Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work.

I'm Jensen Holt McNair. There are a number of television shows that I've started, gotten invested in, and then had to quit at some point because they got too dark.

The characters devolved so rapidly into chaos and evil that I truly couldn't stand to watch it.

One show that I did push through was Breaking Bad. My husband loves the show and wanted me to see it,

which is really the only reason why I stayed strong.

But it was no different than the other shows. If you're not familiar with it, it tells the

story of a high school science teacher, with frankly, like a sad, normal life, who finds out

that he's going to die from cancer. In an effort to leave behind a legacy and money for his family,

he begins creating and selling meth. The man at the end of the television series is not

the same one from the outside. His choices, the paths he walked, the violence that he chose,

the lies he told, all drove him further and further

into evil, until he's almost unrecognizable, willing to kill for his own gain. If his intentions

were maybe noble at first, his motives are deeply selfish and tainted by evil at the end.

Now, I'm not the first to make the comparison to shows like Breaking Bad and the narrative that we

follow along in the Book of Judges. That's because we're not going to find a happy ending here.

The author isn't interested in one. He is interested in showing

bluntly and boldly the effects of our choices and where they can lead us. He doesn't want us

running at the first sign of darkness saying, we can't handle that sort of thing. He wants us to

lean in, to not glorify the violence, to not be excited

by it, but to mourn it, maybe to even be repulsed by it, to see it as a warning. A reminder of

the evil that we're all capable of, even a gentle high school science teacher or the chosen

people of God can devolve into chaotic and

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