Stuff Christians Like (2 page)

Christians don’t like being funny. If I had a dollar for every time someone told me, “My favorite thing about Christians is that they’re so funny,” I would have to dance in the street for nickels to pay my bills. An abundance of humor or wit or satire is rarely a label Christians have been saddled with as a culture.

At first I thought maybe it was God’s fault, that perhaps in the Old Testament he dropped an elbow of justice on the Israelites or Amalekites or some other “ites” about their joking ways. But the more I read the Bible, the more I realized that God is pro-laughter. My favorite example is Psalm 126: 1 – 3: “When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion, we were like men who dreamed. Our mouths were filled with laughter, which we spat out as fast as we could because Christians aren’t supposed to laugh.” I’m kidding. The verse ends with, “Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’”

The nations saw how good God was because of how much his people were laughing. Wow, that is awesome. So how did we get such a bad reputation of being serious people? I blame Somber Christian Syndrome.

Somber Christian Syndrome (SCS) is a disease that tells you that to be considered a good Christian, you have to be serious all the time. That to really reach people for God’s kingdom, you have to be holy and reverent, and instead of laughing out loud,
you have to quietly remark, “That’s funny. I see the humor in that situation. That’s funny.”

When I started to write
Stuff Christians Like
, I found SCS laced throughout the first chapters. I ended every essay I was writing with a literary call to the altar. Even the goofy ones would start out funny, but then they would eventually work their way around to conclusions that essentially said, “And that’s the reason why you have to accept the blood of Jesus Christ into your soul. Ahhhhhhhaleulah.” (That’s how you spell the way monks sound when they chant. Go ahead and google it. I’ll wait.)

In the midst of my bout with SCS, I ran across a verse in Matthew 6. Jesus says in verse 16, “When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting.”

He’s preaching about people who attempt to look holy, people who disfigure their faces to look more spiritual than other people. Even though that verse is about fasting, I found it very convicting about what I was writing.

Somber Christian Syndrome is all about looking holy, about appearing more spiritual than other people and making everyone think you’re perfect. And that’s what I was doing with my writing. I was trying to force-feed serious insights into every essay so that someone would read the book and say, “By jove, his blog is funny, but this book is drenched in wisdom and holiness. He very well may be the next C. S. Lewis.” Which on a side note, I probably could have been if my publisher hadn’t rejected the original title suggestion for this book,
Stuff Christians Like: The book C. S. Lewis would have written if he had been 40 percent more sarcastic and 100 percent less dead.

What’s the cure for SCS? The verses in Matthew suggest putting oil on your head and washing your face. If that doesn’t work, put some oil on your face and tell people it’s “Sermon Sheen” and that you’re pretending to be a sweaty minister. Sweaty minister material always kills.

One time I went to an R-rated movie with a friend who works at a church. On the way out he noticed two people who knew him. He grabbed me before they recognized us and we hid out until we thought they were gone. Turns out they waited for us in the hall. I didn’t work at a church, so all I had done was commit a regular sin. My friend had broken some sort of church employee, “Never see the movie
Desperado
starring Latin sensation Antonio Banderas” covenant, so I immediately threw him under the bus and said, “It’s embarrassing, really, seeing pastors behave like this. The three of us are all just normal Christians; this guy is a professional. He should be ashamed of himself.” Then I swore for emphasis, but it was one of the okay swears, so it wasn’t that big of a deal.

If you want to become a professional church grumbler, not just some amateur occasionally throwing rocks at the worship service, minister, or other attributes of the church, there’s one key phrase you need to know:

“I’m not being fed.”

This simple complaint—the teaching is lacking, the sermons are thin, the worship music is not uplifting enough, or a million other things that people find inadequate—is the official complaint of church grumblers the world over. If we could figure out a way to monetize it, we could permanently end world poverty. Forget cold fusion; if we could generate energy every time someone says this phrase, we’d be able to break our dependence on foreign oil in about four minutes.

It’s such a perfect thing to say because it deflects any attention away from me, while at the same time creating false humility and making me seem spiritually mature and advanced. “It’s not you, it’s me. I just want to learn. I’m admitting that I am incomplete. I’m hungry for deep, real spiritual teaching. I’m humbly confessing that I’m not getting enough out of church. Please help me get the rich faith-building experiences that I so desperately need.”

