(Disclaimer: If you are easily offended, don’t read this post. If you disregard this warning and read it anyway and are offended by the content, for Pete’s sake don’t leave a comment saying you are offended. I warned you!)
OMG! I watched GCB on ABC and I’m still LMAO.
I think I’ve finally found a TV show that I can commit to. I’ve been at a loss for something good to watch ever since E.R. went off the air in 2009.
Preview clips of GCB intrigued me so I wrote the first episodes’ time and date on sticky notes and stuck them on my TV and refrigerator door so I wouldn’t forget to watch.
GCB the TV show is based loosely on GCB the book, written by Dallas native Kim Gatlin and published in 2008. The book is actually titled Good Christian Bitches, a title too controversial and rude for polite company. That explains the acronym.
I’ve known some GCB in real life and I wanted to see if the comedy/drama got the characters right.
Like all good satire, GCB was silly, ridiculous and over the top. And like all good satire, it took an inkling of truth and made a caricature of our human faults and foibles. I LOLed all the way through it.
I didn’t know what a GCB was until I was in my 30s and moved to “THE (mid-sized) CITY”. I grew up in rural Texas and lived first in the country, then later in a small town. The women I knew worked too hard and had too much integrity and grace to gossip unmercifully and stab their neighbors and friends in the back.
They were GCW…Good Christian Women. They were women who stood steadfastly on the Rock of their beliefs. They were more inclined toward quietly and actively living their faith than talking about it. They were infinitely more likely to go to their closet and pray rather than making a public spectacle of it.
Imagine my shock when I first met a true GCB. Call me sheltered. Call me a hick. Call me whatever name describes someone gullible enough to expect people who make a big deal out of being of the Christian faith to actually follow the tenets of their religion.
Having grown up and lived among GCW, I was flabbergasted by the GCB. GCB were women who readily backed up their questionable actions by quoting Bible verses out of context, saying “I’ll pray for you” and tossing an air kiss.
One particular GCB from my past stands out. She owned a health agency in the early 1990s when those types of agencies were cropping up all over and when Medicare fraud abounded.
On the desk of this GCB sat a Bible and on the wall behind her desk hung a cross and a picture of a blonde, blue-eyed, Nordic-looking Jesus. Her office walls were tastefully decorated with plaques embellished with inspirational sayings and Bible verses.
She claimed a personal relationship with Jesus. She dropped the names of the Father and His Son regularly in conversation. She was a master at manipulating any situation by freely using Bible verses out of context.
I’m pretty sure she belonged to the highly popular Christian sect of Pick & Choose What Verse to Use.
At my employment interview she emphasized that her company was faith-based and Christian. That didn’t sound too bad to me. I considered myself a Christian, having met most of the requirements.
Based on her description of her company and my prior experience with GCW, I expected her to be honest and follow fair business practices with a little bit of extra niceness thrown in.
Sadly, my expectations went unfulfilled.
The woman “suggested” that at 8:00 a.m. each day, we employees meet for prayer. At that time she led us in “prayer requests” that consisted of approximately 45 minutes of smack-talking our clients and competing agencies. Then for 5 minutes or so, she “prayed” and beseeched the Lord to make her Christian business profitable. She did serve pastries and that was good.
Although I knew the verse about where two or more are gathered in His name, I thought those meetings a total waste of time. After sitting through a couple of them and being pumped for gossipy details about my clients, I began to doubt. I was fairly certain that we weren’t gathering in His name for any legitimate reason.
I didn’t even feel guilty when I quit going to the “optional” prayer gatherings. I had better things to do…like my job of finding social services to help my clients.
I worked there only 3 months before I found the real reason for all that beseeching. I arrived at work on a frosty Friday morning to find a few agitated colleagues standing outside the office while others returned to their cars and drove away.
There were chains and padlocks on the outside of the building. And there were federal agents on the inside of it. They were busy seizing the assets of the GCB due to non-payment of payroll taxes and other discrepancies in the bookkeeping system.
One lone employee was delegated the duty of relaying the bad news. It was payday, but he wasn’t passing out paychecks. He was handing out printed prayer requests from the owner to please pray for her and to please continue to serve our clients for gratis.
In her plea for our free services to keep her fraudulent business going, she added an inspirational Bible verse from The Gospel of John. It talked about hired hands fleeing because they cared nothing for the sheep and a true shepherd staying with his flock no matter what.
When I headed back home, I stopped by the employment office. I prayed that she had been paying her unemployment taxes.
In her picking and choosing, the GCB had overlooked two significant pieces of Biblical advice that could have kept her business afloat. One was the suggestion from Jesus to render unto Caesar that which is due Caesar.
The other was from James 5:4, “Behold the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.” Or the ears of the Treasury Department and the IRS, which usually exacts vengeance faster than God.
I know, I know…judge not lest ye also be judged. But I think it’s pretty safe to say that my former employer was a GCB. While there’s that verse about judging, there’s also Proverbs 8:32 that says: “Pay attention, my children!”
After a few more run-ins with GCB, I finally learned to identify them from 50 paces and to turn and run when I see one. Sometimes they travel in packs.When you see a whole pack…run faster.
Watching GCB on ABC last Sunday evening was entertaining and I LMAO. I’ll probably watch the next episode this week, if I remember.
I’m not a professional TV critic, but I can say one thing about the show for sure.
Watching GCB on TV is much funnier than watching GCB in real life.
