth is a mess right now, but now we have the chance to start over. Humans are realizing that if they continue to live for themselves they will destroy themselves. They have to stick together if they wanted to survive.

Sadly, some will survive this crisis but others will not. Because earth IS a mess and because many will continue to make choices they don’t even know they’re making.

The show would have been perfect for me if God was somewhere in the picture. The designer of the afterlife plan keeps trying and trying to find ways to save the four humans but he fails every time. I wonder if that is the show’s implicit way to say: without God it is not possible. That’s the way I choose to interpret it! The Psalmist says in Ps 62: “My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from the Lord.”

Friends, until our race learns to trust God on our future, and let go of our tight grip over everything, in the words of Michael, we will continue to “do the most human thing of all: attempt something futile with a ton of unearned confidence and fail spectacularly!“

My hope and prayers are that we do not attempt to do it alone.