Just be careful who you say this to. Pastors are starting to get wily. When people tell my friend, “I’m not being fed,” he replies, “I’m perfectly happy to spoon feed my one-year-old. But if I’m still spoon-feeding him when he’s five, we’ve got a problem. Here’s a fork. Feed yourself.”

For Christians, it’s completely okay to watch R-rated movies, but only if they got that rating because of violence. If they’re rated
R because someone is getting their head cut off or there’s a battle scene that’s so gory, blood splashes on the camera lens, don’t worry. God’s cool with that. However, if the movie is rated R because of sexuality…well, I hope you enjoy your fold-out couch bed in hell. It’s gonna be a hot one, my friend. A hot one, indeed.

I’m not sure where this rule came from, but it’s true. Not only do Christians watch violent R-rated movies, we’ll quote them from the pulpit, build sermon series around them—even show clips from them during service. I call it The
Braveheart
Rule, and my theory is that it’s because of the Old Testament.

Have you ever read any of the Old Testament? It’s hardcore. Samson smashes people in the head with a donkey jawbone. A priest runs a spear through two people having sex. David carries Goliath’s head around like a bowling ball. It’s violent. I think that Christians read that and assume, “Cool. God’s down with some wanton violence. R-rated movies, here we come!”

But if there’s any nudity, if a single nipple makes a cameo at any point, forget it. Throw that piece of nonsense in the trash. That is horrible. We’ll have to wait until they show the edited version on TBS.

You know what I don’t like about fundamentalist Christians? They’re so judgmental. I really don’t like when people do that. Don’t they know we’re supposed to be about love and not judgment? Jesus called us to love him with all our heart and all our mind and all our soul. And to love others! Don’t they get that? It’s about love!

I’m just so sick of their negative attitudes.

They hate dancing too. Did you know that? I’m not making that up or perpetuating a stereotype. They all hate dancing.
They even made a documentary about it one time starring John Lithgow and Hollywood’s Kevin Bacon. Gripping stuff really, but I doubt any fundamentalists saw it because they hate popular culture. Ugh, I can barely stand how judgmental they are.

You know they don’t drink alcohol, right? Oh no, don’t ever offer them a glass of wine or a pint of beer. They’ll throw that right back in your face. That’s kind of a litmus test I use to determine whether you’re a fundamentalist or not. If I suggest we have a glass of red wine and you refuse, then I know. I know exactly what you’re all about and I can read the depths of your spiritual walk just by that simple refusal. You’re a fundamentalist and you’re judgmental.

Sure, I don’t know many fundamentalists personally, because I can’t stand being around people who are judgmental, but I caught a few seconds of a church service on television once. I think it was a church in Texas. Most fundamentalists either live in Texas or are planning to move to Texas at some point in their lives. But even though I haven’t been to a fundamentalist church in, I don’t know, ever, you don’t need to go to one to know what they’re all about. Fire, brimstone, and above all, being judgmental.

Don’t you just hate how judgmental fundamentalists are?

I wish they were more open-minded.

Many Christians reach a point in their small group relationship where they realize, “This isn’t working for me anymore. I need to see other small groups.”

It’s a tricky situation, fraught with unique challenges. Do you take the passive-aggressive route—just stop showing up? Make excuses until eventually they stop calling? Can you skip group without looking like you’re skipping God, because you still love
him
, right? Do you organize a mutiny and try to take other
couples with you? “I can’t keep studying the book of Job. I’m making a break for it; we’re starting a new group and heading to the border of the New Testament. I think we’ve got room for two other people in our car. Three if someone will sit in the way back, but Hank and Stacy aren’t going to be able to make it. Don’t look back. Just run. Run!”

Do you work hard to make
them
want to dump
you
? When you host it at your house, do you serve the most disgusting dessert possible, kidney strawberry pie or blackberry beet pudding? Do you start oversharing at group until eventually they ask you to leave out of awkwardness? “I want to talk about some bowel issues I’m having. Anyone else know what I’m talking about? Bowel issues? Here are some detailed observations I had in the bathroom this morning. I took pictures.” Do you bring your own poetry and tell people, “God laid this fourteen-page poem about the death of my cat on my heart; I’d really like to read it to you tonight. It’s written in Klingon, so it might be a little hard to understand the first time around.”

