What the church can learn from pop culture

A couple weeks ago James Durbin's loss on American Idol nearly broke Twitter; he was a front runner who also happens to have Asperger and Tourette syndromes. Celebrity Apprentice had Marlee Matlin and her intepreter (who I really, really wish had been female, because it's disconcerting to have the communication of a woman expressed with a male voice). On Oprah, a guy with cerebral palsy named Zach Anner won his own show on her new network. Parenthood, which I've never watched, has a character named Max with Asperger syndrome. I'm one of about three people in the US who doesn't watch Glee, but I have loved seeing the positive reception of Lauren Potter's character; Lauren has Down syndrome. Bones, a show I do watch faithfully, has candidly and artfully handled the complex issue of an expectant couple who knows that they have a one in four chance that their baby is blind during this season. While it was cancelled before it really began, Paul Reiser's show made some headlines by casting Brock Waidmann, an actor who uses a wheelchair due to spina bifida and agenesis of the corpus callosum, to play a character who uses a wheelchair. And, of course, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition regularly features families with at least one member with special needs.

I have read many blogs and articles exalting all this as an indication that pop culture becoming more accepting of people with disabilities.

So, church, what are you doing? Are you really going to let pop culture do a better job of embracing those created by God than we do?

I didn't think so. Let's step it up.