This is the forty-ninth installment in the Sacrilegious Humor series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a comedy bit that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please email me the name of the bit or a link to it.
Today’s comedy bit is by Just For Laughs Gags.
One Texas lawmaker is trying to make no-fault divorce no more in the Lone Star State.
Texas State Rep. Matt Krause of Ft. Worth filed a bill that would effectively disallow divorce on the grounds of “insupportability,” meaning no-fault divorces.
Currently “all 50 states offer some type of no-fault divorce, (and) in 17 states and the District of Columbia, you can only file for divorce on no-fault grounds,” said a KXAN-TV news story.
Meanwhile, evidence shows that a majority of divorces in Texas are filed on no-fault grounds, and Krause believes this policy will lead to a decline in divorce and family breakdown.
“I think people have seen the negative effects of divorce and the breakdown of the family for a long time. I think this could go some way in reversing that trend,” he said.
….
Currently, Texas offers six categories of fault-based divorces, including: “adultery, cruelty, abandonment and a felony conviction, living apart for at least three years or confinement to a mental hospital.” Krause said the bill would establish “some type of due process. There needs to be some kind of mechanism to where that other spouse has a defense.”
The idea of re-introducing fault is not about assigning blame as much as it is about treating divorce more seriously and substantively. Krause cited a Heritage Foundation report that said, “A recent University of Texas study of divorced spouses found that only a third of them felt that they had done enough to try to save their marriage. Moreover, children of divorce disproportionately suffer from such maladies as depression, compromised health, childhood sexual abuse, arrests and addiction.”
Whether or not the bill ever becomes law, the policy idea itself raises some important issues for Christians to consider. As Christians, we understand the devastating effects of divorce and have seen it in our own families, neighborhoods, churches and communities.
If we are perfectly honest, we will admit that divorce has become all too commonplace and convenient. We further recognize that “God hates divorce” (Malachi 2:16) and that, according to Jesus, it was because of the hardness of their hearts, that God permitted divorces among the Israelites, “but it was not this way from the beginning” (Matt. 19:8).
Even though Jesus and the Apostle Paul have outlined some limited Scriptural grounds for divorce, we have institutionalized divorce in a way that would have shocked Paul. We also have lost sight of the fact that divorce is a tragic step. To that end, churches should not leave it to politicians to address runaway divorce and family breakdown.
— Brian Hobbs, The Baptist Messenger, Conventional Thinking: Ex-es in Texas, No More?, January 13, 2017
When people come to the church office asking for money, I ask them where they went to church on Sunday. If they name another church, I tell them to go ask that church for money. If you have an account at Bank of America, you don’t walk into Wells Fargo asking to make a withdrawal. The truth is, most of these people don’t go to church anywhere, and there are certain criteria in the Bible about who we are supposed to help.
“For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” 2 Thessalonians 3:10
“Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” James 1:27
“As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.” Galatians 6:10
Our first priority should be members of our church who have a genuine need, especially the widows and the fatherless. Even the widows have to meet certain criteria as outlined in 1 Timothy Chapter 5.
The Bible does not teach that we should give away free money to every drug addict and whore that shows up on a Tuesday asking for money. These people have despised God’s commandments, despised chastity, and despised the institution of marriage. They are wasting what little money they have on lottery tickets, cigarettes, and worse. They go from church to church asking for money yet lack the character it takes to show up and even sit through one church service.
….
These lazy bums don’t want to hear what the Bible says, but they want God’s money. They want to use our church as an ATM machine when they don’t even have an account here. If you can’t stand the Bible and can’t stand preaching, then you should go somewhere else looking for money instead of a church.
With all of the government programs and charities available, people in the United States are not financially destitute. If they were really that hungry, they would be willing to sit through the service. These people need spiritual help more than financial help, but unfortunately, most of them are not interested in hearing the Word of God.
— Steven Anderson, Lazy Bums Wanting Money From Our Church, January 13, 2017
Kids today are growing up in a compulsively connected world. Information is incessant, smartphones are ubiquitous, and with a click or a tap young people have 24/7 access to a never-ending digital conversation.
