Faith is on our side

In a third-season episode of the insanely good TV series Breaking Bad, students at chemistry teacher/ drug lord Walter White’s high school gather in a gym for a post-modern public grief ceremony.

Two airplanes have collided in mid-air above Albuquerque, where the show is set, raining death and debris on citizens and their psyches. School officials, naturally, respond by encouraging the students to express their emotions openly and freely. Well, freely and openly within strict limits.

When one female student wanders into the verboten zone of theodicy and confesses through the microphone to lying awake at night wondering how God could allow such evil to happen, the school principal moves in.

“Honey, let’s keep it secular, please,” she says with swift Stalinist sweetness.