What Is Real About Reality TV? (James A.E. MacLellan)

I was recently listening to a podcast by The Gospel Coalition entitled "Going Deeper with TGC."  The topic was My Top 10 Theology Stories of2013 by Mark Mellinger, as interviewed by Colin Hansen. One of them asked an interesting question in the interview: "What is real about Reality TV?"  That grabbed my attention, because it was meant to be rhetorical.  The answer is nothing!    Reality TV is not real. 

Reality television is a type of program that attempts to show actual events and it seems to usually employ characters that aren't known to be movie stars (although that is not always true).   I read that it started in about the 1990s but by all accounts on my satellite provider's program listing, it is exploding!   In our home we watch such things as restaurant makeovers to Duck Dynasty.  From 'little people' to people with huge families, these shows seem to attract a huge audience – all on the pretense of reality!

So what is reality? The dictionary tells us it’s a noun that is:

1. The quality or state of being actual or true; or
2. That which exists objectively and in fact.

This hunger for reality is a tell-tale sign of the human frustration.  There is a sense where reality escapes all of us.  This quote is attributed to Heraclitus of Ephesus: “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”  Everyone of us and everything in nature is in flux – changing.  There is only one being that is a true being.  As Dr. R.C. Sproul says, "God is being, not becoming, not changing. He is eternally the same. And so we say there’s one being."  We are becoming.  We are changing.  God is always the same.

In that sense there is but one reality in the universe: God. In Exodus 3:11-14 God reveals Himself to be “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh” (I Am who I Am).  "[He] replied, I AM THAT I AM, using the verb to be (Heb hāyāh). It means "I am the One who is" . . . This is also supported by LXX reading: egō ei’mi o‘ ōn. God expressed the unchanging, eternal, self-existence of His being." [1]

God is always "I am".  He is eternal.  He is unchanging.  He can never be better than He was yesterday.  He needs no improvement.  God is the ultimate Reality.

Perhaps the hunger for Reality TV is a hidden passion to find something that is actually true – actually the way it is.  Many today are longing for that reality but don't know where to find it.  The Apostle Paul makes it clear: It is “. . . the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God . . . Jesus Christ as Lord . . ..” (2 Corinthians 4:4–5, ESV)  


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1. KJV Bible Commentary. 1994 (E. E. Hindson & W. M. Kroll, Ed.) (124). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.