Of course, such connectivity comes at a cost. Much of this information is pumped out by an agenda-driven media with a message of their own—a message that sounds good, nice even, but is inherently poisonous. It is becoming louder, stronger, and constant. And young people are drinking it in.
This is the message of expressive individualism—the belief, Tim Keller explains, that “identity comes through self-expression, through discovering one’s most authentic desires and being free to be one’s authentic self.”
This is the follow-your-heart, believe-in-yourself, chase-your-dreams, Disney-Hallmark-MTV gospel. It is the catechism of our culture. It is what our youth are learning. You are the creator of your identity. You are free—even obligated—to be whomever or whatever makes you feel good, no matter what anyone says.
Expressive individualism is steadily becoming pervasive. It bleeds through everything—movies, music, books, news reports, private conversations. Think of Hollywood for the most obvious example. Moana, Disney’s latest animated family flick, has been getting rave reviews for its stunning graphics and gorgeous soundtrack. But Christians have also noted its less praiseworthy underlying ideology.
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The movie (much in the tune of its predecessor, Frozen) teaches kids that they must look within to find their true identity and purpose—even if people tell them not to, even if they’re “breaking the rules,” as Frozen’s Elsa so proudly declares. This theme weaves its way through much modern children and young adult media—its sitcoms and cartoons, its novels and comic books, and, of course, its movies.
….
Another cultural idea propelled by expressive individualism is the self-esteem movement, typically aimed at teenage girls. This movement teaches some true and beautiful things Christians would affirm, such as the inherent worth that flows from being an image-bearer of God. But in much of the “ra-ra, you go, girl” mentality there exists a deeper craving for self-fulfillment. It doesn’t matter what “the haters” say. You’ve got to be loud and proud and, no, no, don’t just love yourself, sister; worship yourself. Be whomever you want to be and find your happiness in that self-realized identity. Embrace the true you, and shame anyone who doesn’t.
Yet all of this flies quite blatantly in the face of Scripture’s teaching.
Instead of following our hearts, God calls us to follow his will and keep his commands (Prov. 3:5–6).
Instead of bucking against authority and breaking rules, God calls us to honor our parents and respect authority (Eph. 6:1–3).
Instead of looking within to find our identity, God calls us to look to Christ alone (Col. 3:1–3).
Instead of idolizing our bodies, God calls us to steward them for his glory (1 Cor. 6:15).
Instead of going our own way, God calls us to take up our cross daily and follow Jesus (Luke 9:23).
Instead of individualism, God calls us to obey and adore the King (Eph. 4:15–16).
The narrative of self-fulfillment is an enemy of the gospel.
….
Parents, teach your children life really isn’t about them; it is about Jesus. For only when they grasp this point will they become who they were truly created to be.
— Jaquelle Crowe, The Gospel Coalition, How Youth Like Me Learn Expressive Individualism, January 4, 2017
[signoff]
This is the one hundred and forty-third installment in The Sounds of Fundamentalism series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a video clip that shows the crazy, cantankerous, or contradictory side of Evangelical Christianity, please send me an email with the name or link to the video. Please do not leave suggestions in the comment section. Let’s have some fun!
Today’s Sound of Fundamentalism is a video clip from a sermon by Kim Burrell. Burrell is the pastor of Love & Liberty Fellowship Church in Houston, Texas.
According to Charisma News, Burrell is facing MASS persecution over her anti-gay sermon.
This is the one hundred and fortieth installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.
Today’s Song of Sacrilege is The Stage by Avenged Sevenfold.
Lyrics
So I arrived, naked and cold
A welcomed change from the abeyance of a ghost town catacomb
No need for counsel I appreciate the time I’m not alone
(Why don’t you get my lawyer on the phone)
There were days these child eyes
Would overlook the ugliness and fantasize
I found my heart for the first time and I awakened in me
I left myself to navigate, and oh I felt control
(It seems these sheep have quite an appetite)
Who is the crowd that peers through the cage,
As we perform here upon the stage?
