“Jesus Does Stand-Up,” and Other Satires: Parables, Pictures, and Parodies for Today's Church
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The satires target an entire herd of sacred cows, making fun of areas of discipleship or Christian living such as prayer, evangelism, worship, mission activity, and social justice issues. Several entries skewer the church's tendency to trivialize our faith or the holiness of God, or our obsession with our culture's emphasis on efficiency and individual fulfillment.
The entries range from parodies of familiar hymns, including one that looks at Jesus as our friend on Facebook, to an exploration of the dilemma facing Donald Trump as he decides which member of the Trinity to fire. Others describe a group of cheerleaders rehearsing for Jesus' second coming, explain why Jesus couldn't be hired for a church's child-care job, and record Lazarus' difficulty in convincing his HMO that he was raised from the dead.
The result allows Christians to laugh, or sometimes squirm, at these commentaries on the pressures of the consumerist, individualistic, and even narcissistic culture in which Western believers find themselves. Neither Christian conservatives nor progressives are spared.
The intent of the entries, however, is never mean spirited. Collectively, these satires offer a corrective or warning, prodding the church and Christians to be the distinctive, counter-cultural presence and witness that God calls us to be.
Gordon S. Jackson
Gordon S. Jackson teaches journalism at Whitworth University, in Spokane, Washington. He has compiled five books of quotations on topics ranging from leadership to travel, and written two other books: a scholarly study on the press in South Africa, and a guide to knowing God's will.
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“Jesus Does Stand-Up,” and Other Satires - Gordon S. Jackson
Jesus Does Stand-Up,
and Other Satires
Parables, Pictures, and Parodies for Today’s Church
Gordon S. Jackson
18435.pngJesus Does Stand-Up,
and Other Satires
Parables, Pictures, and Parodies for Today’s Church
Copyright © 2010 Gordon S. Jackson. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.
Resource Publications
An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers
199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3
Eugene, OR 97401
www.wipfandstock.com
ISBN 13: 978-1-60899-038-2
EISBN 13: 978-1-4982-7198-1
Manufactured in the U.S.A.
All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
For Dan Vaughan
Acknowledgments
I am indebted to various people for their help in bringing this volume to fruition. Foremost among them are my family, Sue, Sarah and Matthew, for their encouragement and especially for their critiques and suggestions.
I am also grateful to the following friends and colleagues for their feedback on drafts of the manuscript: Jim Edwards, Jeff and Beryl Haschick, Dave and Jan Hicks, Jeff O’Connor, Greg Orwig, Fiona Pollifax, Ron Pyle, Colin Storm, Janelle Thayer, Steve Watts, and Ginny Whitehouse.
But more important still is the need to thank those saints who have somehow remained immune to the less-than-Christian conduct or values that are spoofed in this book. These rare individuals provided the motivation for this book by showing the rest of us that we too can live lives worthy of the One who has called us.
Introduction
They sought the world, and it fled them not.
—John Knox (1505–1572),on certain pastors of his day
If humor, as someone has said, is God’s aspirin, then satire must be His penicillin or even steroids: far stronger medicine, to be taken with caution. Satire is a risky business at the best of times. When it dares to tread upon sacred turf, however, that risk increases exponentially.
This book assumes that risk is worth taking, for two reasons. One is that God sometimes uses humor to help His people see their weaknesses and foibles in a way that sermons or Bible studies might not. The second is that at least some Christians have enough of a sense of humor, and are mature enough in their faith, that they’re able to risk looking in a mirror—a mirror that won’t always yield flattering images.
For instead of being soothingly reader friendly, this collection of parables, pictures and parodies about the contemporary church is meant to be provocative. I expect that some of these pieces will annoy or even anger some readers. To the extent that you respond that way because of my failure to make my point, I’m sorry.
On the other hand, it may be that some pieces in this collection can fill the same corrective or warning role that God provides for his people throughout scripture. At times, such as when Jesus spoke scathingly of the religious authorities of his day, the message was blunt and painful. Thus, as you read the vignettes in this volume, you too may encounter truths that hit closer to home than you like. If, as the saying goes, the shoe fits,
you’re invited to take away whatever lessons you can to help you become a more faithful and God-pleasing member of Christ’s church. If the shoe doesn’t fit, keep trying others. For I suspect that all but the most saintly in our midst have a lesson or two to learn from the ideas presented here. To the extent that we do, we will be asking, in John Knox’s words, whether as Christians we have sought the world and it has fled us not
—and, with that heightened awareness, what God would have us do next. (And in case it isn’t apparent from the context, be assured that with rare exceptions all churches, organizations and individuals referred to in these entries are fictitious. The exceptions are obvious historical or living characters, such as Queen Elizabeth II, or organizations like universities that are referred to purely to make a satirical point. Otherwise, any resemblance to real persons or organizations is purely coincidental.)
This book seeks to make two simple yet uncomfortable points. The first is that the Western church, particularly in the United States, lives out its life and calling in an often unfriendly, even hostile culture. The second is that the Western church has at the same time increasingly allowed itself to be contaminated, infiltrated and compromised by its host culture.
The first point is no surprise. Throughout history, the church of Christ has always faced forces that sought to deflect it from its mission. Even when the church played a dominant role in the West, becoming the official religion throughout Europe and, unofficially, the dominant religion in the United States as well, it constantly faced political and other compromises to its integrity and authenticity. Quite how Christians and the church should relate to the culture in which they find themselves has, of course, been the subject of much argument and debate throughout Christendom’s history.
But regardless of how Christians ought to relate to their culture, most of us would agree that the West’s post-Christian, secularized cultural climate is increasingly unwelcoming of, or even actively hostile to, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Assuming that is correct, however, doesn’t give Christians any excuses for where they find themselves today. This book’s second point, that the contemporary Western church has allowed itself to be unduly contaminated by its host culture, is no surprise either. Here too, the church has throughout its history needed to resist the seductions of every culture it has encountered—sometimes with greater success, sometimes with less. This book flows from the conviction that the contemporary Western church, whether in Europe or North America, is in serious danger of succumbing to the lures, temptations and pressures of its host culture, so much so that it is in danger of forsaking aspects of its Christ-given mandate of being his agent where he has placed it.
Far from interacting with our cultural milieu thoughtfully and selectively, we have either been uncertain on how or what to resist, or easily succumbed to inviting seemingly innocent but ultimately unbiblical values into our lives and our churches, values like materialism, individualism and an