The McCollumn - 3/16: " 'GCB' hits close to home"

This spring, ABC debuted a new primetime drama entitled “GCB,” a melodrama focused on the main character’s return to her hometown of Dallas and having to face the music with all the other women she wronged and tortured in high school, women who now seem to be pillars and strong Christians in their local church.

The show’s title refers to those seemingly kind Christian women, as the show’s name during its development phase was “Good Christian B****es.”

For all the controversy the show has garnered from religious groups and organizations over its name and its depictions of churchgoers, one is tempted to ask the question:

“Are you mad because it hits too close to home?”

While I find the show’s farcical and hyperbolic plotlines and antics to be more than a bit over-the-top at times, I can’t help but think the show’s producers did manage to capture some truths about a subset of some churchgoers.

I’ve been in the pews and heard Opelika’s own good Christian women start to snarl and tear into others around them.

I’ve heard women delight in playing fashion police with the other parishioners, and have heard phrases like “tacky ho” and “skank chic” been used in describing the outfits and general demeanors of their victims.

Woe be unto you if you be a member of the famed Christmas and Easter Club, for, lo, your attendance at only the highest of holy days will surely set their jaws to motoring for tens of minutes.

No secret is too juicy not to be shared; no gobbet or factoid will go unturned if you happen to fall to the wrath of “gli Scorpioni Cristiani,” the ‘Christian’ Scorpions.

And, beware, they don’t limit their behaviors to just the church pew. You aren’t immune from their gaze from scorn anywhere in the community: not the grocery store, the movie theatre or even awaiting for primary elections results at the old Johnson Galleries’ building.

These people seem to only want to go to church in order to see and be seen, completely oblivious to the fact that what the religion they claim to love preaches ideals of forgiveness, kindness and tolerance.

If these folks read their Bibles as much as they loved their time “sharing and caring” (the Southern manners-infused way of saying “gossiping”), maybe they’d remember the opening verses of Matthew 7:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

I’m not attempting to paint every churchgoer as a rigid, judgmental and embittered person. I’m not talking about true believers here, and I think y’all know that.

But, to me, these women are to true Christians what Al Qaeda is to true Muslims: a wicked perversion and complete misunderstanding of what should be a peaceful faith.

Beware il Scorpioni, folks, and try as best you can to escape them and their poisons.

We all deserve better.

**Author's note: As people of faith, we ought to spend more time building one another up and encouraging one another. The world is already filled with enough negativity and anger; we don't need "Christian" people adding to that mess.