Satire

My whole adult life I've wrestled with a specific issue: is it okay to make serious points using satire and sarcasm, or is that just mocking?

   The argument can be made that parts of the bible are very mocking, and quite sarcastic.  The argument can be made that, when God used them, prophets were not only sarcastic, but insulting.  Graphically.  Obscenely.  At length.  With no shortage of phallic and fecal imagery.  In poetic form.  Jesus himself resorted on more than one occasion to name-calling, as did John the Baptist and the apostle Paul.

    And the argument can be made that my generation (the one that brought you The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, Seinfeld, Friends and a host of other shows that pretty much run on sarcasm, simply "speaks satire."  That it's cultural.  That it's how we communicate, and that we understand it very well, so it's how to speak to us.

   Susan Isaacs, in writing Angry Conversations With God has her "God" character say "sarcasm is a viable means of communication."  I have a t-shirt of it. She said I should have one.  I sometimes wear it while teaching.

 

Sanctified Satire

But what about with Christians?  Teens are fluent in sarcasm.  They don't miss a slight or a joke.  But Christians? They don't seem, always, to get satire.  To the point that I sometimes think they're trying not to understand.  They get angry, so they try to pretend I'm being serious, or something.  They did that to kick me out of my church, for example.
   I'm starting to think irony, sarcasm, wordplay or anything fancy at all is not the best way to communicate with Christian people who are doing something obnoxious (despite everything that can be said for advanced use of the English language.)  For example, here is a satirical song that came to me, mocking what I feel are horrible attitudes with which to go off to church and claim to be worshipping God (it sounds like this):

Sunday’s Coming

All week long you’ve been with the others,

Now it’s time to draw away

It’s time to climb up to that higher ground

Far higher than they

To be lifted up by the grace of God

To a place we hope to stay

Sunday’s coming

So it’s time to git Christian.

Sunday’s coming

So it’s time to git Christian

Remember the calling

Get back on the mission

Black and white thinking

Support our position

Sunday’s coming

So it’s time to git Christian

There are things they do that we won’t do

And don’t we not do them well

We live a life that’ll show any average Joe

How to stay right out of Hell

To lay hold of love and liberty

Christ died to the world to give

Then we cast them both down at his feet

And we’re careful (stop)

 not to love and live.

It’s so key we not be confused with them

Be a bright testimony

So we draw apart choose that better part

How bless’d God made us we

And to swear and chew may be fine for you

But we wouldn’t stoop to that

Quite beneath us

In our special position

Praise God, Praise God, Praise Go-ah-ah-od

He made you, and me, and all of us His children

His grace, His Grace, His grace May we live worthy,

Worthy, worthy, worthy of it

Praise God, Praise God, Praise God for our pastor

He’s the bomb, the bomb, the bo-ah-ah-om

And Praise our church, our church, and praise us all for going

And praise us, praise us,

Praise us all for going...

Now, is this nothing more than a nasty, mean-spirited, mockery of sincere Christians who aren't really doing anything wrong, and are in fact just enjoying worshipping God?  The thought has occurred to me.  Or is it a heart crying out, trying desperately to get across the outrage it feels over an all-too-common spirit it finds every bit as repugnant as some would find its own satirical way of expressing itself?  To be clear, in case the satire is missed, I could always decode the satire in the above lyric:

-We should not simply "git Christian" on Sundays.  We are supposed to actually be Christians all the time, and that means being like Jesus Christ, rather than just being church lifeforms, or people with an identifiable lifestyle devoid of certain ritualistically avoided things.
-The attitude of feeling superior to people who smoke and chew tobacco, and who don't worship on Sunday morning is bad.  Really bad.  It's not okay to think you're better than other people, just because you're more of a puritan.  Anyone who judges you for acting like that is merely following in the footsteps of Jesus, who did that first thousands of years ago.

-Modern Western Christianity has largely become about things like how people vote, and about black and white thinking (with which it is impossible to properly read anything half as nuanced and artistic as the bible).  It's about 'taking positions' on everything.  This is bad, and divisive. It makes people extremely one-sided, and unable to connect to others.  In fact, it's about dividing from others, on purpose, and little else.  To feel Christian.  It isn't Christian at all.  It's one of the ways modern people are being kept from even considering Christianity as anything other than some practiced by closed-hearted bigots and simple-minded, superstitious folk.

-Our Christianity should not just be about a bunch of things we don't do.  You can't achieve a positive result, simply by avoiding what you feel are negative things.  Especially if said stuff isn't really negative, but we're just being puritans looking for a way to look different/better than others.  

-People are not saved from Hell by seeing how piously we live. They are saved by knowing Christ. It is extremely possible to live an extremely pious life, but not really be able to help people connect to Christ. It is possible to only have religion on offer, and no relationship with Christ at all. It is possible to not even know those two things are different, though they may well make all the difference in the afterlife.

-An emotional need to feel that we are at all times clearly identifiable as, not merely normal people, but as Christians who live to a higher standard, is ugly, when allowed to peek out.

-Too often, church "worship" songs are songs about singing songs, and about liking singing songs about singing songs.  And that's pretty misleading and futile.  Masturbatory.  Worship songs should be to make God feel something, and not mainly be about us, and what we're doing, or what we believe or think or are feeling.  Worship services should not serve us.  They should not exist to be a "show" for a passive audience.  Certainly, worship songs should not praise us, our pastor, or our church group. If they do, idolatry is occurring.
-We should never try to "Walk worthy" of grace.  That's not what grace is. If we don't know that, we don't know Christ.

That was the serious content of that song. In a much more boring, forgettable form.

But I don't know if this song is a useful vehicle for making those points, or not.  (contact me and tell me what you think?) I'm sure it makes people who already feel the same way laugh at people who don't.  But that's not the point.  I need it to sting.  I need it to make people who should hear these points uncomfortable, and consider them, because they feel them.  I need to wrap them in artistry so they aren't just cold ideas that can be ignored or forgotten.  I need to make them hard to forget or ignore.  That's my job. But is that likely to happen, given what I've wrought?

   I was relieved when a more sincere, much less satirical way of saying the same thing came to me a few days afterward.  I think it's better. It's not funny.  But I don't feel like I have to decode it. It's to God.  Simply saying that, as to worship, we're all told different things and worship in very different ways, and I am painfully aware that I don't have any clue what He likes, so have written Him this worship song about all that (it sounds like this):

I Don’t Know What You Like

I was raised to hang my head in shame

Right on cue, for an hour Sunday morning

And sing songs of pain, and reverent self-blame

So that’s what I did

And I’m used to that

But do you like it all

Or are there things you are more fond of?

Can we reach a point where we’re singing to ourselves?

About how we feel, live and believe

But leave you out

Almost entirely

I don’t know what you like.

No I don’t know

What you like

Went to a church filled with weeping hipster youngsters

Selfying teens, singing songs about them singing

Yea singing songs about liking singing songs

That’s what they did

And I wasn’t feeling that

‘Cause we’ve got songs about sweat and blood and pain,

Debasing death and about our sin and shame

And we’ve got songs about how awesome we are feeling

To gladly surrender our sweet, special lives

I think it's better.  Not satirical.  Susan Isaacs still laughed at the second verse anyway.  But was there ever even a place for the previous song?  Is it, in fact, like an Old Testament prophet cooking bread over a manure fire, and eating it publicly to say to all of Judah, "To God, your worship tastes like crap"?  I really don't know, right now.  Awkward.  I was going to make a video. (of the song.  Not of Ezekiel bread.)