Why Leave It To Beaver Is No Better Than Hell on Wheels
As an Evangelical Christian, it’s pretty easy to criticize modern TV programs.
A show like Two And a Half Men (even before Charlie Sheen was replaced) is an easy target because of its sophomoric but degraded sexual “humor.”
“Darker” shows like Hell on Wheels or Breaking Bad, whether they’re aware of it or not, clearly depict depravity and the inevitable results of our fall into sin. 
Those shows are a commercial for our need for grace.
But of course, grace is nowhere to be found in Hell on Wheels or Breaking Bad. Instead, we find evil with no remedy. Sin without redemption.
But I Don’t Yearn for the Good Ole’ Days
As an Evangelical Christian, it’s pretty easy to think, “Oh, for the good old days of television!”
I suppose from a shallow perspective that might be true. I mean, I enjoy a good episode of “wholesome” TV as much as the next person.
Just contrast 30 minutes of Leave It to Beaver with 30 raunchy minutes of … well … pick most any current “situation comedy” and you get my drift.
But as much as I like Leave It to Beaver or The Andy Griffith Show or The Dick Van Dyke Show, they all leave out something vital. In fact, they leave out the vital element.
It’s true of “old-fashion” dramas, too, be it Mannix or Marcus Welby, M.D. They, too, miss the point.
Missing Grace
Whereas great literature from the past, such as Les Miserables is infused with grace, TV—classic and modern—is missing grace.
Les Miserables is dark. It’s not naïve. It paints sin with bold colors and sin’s consequences with dark hues.
But Les Miserables doesn’t miss grace. It is a commercial for grace. It is a primer for our need for grace—our common human, desperate need for grace.
Not so modern TV. And, not so classic TV. The Beave’s problems were solved by morality, not by grace. Andy solved Barney’s problems in a 23-minute morality tale, not with any sense of Christ-dependence.
A Morality Tale, An Immorality Tale, and a Grace Tale
The Old Testament is Hell on Wheels with a clear message that We Need a Savior! The Old Testament is not a morality tale. It is an immorality tale with a longing for grace—for a Redeemer. The Old Testament points us to the grace narrative of the New Testament.
Breaking Bad is an immorality tale…but the producers, writers, and director point us nowhere—but to despair.
Leave It to Beaver was a morality tale where the producers, writers, and director pointed us somewhere—to ourselves! 
In fact, Leave It to Beaver may be more dangerous than Hell on Wheels! At least with the latter our sinfulness is clear. With the former, the subtle message is that we are basically good, but just need a little help to draw it out and fix ourselves up.
We Need Grace Story-Tellers
We need messages and images, stories and narratives that point us to a grace tale. The Bible is an immorality tale that points us to a grace narrative.
The “in” focus today in preaching and ministry is to be “gospel-centered.” I’m all in with that! We don’t need preaching and teaching that become little more than Leave It to Beaver lite—pointing our hearers to works and self-effort.
However, we also need to raise and equip a generation of artists, musicians, writers, actors, producers, and directors who can produce material that points people to their desperate need for grace.
We don’t need Christians who go into the “arts” and simply end up producing shallow, throw-back 1950s-ish morality tales.
We need Christians going into the arts, not being of the world, but speaking a grace-theme to the world.
What would that look like?
It might be even darker than Breaking Bad or Hell on Wheels. But the darkness would point to humanity’s desperate need for light—the light of Christ’s gospel of grace.
Join the Conversation
What do you think, is Leave It to Beaver subtly just as much a non-Christian message as Breaking Bad?
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I’ve not seen Breaking Bad or any of the other shows you mentioned, but I’m aware of them. I just don’t watch much TV.
I do think Beaver is just as bad. I watched an episode with my daughters, just to show them a TV show in black and white, and to fill in the gap of a cultural reference. We were appalled to see both boys engaged in a very deceptive act, and the laugh track was supporting it. Their mother had told them to take a bath before getting ready for bed. They filled the tub, sloshed their fingers in it, and messed up the towels, all the while discussing something that happened at school. In that, we saw evil being laughingly supported, winked at. It made the need for grace completely absent.
i guess i have a different view perhaps from my bitterness, however being an african american i always thought those shows really ironic because was it not during that time when mainstream americans where leaving it to Beaver we couldnt go to the same water fountain? that’s why you are right, its easy to say hell on wheels is bad, but the hyprocrisy is that apart from Christ we are all Hell on Wheels..yes..Beaver too. We only see him in the family but is he participating in segreation as well. Or not saying anything to his parents about it. Was Beaver down with MLK, that posty image was truly not something that made me think about the ‘good ole days’ b/c for my family they were not ‘good ole days’ its very ironic. It takes someone else very often to show us our own sin. I am a registered republican howeverChrist has no party but my goodness i think people marvel at the hypocrisy we can present and say we represent God. At least Hell on wheels is honest, sometimes its the appearance of righteousness we need to guard ourselves from more just my thoughts .
