Before I became a Christian, I believed that religion was a socially functional good whether it was true or not. I believed, with Eric Fromm, that religious myth takes the best of us and transfers it to “God.” We become better people, or at least aspire to be better people. But what we’re believing “in” is not necessarily true.

When I became a Christian, God crashed through all that. He is. Truth matters. We’re broken, and he had to fix us. As John’s gospel maintains:

There was the true Light which, coming into the world, enlightens every man. … And the word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory (John 1:9,14).

Each Advent/Christmas season seems to bring its own “zinger,” a fresh reminder that the gospels tell more than a good story. They tell the One True Story.

My first Christmas as a Christian, the zinger was Handel’s Messiah. The music wasn’t unfamiliar, but the notion that the Bible was a coherent whole was new. And to hear this One True Story sung — well, it resonated with something deep in my soul. I wept through the performance.

This year’s zinger was the rebroadcast of an episode of House, titled “Fetal Position” (from Season 3). For the TV-averse, Gregory House (played by Hugh Laurey) is an über-competent, but über-über-narcissistic surgeon. House is as always right about medicine as he is unfailingly wrong about, well, everything else, from relationships to ethics.

In this episode, House has to weigh the health of a pregnant woman against that of the baby in her womb. It’s not a huge conflict for House, actually, because what’s in her is just a “thing” as far as he is concerned. Studiously and forcefully, he denies the humanity of the unborn, and airily prescribes abortion when the “fetus’s” illness threatens the pregnant woman’s life.

The aspiring mother, Emma, however, would rather die than lose her baby. Against his better judgment, House winds up in the operating room, performing prenatal surgery.

No sooner does he open an incision in Emma’s uterus than the baby reaches out an arm and grabs House’s index finger with a tiny hand. House’s quip, “I just remembered I forgot to TiVo Alien,” fails to mask the revelation that’s just taken place. His eyes tell the tale, as does his thumb as it caresses the tiny hand.

After the (successful) surgery, House visits Emma. She’s amazed, she remarks, that she’s going to be OK.

“What’s amazing is how blonde your baby’s hair is.”

“My baby?”

“Yeah, that thing in your belly that tried to kill you.”

“You’ve never called him a baby before.”

The banter goes on, but House’s eyes betray him again.

Before a final lovely scene of Emma hugging her newborn months later, the penultimate scene has House at home sitting in front of the TV, popping pain-killers. In the background Lucinda Williams’ haunting voice sings “Are You Alright”:

Are you sleeping through the night?
Do you have someone to hold you tight?
Do you have someone to hang out with?
Do you have someone to hug and kiss you,
Hug and kiss you, hug and kiss you?
Are you alright?

As the lyrics unfold, House’s eyes transition from retro-TV images of dinosaurs to his own fingers. He watches his thumb caressing the place where Emma’s boy had reached out of her womb to take hold of his finger.

Out of the womb of Mary, I am reminded, God’s tiny little hand grabs mine.

I can’t not respond. I can’t not return the caress. I can’t call God a myth, a nice idea or a projection of our best hopes for ourselves. I can’t not be grateful that Someone is there, holding tight, hanging out, hugging and kissing.

More to follow …