Desperate times call for desperate measures. If there is one thing that I observed from this week's episode of Breaking Bad is that the main character Walter White (played by Bryan Cranston) is desperate!
Walter is a common chemistry teacher, also working a job at a car wash. He is dissatisfied with life but loves his family. A few days after his fiftieth birthday he discovers he has lung cancer, that will eventually take his life. At this news Walter makes a rash decision to begin "cooking" crystal meth. After doing a ride along during a bust of a meth lab with his brother-in-law who is a DEA agent hooks up with a fromer students and begins cooking crystal meth. This in fact is a desperate measure!
As crazy as this plot is you can see the humanity in Walter's decision. He doesn't do this out of some crazy death wish but a desire to provide for his family in a way that teaching and working at a car wash can't. It goes unsaid but Walter wants to leave his pregnant wife and disabled son with something more than debt and sorrow. He wants to provide for them and he is uses his skills as a chemist to do so.
This show is a commentary on our society, no matter how drastic. Like a said before desperate times call for desperate measures and people all around us have hit a desperate time, in fact our country has hit a desperate time. So waht does that mean for Christians who believe that in the pits of life our way out is Jesus. How do we help and love those who are in desperate times? That is the question that my generation of leaders has to wrestle with. How do we help the Walt White's who are dying and want nothing more but to help provide for their families? How do we point them to the ultimate provider?
