Theology of The Office: Natural Reason and Divine Revelation, explained by Dwight and Michael

Out of our favorite shows of all time, The Office is arguably in the top 3. It’s a little silly to think of how much of our marriage over the last ten years has involved dialogue from this show. Countless disagreements have been illuminated by one of us declaring, “This is like that time when Jim said that thing to Pam…!” Or, “I feel like when Kelly did [x]…” Memes and quotes from The Office have been a glue of a shared worldview for us to communicate and understand each other in ways that are completely hilarious. This show has legitimately helped us be better friends and partners to each other.

So of course when we came to the person of Jesus Christ, one of the first ways we started trying to understanding Scripture and the teachings of the Church were to analyze them through the light of our favorite moments from The Office. Our new shared language, the truth of the Gospel, made all our old knowledge and communication come alive in ways that we could never have anticipated. Funny shows are funnier. Affectionate moments are filled with even more depth and love. All the media we consume increases in meaning, and we can clearly identify both the deepest truths as well as glaring moral flaws in the messages and storylines.

So anyway, we still talk about The Office all the time, but always rooted in the illuminative glory of the Lord’s revelations of truth and love. This particular clip about Dwight and Michael is such a small snippet of our daily insights into our faith, but it is my deepest delight to share this way of understanding natural reason and divine revelation. We hope you enjoy this dive into how Michael’s Secret Santa gift idea to Dwight is such a great way to understand how God’s communication to the human creature both requires, honors, and elevates our rational nature and capacity to reason! (side note: I’ve always felt that Dwight’s brilliance doesn’t get its due, so hopefully this video corrects some of that longstanding error.)