As the boy became a man
In came a calm sophistication I can hardly understand
So lost in ego, didn’t notice when the time had slipped away
(Yeah, everybody’s got a sob story)
Jesus Christ, was born to die
Leave it to man to levitate his own to idolize
We’re simply sociopaths with no communication baby
I see your angle but we differ from our points of view
(So tell me, what’s your cross to bear?)
Who is the crowd that peers through the cage,
As we perform here upon the stage?
Tell me a lie in a beautiful way
I believe in answers just not today
Hope my wheels don’t abandon me now,
Seeing that I’m out here alone
I’m running out of fight
And the wind speaks a comforting voice,
Guiding me to her arms
Mother, I’m alright
It took the birth of sin to snake-rattle the mind
Before a blow to the head by the gavel of time
To wake up
Won’t you wake up?
When did the walking apes decide that nuclear war
Was now the only solution for them keeping the score?
Just wake up
Can’t you wake up?
Who is the crowd that peers through the cage,
As we perform here upon the stage?
Tell me a lie in a beautiful way
I believe in answers just not today
I recently had the privilege of appearing via Skype on The Corpsepaint Show. Hosted by Satan, The Corpsepaint Show primarily covers the heavy metal music scene, so I can easily understand them wanting to interview a metalhead such as myself. (You should be laughing right now.)
I had a delightful time speaking with Satan. What follows is the audio of the interview. If you want to view the video, please go to The Corpsepaint Show’s website and click on the December 25, 2016 video.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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The cartoonists at the N.I.B. have published a tract titled Jack Chick: this Was Your Life. Chick died October 23, 2016. Chick drew and published tracts that were used by thousands of Evangelical churches in their evangelization efforts.
You can read the entire tract here.
You can read the entire tract here
Now, let’s jump from my impressionable years to just a few years ago. I was touring the country in a show about the Scopes Monkey Trial. Ed Asner was playing William Jennings Bryan and I played Clarence Darrow.
This was not Inherent the Wind. This was the actual 1925 trial transcript arguing the teaching of evolution in the public schools—an argument, I’m sorry to say, that’s still raging today for all the wrong reasons.
We were on the college circuit, but performances were open to the general public. During our month of touring, we were picketed, yelled at, and booed—most of the time before the show even started. At one of the universities, I was finishing up a Q&A for a group of 100 or so students when the teacher said he’d seen the play the night before and highly recommended it.
Then, with a wink in my direction, he turned and asked the class, “With a show of hands, how many of you believe the earth was created on October 22, 4004 BC?” Seventy-five students raised their hands. I was stunned. Speechless. My head dropped as I silently bore witness to the death of knowledge, the death of curiosity—wiped out in an instant by some religious nonsense—yet these college students believed it. And they were secure in their belief, you could even say smug considering the enthusiasm with which their hands shot up into the air, affirming: “I believe.”
In the green room that evening I told the cast about my experience. There was a young theater “groupie” hanging around, and I asked her if she would have raised her hand like the others.
“Oh yes,” she said.
“Why? In light of everything we know today, why?”
“Because I believe God is my bus driver.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “I don’t know what that means.”
“That I can sit at the back of the bus and party-hearty because God is driving my bus. And if the Bible says 4004 BC, who am I to disagree?”
“4004 BC is not even in the Bible,” I said.
“Well… I don’t know. That’s what I believe.”
“But that doesn’t make sense, you idiot. Next, you’re going to tell me that you believe vaccines give you autism; or that Obama is a Muslim; or that not having healthcare makes you free; or that AIDS is a punishment for being gay; or that Sandy Hook was staged.”
Of course, I didn’t say any of this. I just looked on in despair and half-heartedly asked her if God required exact change to get on the bus. She didn’t get the joke.
“God is my bus driver” precludes any and all critical thinking. It exposes this young woman to a lifetime of nonsense both benign and dangerous. It typifies the mindset of a segment of our population who can’t tell the difference between truth and fiction because they’ve wasted their formative years focusing on whether Adam wore flip-flops or walked barefoot in the garden—with his dinosaur.
