I just finished Season 2 of Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage, and somewhere along the way it sent me back to thinking about Young Sheldon and, naturally, The Big Bang Theory. I have always had a soft spot for these shows. My wife has told me for years that I am some strange combination of Sheldon and Leonard, and when we were dating she regularly pointed out how much the two of them reminded her of me. Believe it or not, despite my love of sports and my ability to talk about them far longer than anyone probably wants, there is some truth to that.
I am quite nerdy. It is not unusual for me to find myself reading the Church Fathers and then, not long afterward, reading about Noether’s theorem or papers dealing with Gaussian wave packets. At one point, I even became fascinated with trying to connect the Schrödinger equation with questions surrounding the Christian understanding of creation, the Big Bang, and Genesis. No pun intended. In fact, our Made in the Image Podcast series is formatted in the same vein as a physics podcast called The Cool Worlds Podcast. But I digress.
For those who have been following along, “Almost Christian” is a series examining the spiritual themes found in popular media through the lens of Orthodox Christianity, showing how these works can reflect fragments of truth while falling short of the fullness of the faith. Young Sheldon is especially interesting because it begins as a comedy about a boy who seems to know almost everything and gradually becomes a story about all the things intelligence cannot solve. Beneath the jokes about science, Baptists, Texas, football, and an eccentric child genius is a story about family, pride, sacrifice, forgiveness, faith, suffering, grief, and ultimately death.
The Boy Who Knows Almost Everything
Sheldon Cooper is brilliant. As a child, he understands mathematics and physics at levels that leave many adults completely lost. Yet he routinely fails to understand the person sitting across the dinner table from him. That contrast becomes one of the central truths of Young Sheldon: knowing a great deal about the universe does not necessarily mean that we know how to live within it.
Orthodox Christianity has never treated intelligence as an enemy. The Christian tradition includes some of the greatest thinkers of the ancient world, and the Church Fathers were willing to engage philosophy, science, language, medicine, and the intellectual culture around them. The problem is not knowledge. The problem comes when knowledge becomes separated from humility, love, and wisdom.
St. Paul gives us a sentence that could almost have been written with Sheldon in mind: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” in 1 Corinthians 8:1. Sheldon is often correct, but his correctness becomes a reason to look down upon other people. His greatest moments of growth usually happen when another person forces him to recognize that being correct and loving someone are not always the same thing.
This distinction matters far beyond a television show. Christians can fall into exactly the same temptation. We can know theology, quote Scripture, understand the canons, recognize heresy, win arguments, and still fail to love the person standing in front of us. Truth matters enormously, but the truth is never permission for pride.
Knowledge Is Not the Same Thing as Wisdom
Sheldon does not need to pretend that he is not brilliant. Christian humility is not pretending that our gifts do not exist. Humility means recognizing that every gift we possess has been received and that possessing one extraordinary ability does not make us more valuable than someone else.
That is where Georgie becomes such an important contrast. Sheldon considers himself vastly more intelligent than his brother, and academically he certainly is. Yet as the series develops, Georgie becomes hardworking, entrepreneurial, responsible, loyal, and increasingly willing to sacrifice for Mandy and their child. Sheldon can solve equations Georgie cannot understand, while Georgie learns how to carry responsibilities Sheldon barely notices.
What makes a person valuable?
The Christian answer is not intelligence, education, productivity, athletic ability, wealth, beauty, or success. Human beings possess dignity because they are created in the image and likeness of God. A person with an extraordinary mind is not more human than the person who struggles academically, just as the wealthy person is not more human than the poor.
Missy makes this point in another way. She grows up beside a brother whose abilities consume enormous amounts of the family’s attention, yet she frequently understands people far better than Sheldon does. Sheldon can explain what is happening inside an atom while Missy can often recognize what is happening inside someone’s heart.
Young Sheldon quietly asks us what kind of intelligence actually helps us love. Knowledge is a gift, but gifts find their proper purpose when they become service. The Orthodox Church teaches that what we have received should ultimately be offered back to God and neighbor.
Being right is not enough.
