“What if God was One of Us?”

CBS’s new Friday night show Joan of Arcadia allows us to imagine what singer Joan Osborne’s intriguing theme song asks: “What if God was one of us?” Sixteen-year-old Joan Girardi has moved to a new town with her family. Although her family experiences its share of ups and downs, her life is complicated further when God pays her the occasional visit as an African-American woman, a cute boy her own age, a garbage collector, a young girl and a mime artist. In unpredictable ways God enters her life even though she tells God that she is “not a religious person.”

In some ways Joan of Arcadia offers us predictable TV theology. Institutional religion is passé; there is no particular community of faith. God meets only Joan; faith is purely individualistic. Although God takes an interest in some people’s problems, don’t expect serious counter-cultural prophetic pronouncements.

Still, Joan’s God is a refreshing take on the possibility of incarnation. God delights in surprising Joan. God doesn’t give up on her. God works in and through the ordinary. When Joan asks, “Am I doing what you want?” God replies, “I want you to fulfill your true nature.” Joan’s experience of God-in-the-flesh raises interesting and even important questions for family discussion. And it might even challenge us to consider both how God is present to us and how we participate with God in mending a broken world.

Gordon Matties teaches a course in film and faith at Canadian Mennonite University. His also manages a Movie Theology website.