The willingness of these twenty-first-century college students to believe the calculations of a seventeenth-century prelate, in spite of indisputable evidence to the contrary, is astounding. And because they’ve gone down this path, these young people are entering a world woefully unprepared for the challenges they’ll encounter. They will look at a hillside and see, perhaps nothing—certainly not iron ore. In their youth, they’ve not been encouraged to understand the world they live in, but rather have been directed to explore an imaginary world. They will enter adulthood with neither the disposition nor the skill to untangle complex, earthly problems. Healthcare, global warming—too complicated. Same-sex marriage, bathrooms—perfect.
— John de Lancie, The Humanist, Inspiration, Sci-Fi, and the Importance of Driving Your Own Bus, November/December 2016
Evangelicals are fond of saying that the LORD is on their side. Culture warriors frequently invoke God being with them as proof that their causes are righteous and just. Christian politicians, when justifying their murderous, imperialistic wars, often suggest that God not only approves of their violence, but is also the mighty general that leads the troops into battle.
From February 23 to March 6, 1836, Mexican President General Antonio López de Santa Anna and his troops laid siege to the Alamo. On March 6th, Mexican troops overran the Alamo’s defenses, killing several hundred people in the process.
The day after the siege began, William B. Travis, the commander of the Texian forces, wrote an open letter titled To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World. Travis wrote:
To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World:
Fellow citizens & compatriots—I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna—I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man. The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken—I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch—The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country—Victory or Death.
William Barret Travis
Lt. Col. comdt
P.S. The Lord is on our side—When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn—We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels & got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves.
Travis, like countless Christians before and after him, believed that the LORD was on his side. Despite overwhelming forces outside the Alamo gates, Travis believed God would send reinforcements and lead them to victory over the Mexicans. No reinforcements came, and Travis, along with most of the people behind the walls of the Alamo, died.
Twenty-five years later, the United States found itself embroiled in a violent, bloody civil war that resulted in 750,000 deaths. Both the North and the South claimed that God was on their side. The 20th century would find the United States embroiled in two world wars and major conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. Fueled by theocratic and nationalistic fervor, American political leaders believed that a victory over totalitarianism and communism was a triumph for Christianity. In other words, THE LORD IS ON OUR SIDE!
In the late 20th and 21st century, the United States found itself waging a crusade in the Middle East against Islāmic terrorists. President George W. Bush framed invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as holy wars — good vs. evil. God is on our side, President Bush told the American people, repeating a time-worn cliché that has resulted in maiming and killing millions of people.
The 2016 presidential election invigorated the religious-right, resulting in the election of the most unqualified candidate in American history — Donald Trump. Eighty-two percent of white Evangelicals voted for a man who bragged about sexual assault and grabbing pussy. Believing that Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party were the personification of evil, Evangelicals stormed the throne room of heaven with their prayers and voted their “conscience.” Come January 20th, Evangelicals will cheer as God’s man becomes the forty-fifth president of the Christian United States of America. In unison they will cry, THE LORD IS ON OUR SIDE!
And when a modern-day battle of the Alamo, one fought with weapons that have the power to erase the human race, causes horrific bloodshed, will Evangelicals still cry, THE LORD IS ON OUR SIDE? When millions of people lose their health insurance, their good-paying jobs, and Social Security benefits are cut, will Evangelicals still think God is on their side?
How much suffering, death, and loss must happen before Christians are willing to admit that, when it comes to the machinations of men, God is nowhere to be found. The only gods at work in the affairs of men are those who are very much earthly. If God is indeed on their side, then Christians have no response when secularists say that their God is a violent, bloodthirsty megalomaniac. If the Lord is on the United States’ side, then he is culpable for the worldwide slaughter of millions of men, women, children. He is responsible for the savagery of those who, with great fervor and pride, say THE LORD IS ON OUR SIDE! And when the last news reports Americans hear warn of incoming “enemy” nuclear warheads, just remember, THE LORD IS ON OUR SIDE!
