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Across the street, a woman has just watched an episode of the medical drama House. As the credits role, she honestly can't determine who was sicker: the patient or the doctor. Along the way to a diagnosis, Dr. House (played by Hugh Laurie) belittled, bemoaned, and bullied others. He went against orders not just to pursue what he felt was the right medical path, but sometimes just to exhaust his superiors. To top it all off, he popped Vicodin like it was candy to keep a painful, diseased leg in check. But in the end, like every other character in the show itself, she, the viewer, decides to overlook - even laugh at - the poor bedside manners, senseless rebellion, and the drawn-out attempt at suicide. Why? Because House is just so good at what he does.

Next door, a teenager puts in the first disc of the third season of Seinfeld. At some point in the season, everyone in the gang - Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine - is going to have to figure out some way to end a relationship because "she's too ugly" or "he's too boring." And for a teenager who is often thinking about another girl while dating someone else, he's torn: This is awful! This is ingenious! This is actually going to be quite useful!

These three scenarios probably represent what tonight (Tuesday night) is going to look like for a lot of people. Now, you might be troubled by the mere fact that people are actually going to watch this stuff when they get home from work or school or wherever they've been all day. That's a perfectly valid concern. But let's drill deeper and discover something that's of greater concern: the types of external and internal conversations that these shows encourage - conversations that might lead to a fractured lifestyle.

Think about the conversations stirred by The Shield: If the extreme actions of Vic and his team result in the decline of gang warfare, rape, murder, and robbery, are such actions really all that bad? Or 24: In a post-9-11 world, as we clamor for safety, is there a place for torture, for an abandonment of due process to speed things along? Consider House: If 99 percent of medical cases are treatable if discovered as early as possible, what's wrong with a little bullying, a little insubordination, a little substance abuse to kick things into gear? And Seinfeld: Who wants to be in a dead-end relationship? Better to end it now, however you can, then prolong the inevitable, making everything even worse!

Can you see how easy it is to find yourself justifying the means in light of a glorious end? And can you begin to see how such situational ethics, played out again and again to great ends on our television screens, can subtly creep into our everyday lives - even in the life of the church? The influence of these shows is made all the greater when you consider the chief idol of American culture that's second only to sex: the bottom-line. How often have you been encouraged to do whatever it takes to meet and even exceed that line?

I actually don't think some of the creators of these shows have set out to push for our adopting a dark pragmatism. In fact, I think some are making an effort at exposing and dismantling a dark pragmatism. Did you happen to see the final episode of Seinfeld, for example? There is a reason so many people hated the ending - it called them on the carpet for celebrating situational ethics and despicable protagonists. Some of these shows - and even the ones who don't care to - serve as mirrors to trouble us, startle us into change. So perhaps that's exactly what we ought to do with them in our preaching - prop up these cultural texts as mirrors to show the dark world of pragmatism we sometimes call home.