Do you start seeing other groups on the side? And do you keep your broken group going because you like talking about football with one of the guys and your wife likes the recipes one of the girls gives her? You can find substance elsewhere. Just start small grouping all over town until you find one you like, and once you do, you can dump the old one.

If all else fails, I guess you could just be honest. But that’s only if you don’t know a good recipe for pork pineapple white chocolate chip cookies. People hate those things. Serve a warm plate of those to your small group and it will be over by bite two.

I’m not going to lie to you. I don’t know the exact numbers on this study. There were no Bunsen burners or beakers or statistical
flow models plotting percentage of hate mail sent by satanists vs. percentage of hate mail sent by Christians. But I can say without a doubt that when it comes to the hate mail I’ve had emailed or posted online about things I’ve written, 100 percent of it has not come from satanists and the majority has come from fellow Christians.

That feels backwards. I don’t have any friends who vocally worship satan, to whom I give the middle finger of grammar with a lowercase
s
, but I assume that there’s a lot of hate involved. I have to imagine that when you serve the father of lies there’s a lot of lying and criticism and outright nastiness in all forms. Hate for satanists is kind of like Frisbee for Christians. It’s just something you do when you sign up. And yet the most frustrated, hope-you-fall-in-a-deep-hole-full-of-cougars-on-crystal-meth hate mail I get is from other Christians.

Which makes no sense. After all, love is right there in our bylaws. We’re supposed to love God, love our neighbor, and love ourselves. Pretty simple, but maybe that’s too hard to try all at once.

What if this year we set our sights on something reasonable, like, “Let’s send less hate mail than devil worshippers”? I admit, that might not be the kind of goal you can slap on the bottom of a Thomas Kinkade poster and sell at craft fairs, but at least it’s attainable. I hope.

Dang you, American Apparel! Ten years ago we would have boycotted you back to the Stone Age. Ask Kmart. We would have risen up against your suggestive advertising and probably had a good old-fashioned product bonfire. There would have been billboards and picketing and yelling, but when it comes to you, we can’t muster up a boycott. Your shirts are just so soft and comfortable!

And it’s not like you’re shy about what you do. We know about how you’ve used
Penthouse
magazine covers as décor in your stores. We know that when you realized your anti-sweatshop messaging wasn’t increasing revenue, you made a deliberate decision to sell using sex. In
Fast Company
magazine your CEO, Dov Charney, was honest enough to say, “That’s the problem with the anti-sweatshop movement. You’re not going to get customers walking into stores by asking for mercy and gratitude. If you want to sell something, ethical or otherwise,…appeal to people’s self-interest.”

We tried to dismiss that last part; you can define “self-interest” a lot of different ways, but then the author of that article confirmed our fears:

“Sure, he [the CEO of American Apparel] hoped quality or social consciousness or a distaste for logos would each attract some consumers. But he also hoped that selling a sexed-up version of youth culture to young people would attract others, and hopefully in greater numbers.”
^*

Dang you, American Apparel! I was ready for the boycott, I was, but then the last six T-shirts I got from Christian ministries were printed on American Apparel merchandise, and each one was more comfortable than the last.

Can you at least let us pretend that, when we place an order via cafePress or another printing press, the owner calls you and
lets you know that we’re reaching out to you in love and that our purchase is actually kind of a witnessing tactic? Will you give us that?

If not, please know that when I put on an American Apparel T-shirt I don’t think about the financial support I’m giving a sex-based marketing machine. I think to myself, “I am being
in
this T-shirt, but not
of
this T-shirt.” And dang, it is buttery soft!

Christians sometimes like to feel small, quiet waves of pity for any church that doesn’t have skyrocketing attendance numbers.

That’s why every time my wife and I drive by the small Baptist church near my neighborhood on Sunday mornings on the way to the megachurch we attend, I think: Shouldn’t the camera crew or the guy who runs the laser show be at church by now? The parking lot is empty at 8:00. Granted it only holds about forty cars, but shouldn’t the host team be there already to get the traffic cones set up? Who is going to turn on all the flat screen televisions or get the crane they use for simulcasting the service to other campuses in the right position? Then I remember, that’s right, they don’t have a crane or other campuses.

And then I feel sad for them.