I think we’re in total agreement that those were not the “good ole days.” I happened, in this particular post, to emphasize one aspect of “The Beave’s” failure to represent well Gospel truth. I’ve written in other places, including my book, Beyond the Suffering: Embracing the Legacy of African American Soul Care, about the historic American sin of racism and prejudice.
again this is simply my experience and helps me to see that what one man can look on as the idyllic circumstance, which may be but someone else may see something else, or has a different take. I guess i was saying it is important to not only judge by appearance. Hell on WHEELS may showcase terrible violence but maybe he takes care of his wife LOL. God is very interested in my heart. when losing everything recently i looked back on my prosperity and thought i was doing well, but my heart was far away from God. So i may have not in actuality been ‘doing so well’ now i live with HELL on WHEELS but i have to say i am much more forgiving and have mercy more than i ever have. i agree that tv shows back then were SHOWED less sin perhaps which is a great thing. Which is indeed a good thing, but its little about race and much about our nature as humans. So i agree its about Christ not the outer.
Thank you for this post, Bob. I couldn’t agree more with you.
To pile on, I grew up watching Leave It To Beaver and Andy Griffith re-runs, and believed the message that everyone is fundamentally good if we learn all the right things to do. This belief led my heart to despair, becasue I failed over and over, and lived in anxious secrets and sin and guilt — but always strived to white-knuckle willpower myself into being good. It was impossible to do in my heart, so I settled for striving to APPEAR good.
It was a message not just of guiding moral principles, but a very specific recipe that was unattainable. One of its worst effects is the “good ole days” nastalgia — the wish to return to an idealized paradise that seems to have been real, but in reality never existed.
I also grew up watching Star Trek, with its similar message that once we someday remove all the shackles of need and poverty and limited resources, we can realize our human potential through technology to be altruistic and fix all our problems.
I walked down the aisle at 7 years old to accept Christ in a small baptist church, and soon returned to a Bible-belt behavioralistic moralistic life. This is NOT Christianity. It IS a fake world, where we carry perfectly-airbrushed cardboard cutouts of ourselves to hide ourselves behind, judging ourselves and others by appearance, proud of our standing and reputation as good people, comparing ourselves to “worse” people, fundamentally believing that God is on our side because we are “on his team.” Fundamentally believing that God even owes us for the times we chose difficult morality over easy immoral gain, or to stand up for our political or religious beliefs.
Many young adults grew up on the ugly private side of their parents’ cardboard facades, where their parents REALLY were. They had a front row seat watching olympics-grade hypocrisy. And if they’ve been told this is what being a Christian is, they want no part of Christianity.
When I went to college, God broke into my life and heart in a very real way, and convicted me — and at first when I realized what horrible sin I was capable of, how helpless and blind I was — I didn’t want to live any more. I was so messed up. My pride in myself was shattered, and the truth I saw about myself so disappointed me that my quest to feel good about myself was hopelessly lost forever. I truly couldn’t imagine how I’d go on.
But then Jesus. Jesus showed me he already knew all that. I felt Him. I saw what He had done and how because of Him, God forgave me. Yes I am hopeless on my own, and will always be, but I can hide under the covering of Christ, and I am His.
At least Breaking Bad and Hell on Wheels represent half the truth! They paint the darkness of our driving pride, and the low, low depths to which we are capable of sinking. When you look at the corrupted men of History — the Hitlers, Stalins, and Moas — Breaking Bad rings so very true. This is the state of our desperate world of selfish hard people — and everyone is capable of sinking — at a heartbeat.
Our Christian artists cannot go out expecting the world to like their message. Jesus — the person — is the answer to brokenness and sin, and those who do not know Him or see that will never appreciate his multifaceted beauty. But as in Lewis and Tolkien, let stories and metaphors show evil as evil, nobility as fragile and conflicted, and good as a transcendant interceding personality that intervenes just when all appears lost.
Great insights that powerfully illustrate this post.
