A House-ism

Okay, so I watch House. My sister and parents are on a House-kick and Sophie got the first two seasons on DVD for her birthday. I'll watch one or two on a day off and my parents watch one every night. There are some golden episodes and some that are odd or stupid. But the good episodes are really good. Well, today I put on a House entitled "House Vs. God."

The episode starts out with a fifteen year-old boy leading some sort of Evangelical church in a healing ceremony. The boy asserts that he has a gift of healing from Jesus Christ. And heals an older woman who can't walk. The boy thanks God and then passes out.

He's taken to the hospital and sent to House and his crew to be diagnosed. The boy tells the crew almost immediately that God speaks to him and says things to them like, "I can tell you are harboring anger towards one of your collegues, etc." Either God really is speaking to him or he is semi-intuitive. Well, they do a number of tests on him and discover that he has a cluster of benign tumors in his brain that cause hallucinations and his symptoms. House wants to remove them surgically basically saying that it's time for the boy to become a normal teenager.

The boy adamantly refuses the surgery saying that God did this for a reason. The boy's father sticks with his son. House finds his best friend, Wilson, a cancer doctor, who is a master manipulator. (House and Wilson have a mock bet that House has to give Wilson a dollar each time a patient thanks him for telling them that they are dying. Wilson is so good that patients thank him for giving them bad news.)So, House asks Wilson to talk to the boy.

I wrote this down because it was really great.

Wilson: Do you think God wants you to die?

Boy: This is the way that the Lord often is with his chosen one's. He gives the most trials to those that He loves most.

Wilson: (Flabbergasted but calm. Bear in mind, he says this slowly and sincerely. Not rudely.) So, you believe that you are a...saint. The way I understand it, one of the hallmarks of a saint is humility. Now someone with true humility would consider the possibility that God hadn't chosen him for that kind of honor. He'd consider the possibility that he just had an illness.

Hmmm...