One of Sheldon’s greatest weaknesses is his belief that demonstrating another person’s error settles the matter. He is often technically correct and relationally wrong. He can win an argument while leaving another person embarrassed, frustrated, or wounded.
Christians should recognize this temptation immediately. There is a way to defend the truth that becomes more concerned with victory than salvation. If proving that I am right becomes more important than the person in front of me, something has gone wrong in my heart even if my argument is flawless.
This is why humility is so central to Orthodox spiritual life. St. Isaac the Syrian repeatedly connects spiritual maturity with mercy toward others, while the Desert Fathers constantly warn against judging our neighbor. The spiritually mature person does not become indifferent to truth. He becomes increasingly aware of how easily truth can be used by pride.
A family that keeps showing up.
The Cooper family loves one another without always understanding one another. George struggles to understand Sheldon. Sheldon misunderstands nearly everyone. Mary worries, Missy feels forgotten, Georgie makes mistakes, and Meemaw frequently operates according to her own moral code. Yet again and again, these people inconvenience themselves for one another.
That may be one of the most Christian things about the entire series. Love is inconvenient. Real love costs time, money, sleep, comfort, pride, opportunities, and sometimes the future we had imagined for ourselves.
St. Paul tells Christians to “bear one another’s burdens” in Galatians 6:2. The Cooper family does this imperfectly but constantly. They drive Sheldon places, tolerate his habits, work to provide for one another, forgive failures, endure embarrassment, and return to one another after arguments.
This is also why marriage in the series feels surprisingly real. George and Mary’s marriage contains affection, frustration, disappointment, temptation, exhaustion, disagreement, sacrifice, and forgiveness. Christian marriage is not a guarantee that two people will effortlessly make each other happy. It is a life in which two people receive countless opportunities to repent, forgive, sacrifice, and learn how to love.
The people we misjudge.
George Sr. may be the greatest example of how Young Sheldon complicates our judgment of another person. Viewers who came to the series through The Big Bang Theory already had an impression of Sheldon’s father based largely upon Sheldon’s memories. Young Sheldon gives us the man himself.
George is flawed, but he is also tired, hardworking, worried about money, devoted to his children, and capable of quiet sacrifice. He is not simply the character we might have constructed from someone else’s account of him. He is a person.
That is an important spiritual lesson. We rarely know another person’s whole story. We do not see every private sacrifice, wound, temptation, act of repentance, fear, or burden. Orthodox Christians believe judgment belongs ultimately to God precisely because He sees the human heart in a way we cannot.
George’s ordinary sacrifices matter too. Most people will never perform some spectacular heroic act. Holiness is usually pursued through ordinary faithfulness: going to work, caring for children, keeping promises, forgiving someone again, showing up when tired, praying when distracted, and carrying responsibilities nobody else notices.
When the church gets it wrong.
Religion occupies a strange place in Young Sheldon. Mary Cooper’s Baptist faith is sometimes portrayed as simplistic or fearful, and Pastor Jeff is alternately caring, awkward, inadequate, and self-interested. Christianity becomes the subject of jokes, but the show rarely reduces Mary herself to a joke. Her faith is sincere, and it gives structure and meaning to much of her life.
The painful treatment of the Cooper family surrounding Georgie and Mandy’s pregnancy is particularly important. The community knows that something morally wrong has happened, but moral judgment begins turning into social rejection. Instead of helping wounded people carry the consequences of their choices, religious people can become another burden placed upon them.
The Orthodox Church does not solve this problem by pretending sin does not matter. Sin matters precisely because people matter. But Christians must never confuse condemning sin with disposing of the sinner.
The Gospels repeatedly show Jesus Christ receiving people whose lives were disordered while still calling them to repentance. Truth and mercy are not enemies. A church community should be one of the places where someone can say, “I have made a terrible mess,” and discover people willing to help him repent and begin again.
Repentance looks surprisingly ordinary.
Georgie’s development is one of the strongest examples. The circumstances surrounding Mandy’s pregnancy are messy, but Georgie increasingly responds by accepting responsibility rather than running away from it. He works, provides, remains present, and gradually becomes someone quite different from the immature teenager we first met.
