Badly Broken

This week saw the series finale of the popular series Breaking Bad. Walter White, a high school chemistry teacher turned crystal meth manufacturer finally met his long expected and and well-deserved fate. The series was brilliantly written and acted but was probably too dark and stressful for most church folk. For that reason I thought I would summarize the moral lessons learned from the series and save a few the necessity of watching the series.

1. We are all capable of great evil. We are all badly broken. We sometimes forget that “but for the grace of God” there goes us. It’s popular to believe that most folks are basically good. It just isn’t so. We are all basically sinners, who fall far short of the mark. Think about what the world will be like when the church is removed post-rapture and the restraining power of the Holy Spirit is removed. It’s going to be bad. It’s going to be tribulation.

2. We are all capable of enormous self-deceit. It’s amazing how we can justify bad acts as being performed with good intentions. Walter manufactured life-destroying meth and eventually murdered allegedly to make sure his family was financially secured. He finally admits in the finale, that he did these things because of the way he felt when doing them. It felt good to be bad. We work too much or spend too much time away from family, not for our family’s good, but for ours. We may be fooling ourselves, but we probably aren’t fooling anyone else.

3. Our actions have extended, even if unintended,  consequences. We still cling to the ideas of victimless crimes and “who am I hurting but myself.” What we do affects others. Most importantly, it principally affects those we love and who love us. Every action is a stone tossed into a pond. The ripples go out in every direction and for long distances.

4. Everything eventually comes to light. If you do something often enough and no one notices or finds out, you can begin to believe that you will never be found out. It just isn’t so. There is a judgment day. There is a day of reckoning. 

These are some of the lessons one would learn from watching Breaking Bad. The truth is you could also learn these lessons from reading your bible or just paying attention to life around you. But who does that any more.

Be blessed.

Nick