What Can I Say?

  Is there a place for mocking sincere Christians who are doing things that seem stupid to us?  I dunno.  I did that in 1993 and got kicked out of my church group for it.  I'm not convinced it's okay to do it.  I know the power and use of satire and parody, but they're also kinda like crack or steroids or something of that nature.  They can be too much, too heavy-handed, too harsh.

  And yet sometimes people in the bible use them.  And sometimes people in the bible are far harsher than satire or parody is likely to ever be.  So I'm of two minds.  Use responsibly, I guess.  If you make the point in a way that otherwise, it could fairly easily be shrugged off or dismissed, and you make it "stick," then maybe that's good.  

  Mocking a Sunday School pamphlet because the people who made it were so clueless they didn't know the title "Wild Whipped Cream" sounded like porn?  Maybe not the best or gentlest way of making a point about it.  I was raised to assume they wouldn't care or listen to what I had to say, so I did it that way, though it was only to amuse myself and wasn't supposed to get handed around.

  But I was about to experience my second local church upheaval/division, and there was a point no one was getting.  Everyone was getting terribly serious, terribly opinionated, terrible resolute about what was wrong and what had to be done and who was messing up and so on.  Terribly serious.  But kinda arrogant and proud.  "It's really very simple..." they would say, and then they would explain why they were right and the people who were against them were wrong.  What I thought they were missing was that it was all stupid.  Silly. Embarrassing.  Were they getting this?  They didn't look embarrassed.  And I made a YouTube video  (and part two) presenting how stupid the divisions were.  People were mortified to see themselves depicted in this way. This made me suspect maybe it was effective.  I'd like to think it's made people re-examine the whole issue.  

  But I've been trying not to mock any more than I need to lately. Trying to dial down the sarcasm, without any great success.  And right when I'd made a music video called "Because A Christian's What I Am," mocking the stereotypical, black and white, homophobic extreme Republican American evangelicals who were bugging me and who I was sick of being associated with, the Chik-Fil-A thing started.  And it was stupid and embarassing and I felt okay about mocking it.

  And then I made a video called "I Live Alone," which was more mocking me and my bachelor life, adolescence prolonged into middle age because I've got no one depending on me.  And that felt better.

  But then there was Susan Isaacs.  Susan Isaacs is a Hollywood actress.  You have probably never heard of her.  She played John Candy's wife in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, acting alongside him, only to see her role cut and cut until all that remained was her photograph in the final edit.  And she was one of Mallory's friends on Family Ties for a few episodes.  And she's done bit parts on Seinfeld, My Name Is Earl and Parks and Recreation.  But if you blink, you'll miss her.  Mostly she's made odd faces and done funny voices in countless commercials.

  But Don Miller name-checked her while touring his book Blue Like Jazz.  You see, she also had a book.  It was a much more personal work called Angry Conversations With God: A Snarky But Authentic Spiritual Memoir.  It reminded me of Confessions of a Would-Be Husband by Gabriel Heath, who I am close to.  In fact, it reminded me of my own life.

  And I emailed her, as I often email authors when I really like their books.  And she emailed back. And she helped Don Miller out with some lines in the Blue Like Jazz movie.  And she acted for him, and was then cut from the final edit.  He almost cut out his own cameo, in fact, in that scene.
  And then something very interesting happened.  She emailed, said her usual go-to music guy was unavailable, that she was doing a live, one-woman version of Angry Conversations With God, and needed some mock church music.  She sent me some repetitive rhyming lyrics and everything.  Was very specific about what kind of hipster west coast church she wanted it to sound like.  I was unfamiliar, as all I've experienced is Vineyard worship music, which is more draggy than what she wanted.  But I did as she asked.

  I came up with some church music per her instructions, and for a month, it was played as part of a gag in her sold-out shows in a small theatre in Studio City, California.  It was odd.  Just like when I'd recorded an odd little song called "The Vagina Song" after I'd woken up humming it and thought I ought to record it before I forgot it, and emailed it to a couple of local radio stations and it was played on the air on the morning show twice not two hours later, and just like the Church Division cartoon, and just like my video about me living the bachelor life, my serious songs were easily outdone by me making something silly and "in character" rather than honest or straightforward.  A similar thing happened when my editing scenes from Star Wars so Darth Vader's voice was James Earl Jones' audiobook of the bible became so popular that it got the attention of Twentieth Century Fox who got it taken down.  And my Fight Club parody of what tends to go wrong when smart people decide to have bible studies in small groups.
  Once again, what made people feel things and share things and pay attention was me being silly, irreverent, maybe even mocking.  Pondering what lesson is a good one to take from that.