That resembles an important Orthodox understanding of repentance. Repentance is not merely feeling guilty. It is a change of mind and direction that becomes visible in the way we live.
We often imagine redemption as one enormous dramatic moment. More commonly, repentance looks like apologizing, getting up tomorrow, doing what needs to be done, accepting consequences, repairing what can be repaired, and refusing to allow yesterday’s failure to determine tomorrow’s choices.
The Cooper family survives in much the same way. People hurt one another, forgive one another, and return to one another. Forgiveness does not mean pretending nothing happened. It means refusing to allow another person’s worst moment to become the final definition of who that person is.
Sheldon asks questions Christians should not fear.
Sheldon’s arguments with Mary often frame the conflict as science against religion. He wants evidence, explanations, consistency, and certainty. Those are not bad desires, and Christians should not be frightened by sincere questions.
Orthodox Christianity does not require us to choose between studying creation and believing in its Creator. Science can tell us extraordinary things about physical processes, matter, energy, space, time, and the development of the cosmos. Theology asks different questions about meaning, purpose, personhood, sin, communion, and why anything exists at all.
The problem arises when Sheldon assumes that empirical measurement is the only possible path to knowledge. Love cannot be weighed. Beauty cannot be reduced to a formula. Personhood, sacrifice, forgiveness, and holiness are real even though none can be placed under a microscope.
Reason is a tremendous gift, but it has limits. The Christian answer is not to become less rational. It is to recognize that reality is larger than what reason alone can master.
Life refuses to behave like an equation.
Sheldon loves certainty. Rules, schedules, categories, routines, and formulas make the world manageable. If the correct variables are known, there should be an answer.
But family life refuses to cooperate. Marriage problems do not behave like equations. Neither do friendship, poverty, pregnancy, disappointment, growing up, or grief. Sometimes there is no calculation that restores the world to the way we wanted it.
This is part of Sheldon’s gradual education in what it means to be human. He begins as a child who can understand things adults cannot. Yet the adults around him often possess forms of wisdom that cannot be obtained from a textbook.
Christian spiritual life works similarly. We certainly learn doctrine and study Scripture, but Christianity is not finally information about God. It is communion with God. We learn the faith not only by reading but by praying, worshiping, repenting, forgiving, fasting, receiving, suffering, and loving.
When intelligence meets death.
George’s death brings nearly every major theme of Young Sheldon together. Sheldon understands what death is biologically. He possesses enough scientific knowledge to describe what has happened. None of that knowledge can make his father walk back through the door.
His imagined alternate versions of their final interaction are especially painful. Sheldon mentally returns to the moment again and again, imagining different things he could have said or done. Suddenly the boy who always wants another opportunity to correct an error encounters something that cannot be revised.
Grief cannot be solved intellectually. There is no equation that makes the death of someone we love acceptable. Christianity does not answer death merely by explaining why human beings die.
Orthodox Christians call death an enemy. At every funeral, the Church allows us to mourn while simultaneously proclaiming the resurrection of the dead. We do not pretend that separation does not hurt, but neither do we believe the grave has the final claim upon the human person.
Mary’s crisis of faith.
Mary’s response to George’s death is one of the most spiritually interesting parts of the series. The woman who spent years insisting upon faith suddenly finds herself angry, wounded, and unable to make sense of what has happened. Her suffering does not produce an easy religious answer.
Scripture leaves room for this kind of grief. The Psalms contain cries of confusion, anger, abandonment, and sorrow. Biblical faith is not always calm. Sometimes faith looks like refusing to stop speaking to God even when the only words we have are painful ones.
Christians should not demand that grieving people immediately explain their suffering correctly. Job’s friends were at their best when they simply sat beside him. There are moments when presence is more pastoral than explanation.
Mary eventually reaches for faith again, but the experience has changed her. That is often what suffering does. It strips away easy answers and forces us to ask whether our faith is merely an explanation for life or a relationship that can survive when life no longer makes sense.
Sheldon’s baptism and the beginning of love.
Sheldon’s baptism near the end of the series is an unusual scene from an Orthodox perspective. There are obvious sacramental and theological questions surrounding it, and an Orthodox understanding of Baptism is much fuller than the scene presents. Yet something important happens within Sheldon himself.
