Today’s TV Isn’t Christians’ Reality

If God existed, would he allow TV programs like “The Bachelor” and “The Bachelorette”?

Would a loving God force us (yes, against our will) to watch Trista tell America that she might be falling in love with two people she barely knows and then, two weeks later, dispatch one and accept a wedding proposal from the other? Would he make us listen while she told Charlie she needed the freedom to be intimate with Ryan before she could decide between the two?

We’ll save those theological conundrums for another day.

For now, let’s dwell on a question posed in a recent edition of Christianity Today magazine -- namely, “Would a Christian ‘Bachelorette’ Be Different?”

“I would hope it would be,” says Justin Sogoian, a pastor at Mariners Church in Irvine who directs a program for people in their 20s.

“I was watching ‘The Bachelorette’ last night as they did kind of a recap,” Sogoian says, “and there were the immorality type of things that you hope would be different, like the girl [being intimate] with a couple of the guys.... I would hope they wouldn’t do things like that in the Christian world.”

I assumed incorrectly that Sogoian, 29 and married, hadn’t spent much time thinking about TV’s “reality” shows. To the contrary, he says, he and friends mused recently about how they’d run such a show. Ultimately, they couldn’t justify the inevitable rejection that participants feel.

“We didn’t want them to feel devalued by not being selected and to feel like a lesser person,” especially, Sogoian says, when the rejections come on the basis of so little information.

TV has no such qualms. To the networks, the only thing better than a woman sizing up 20 guys in a month is rejecting 19 of them and marrying the 20th.

That mentality may have spawned another article last year in Christianity Today, headlined “Why Aren’t Christians Dating?”

Since Sogoian had three single men in their 20s in his office as we talked, I threw the question to them. “I think the dating scene is really great if you’re not a Christian,” says 22-year-old Rob Schneider, “because this is one of the most immoral times our country has ever seen. If you’re dating just to be dating, it’s easy to do that. If you’re a Christian and you want to be part of that, it’s really tough because you have a moral conflict with your own soul.”

Because dating is much less enjoyable when done with a conflicted soul (except on TV), that might explain the reader responses in the magazine.

“I have many jumbled thoughts about it,” wrote one woman. “I don’t think we should be out there getting in romance after romance and looking for love in all the wrong places. But as a single girl who’s been waiting for a man to move toward her while she satisfies herself in the Lord ... I’m beginning to feel like I could be waiting forever!”

Other explanations echoed what you’d hear in the secular world, such as differing expectations between men and women and the overemphasis on looks. But committed people of faith often have the added element of meeting someone who shares their religious beliefs.

Schneider is looking for a wife but doesn’t expect to find her on a TV show. “That’s like telling your kids, ‘I met your mother in a bar.’ ”

Many fathers today no doubt finesse that story a bit, but Schneider wouldn’t. Because faith is paramount in his life, he says, “if the girl doesn’t match that level of passion and commitment, what are you going to talk about 30 years down the road?”

TV shows don’t worry about stuff like that, which is probably why we won’t soon be seeing “The Christian Bachelorette.”

Still, who knows? As we’ve seen with the current proliferation of “reality” TV, the Lord moves in mysterious ways.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.