Bob, thanks for your response. I would have posted on your blog, but couldn’t find the link for comments. You do make very good points and I understand where you are coming from. However, what is truth? Is your views truth? Are my views truth? Maybe both are truth, but at the same time neither are truth. My point is that we can sit and disect & be critical of every moment of the past, but unless we learn from it so that we can change the present or future, it does no good. I grew up in a family and church that taught me to love everyone and that everyone had a right to share there thoughts and feelings. I wish that our world was such that when people expressed themselves and their thoughts and feelings, that we truly listened instead of being so defensive that we never hear what the other is saying. We never have to agree, God has us all on different journeys, and different places in our lives, but we all need to show grace and listen. Many children in the 50’s & 60’s watched the shows you mentioned and learned valuable family values. As you have suggested many also watched, but saw lies and deceit. We can choose to only see the negative if that’s what we want, or we can be influenced by the positives, and take the negatives and improve lives. I personally think as a society, determined by what is on TV, and the moral fiber of the world today, that we haven’t learned anything from the past. And in my opinion very few shows today carry the values that I DID see in Andy Griffith and Leave It To Beaver. Thanks for giving all us a place to share our voice, even though it might differ from others.
Beth, Always great to interact. Of course, in a blog post about Tv and the arts, our beliefs are not inerrant. But my conviction would be that many aspects of 50s and 60s TV, though on the service “cute” and “family-friendly,” when looked at more deeply, were not honoring to Christ. For example, Andy frequently lied and schemed to make Barney not feel like a bumbling loser. Instead, a Christian approach would be speaking the truth in love. Also, Andy/Mayberry and the Beave in Mayfield were lilly White–how offensive would that be African Americans and how honoring to Christ? All that then is added to in my blog: the lack of any focus on our desperate need for Christ’s grace, rather than human effort/work/self-sufficiency. Bob
Bob, I appreciate your article and the subject you’ve brought forth. Of the two particular television programs listed in your title, I am only familiar with Leave It To Beaver. On that show, even though the message of grace was not brought up, our omnipotent God was mentioned. Joe Connelly and Bob Mosher, the series’ creators, producers and chief writers, had June Cleaver speak to Beaver about God’s omniscience and omnipresence in the 34th episode of the 1st season titled “Beaver’s Bad Day.” In the episode titled “Beaver and Kenneth,” the 12th episode of the 4th season, written by John Whedon under the supervision of Connelly and Mosher, June explained to Beaver that God watches him at all times and bad actions hurt God. So, even though June was a compulsive fretter and the Cleaver boys showed an alarming lack of good sense by continually falling for the shenanigans of their friends, can they at least be given credit for these two prominent discussions about God?
Stephanie, I’d be glad to give them credit for two episodes out of how many (100s?). And I don’t say that to “bad-mouth” “Leave It to Beaver.” It’s an entertaining comedy that I still enjoy from time to time to this day. However, I do not watch it naively. I understand that much of the show–the vast majority of the show, moves forward day after day, episode after episode, without any reference for or need for God. And even the two mentions that you note, seem less about grace, and more about a scowling God of judgment and not grace.
Bob, you are right in noting that the Leave It To Beaver characters rarely spoke about God or made use of their many opportunities to mention our need for Him. Yet, God was taken seriously enough that the following conversations occurred on the show, both times in a soft, heart-to-heart manner.
June Cleaver: ..and anyway, even when you think you’re getting away with it, God
knows you’re lying.
Beaver Cleaver: How?
June: Oh, because God knows everything. He sees everything.
Beaver: Right through the roof?
June: Right through the roof.
Beaver: Right through the ceiling?
June: Right through the ceiling.
Beaver: Would he see me if I hid in my closet?
June: Yes, Beaver. You see, God is everywhere…
From: “Beaver’s Bad Day” Season, 1 Episode 34 Original air date: 6/14/58 CBS Television
June: Well, Beaver, I just hope you realize that wherever you go or whatever you do, there’s always somebody watching you.
Beaver: Sure, mom. You watch me or Dad watches me. While I’m at school, the teacher watches me. And when I go to the movies, the ushers watch me.
June: No, Beaver, I mean somebody else.
Beaver: Gee, mom. Do you mean like God?
June: Mm hmm. And Beaver, if you do something bad, you’re going to hurt Him.
Beaver: I wouldn’t wanna do anything to hurt God. He’s got enough trouble with the Russians and all.
June: Well, Beaver, I just hope you never will.
Beaver: Oh, sure, mom.
From: “Beaver and Kenneth” Season 4, Episode 12 Original air date: 12/17/60 ABC Television
In light of the fact that most programs make fun of God and make fun of the people who love the Lord and take the Bible seriously, can you also perhaps see in the above scenes a mother lovingly talking to her son about a heavenly Father who is always with his children. June Cleaver speaks of God as a Father in heaven who never leaves us alone and who is attached to our actions.
I can certainly see, though, how the conversations might make it seem like she’s pointing to a God who is sternly watching and judging. So, please, if possible, view the episodes for yourself on YouTube, Nextflix, or whenever they air on television. I also have the clip from “Beaver’s Bad Day” on my blog: biblecategorizer.blogspot.com. I’m hoping that perhaps you will see even a smidgen of what I saw when I watched those two episodes. Thanks.