He does not suddenly abandon his skepticism. He allows himself to be baptized because he recognizes what the moment means to his grieving mother. For perhaps one of the clearest moments in the series, Sheldon deliberately steps outside his own intellectual framework for the sake of another person.
His motive is love rather than argument. For Sheldon, that represents enormous growth. The person who spent so much of his childhood demanding that everyone else accommodate his understanding of the world finally chooses to do something because another person needs him.
That does not make the scene secretly Orthodox, nor does it make Sheldon’s understanding of Baptism Christian. But it reflects a truth Christianity knows well: love calls us beyond ourselves. “Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others,” St. Paul writes in Philippians 2:4.
Where Young Sheldon becomes almost Christian.
The series begins with intelligence but ends with love and grief. Sheldon can explain remarkable things about the universe, yet the deepest realities of his life cannot be reduced to mathematics. Family, sacrifice, forgiveness, personhood, sorrow, and love demand something more.
This is where Young Sheldon becomes “almost Christian.” It recognizes that intelligence alone is insufficient, that pride isolates us, that people are more complicated than our judgments of them, that love is costly, that sinners should not be discarded, and that forgiveness allows relationships to survive failure.
But the show reaches its limit when it reaches death. It can beautifully portray grief, memory, regret, and the terrible absence created when someone we love is gone. What it cannot proclaim on its own is that death itself will be destroyed.
The historic Orthodox Church goes further. Jesus Christ does not merely teach us how to cope with death. Through His death and Resurrection, death is defeated, and human beings are called into eternal communion with God. Memories of those we love are precious, but Christian hope is greater than memory because we await the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.
What the universe is for.
By the end of Young Sheldon, everyone is moving forward. Children grow up. Families change. People leave home. Seasons that once seemed permanent disappear, and the world keeps moving.
That can be frightening, but it is also spiritually useful. Christianity reminds us not to confuse any present season with our permanent home. Everything we possess in this life is ultimately something we are called to receive with gratitude and offer in love.
Orthodox Christianity would never ask Sheldon to become less intelligent. It would ask him to unite intelligence with humility, wisdom, love, and communion. The goal is not to stop asking questions but to become the kind of person whose knowledge serves love rather than pride.
Sheldon spends the series learning that being able to explain the universe is not the same thing as knowing what the universe is for. Christianity does not ask us to choose between truth and love. It teaches us that without love, even the most brilliant understanding of the world remains incomplete.
The invitation of the Church is therefore not simply to think differently but to live differently. Come pray, repent, forgive, receive mercy, bear another person’s burdens, and learn to love within an actual community. The truths we glimpse in stories become something far greater when they are lived within the sacramental life of the Orthodox Church.
If you have a film, television series, song, book, or other work you would like considered for a future installment of “Almost Christian,” you can send your suggestion to me, Fr. Stephen, at frsteve@savannahorthodox.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Young Sheldon a Christian show?
Young Sheldon is not a Christian television series, although Christianity and religious belief play important roles in its story. From an Orthodox perspective, the show contains several themes compatible with Christianity while stopping short of the fullness of the Christian Gospel.
What does Young Sheldon say about faith and science?
The series often creates tension between Sheldon’s scientific skepticism and Mary’s Christian faith. Orthodox Christianity does not regard genuine scientific study and belief in God as natural enemies because they address different dimensions of reality.
Why is George’s death so important in Young Sheldon?
George’s death confronts Sheldon with something his extraordinary intelligence cannot fix or reverse. From a Christian perspective, this exposes the limits of explanation and raises the deeper question of whether death itself can be overcome.
What does Young Sheldon teach about family?
The Cooper family shows that love is often expressed through sacrifice, patience, forgiveness, and simply continuing to show up. Their relationships are imperfect, but their willingness to bear one another’s burdens reflects something deeply compatible with Christian life.
What would Orthodox Christianity say to Sheldon Cooper?
The Orthodox Church would not ask Sheldon to reject science or intelligence. It would call him, as it calls every person, to transform his gifts through humility, wisdom, love, repentance, and communion with God and neighbor.
