Y'all Bow Please - Faith Returns to TV

For some reason I get asked a lot by people I know "Are the Duck Dynasty guys are really Christian?" Now personally I don't know the Robertson family, but I wish I did. From what I've seen of the Robertson's they have everything that I've dreamed about: loving family, tons of land to hunt and camp in, and a rock steady unshakeable faith in Jesus Christ. Having been raised RCC the faith was something I had to learn on my own, but having  spent many of my formative years growing up in the woods I can identify with their redneck ways. Although Louisiana appears to have much more tasty critters than upstate NY, and hardly anyone calls someone with a "Buflo Noo Yawk" accent a redneck, a redneck I am and will always be. 

Now I'm not fit to judge the depths of anyone's Christian faith, but I can Google nearly any subject into submission so I think my friends are asking me about the Robertsons for this reason. Personally I don't watch "Reality Television" because; 1. It's not reality and 2. It's stupid. But from what I saw on the internet I just had to take a peak at what was going on in West Monroe LA. 

The first time I saw Duck Dynasty I actually came into it at the end of the show. I saw the whole Robertson family along with friends gathered around a long table heaping with food and the family patriarch, Phil Robertson, at the head. Phil started his prayer

"Y'all bow please... Father, thank you for the good food, thank you for our children, thank you for loving us and saving us through your son Jesus." 

I was immediately hooked. I was in tears at not only the beautiful simplicity of his heartfelt prayer, but the fact that his sweet prayer said it all; thank You for blessing us with our children, thank You for blessing us with sustenance, and thank You for loving us and for saving us through Jesus. Being a leading advocate of short heartfelt prayers to me this prayer was perfect. My second thought was "How on earth did this get past the A&E's censors?" I later found out that in the first season it didn't. The self appointed protectors of society at A&E culled references of Jesus from the show to "protect us" from hearing such mention. Phil had a special prayer for the crew that had a hand in editing out Jesus' name from his prayers during the first season:

"Father, thank you for the good food, thank you for our children, thank you for loving us and saving us. And I pray that you give these people that are filming us time to repent before you burn them for not using your name in a prayer." 

When Phil prays it's a no-holds barred prayer, and now Jesus is no longer persona non grata on A&E. But this was not the first conflict they had with A&E, during the first two episodes A&E bleeped a few words here and there with the sole intent of making it look like two characters swore. The Robertsons let A&E know that they do not swear and they do not appreciate being painted as someone who would. There hasn't been a bleep for any reason ever since.

The Robertson family is made up of Phil and his wife of 50 years Miss Kay, sons Alan, Jase, Willy, and Jep, and their wives, Phil's brother Si, and a myriad of of rambunctious, rowdy, happy grandchildren along with friends and employees who all have found salvation in the loving arms of Jesus. Each one has a testimony, and each one has an unshakeable faith in God and family. The show actually centers around Willy, the third eldest boy, but the one that had the business savvy to take Phil's little family business/hobby of building duck calls and grow it into the multi million dollar business that it is today. The Robertsons went from dirt poor a few years ago to multimillionaires by selling 600,000 duck calls a year along with decoys made of swamp wood, buck calls, and other forms of top end hunting equipment and apparel along with three television shows: Duck Commander and Buck Commander on the Outdoor channel and Duck Dynasty on A&E. 

Don't get the idea that these are just a bunch of dumb rednecks that just got lucky, with the exception of Uncle Si all of the Robertson men have college degrees, Willy's being in Business and Sales. Grandpa Phil was an all-star quarterback with NFL potential when he played for for Louisiana Tech and for two years his backup quarterback was Terry Bradshaw, Phil ended up with a bachelors degree in physical education and a masters degree in education.

While they do a good job making Uncle Si look like a burnt out bachelor one term Vietnam draftee, Si actually spent 25 years in the US Army (which is an advanced education in itself) and has been married to his bride, Christine, for 43 years and has 2 children and 8 grandchildren. Like the rest of the Robertson clan Si's faith in God is his anchor:

"That's what got me through 65 years of life. My belief in God and what He's done for us and what He will do for us. That's a lot of the problems now. Look a lot of people don't believe there's evil. If there's good in this world, then you're being intellectually dishonest, if you believe there's a good power you've also got to believe there's an evil power too. There are physical laws that are in place. We've got the physical world we see but there's a microscopic world that you have to have special stuff to see, just because you don't see it with your naked eye doesn't mean it doesn't exist."

It was this faith that kept Phil and Miss Kay together for 50 years. No, their marriage hasn't been perfect, in fact they both will admit that it nearly blew up in their faces. Phil was drinking and operating a honky-tonk and he admits that it was his lack of faith that nearly destroyed them. He says he was into sex, drugs, and rock and roll and he threw his wife and children out of the house. His sister showed up with a preacher to try to preach to him and Phil ran that preacher off, and as he said “The devil had me by the throat and I didn’t even know it.” But a year later he heard the Gospel of Jesus and decided to change his life. One day he went to Miss Kay and begged her to take him back, which she did, under the condition that he stop drinking, get rid of his old friends, and receive the Lord, which he did.

“The rarest commodity in the world is peace of mind,” says Phil “And you can only find that through Jesus Christ.” And Phil takes an active hand in spreading that peace of mind, preaching when ever he can and baptizing anyone who asks. To date he has baptized more than 300 people

Detractors of the show call Duck Dynasty a "sex drenched" reality show, but in reality the only sex mentioned on the show is between Phil and Miss Kay. Personally I don't think a couple getting a little frisky, sharing some double entendre, and having a little wink wink nudge nudge behind the grandkids backs after 50 years of marriage anything but admirable. And some of their euphemisms are adorable, my favorite is "honey on the biscuit".

Personally I really like this show, the gentle loving taunts the brothers throw at each other are nearly as priceless as the remarks that emit from Si without warning: "These hands are legal weapons" and "You can't spell 'squirrel' without si, and that's me" and "Ford F150, Chevy Silverado, Dodge Ram, Toyota Tundra. As a married man these are the only pickup lines I am allowed to use," and "I sting like a butterfly and punch like a flea" and "I am the MacGyver of cooking. If you bring me a piece of bread, cabbage, coconut, mustard greens, pigs feet, pine cones, and woodpecker, I'll make you a good chicken pot pie."

For his own part Phil's mission is to get his generation to repent. He firmly believes that most of the nations troubles are because we have turned away from Jesus and to sin, and a lot of it he blames on his own generation.

I'm going to have to agree.