Virtues of omission.

My wife and I just finished watching the first season of the TNT show Leverage on DVD, and we loved it. The premise is a superstar insurance fraud investigator whose own company refused to help save his son’s life who decides to organize a team of thieves to pick up where the law leaves off by running cons on people who abuse others.

Aside from being clever and funny, the concept of a group of misfit criminals who find themselves doing good only because a brilliant leader organizes them is a fascinating analogy for Christianity. But perhaps the thing I love most about it is that it’s clean. There is fighting, but rare bloodshed. There is only the mildest of language, and there’s virtually no sexuality at all.

In fact, in one episode, to portray the character of an addictive person, they showed him coming out of a strip club. And that’s the point. The scene was outside! They declined a gratuitous trip inside a strip club, something which most other shows are eager to include. So, kudos for a show that’s really trying to be better than its competitors.

Virtue is so often about what you omit.