Making the Gospel a comedy with our hypocrisy

Ann Voskamp writes at A Holy Experience,

You know they’re laughing at us all, right?

They’re laughing at us because the evangelist Creflo Dollar’s been out panhandling a campaign this summer for his own 65 million dollar private jet because apparently there are people going around with Bibles under their arms proclaiming personal jets are “necessary to spread God’s word,” because a luxury private jet is, in his words, “standard operating procedure for people of faith” — when in developing countries every second pregnant woman and about 40% of preschool children are estimated to be anemic and 1 billion poor people in developing countries live on $1.25 a day or less.

They’re laughing at us because some hackers slapped a site named Ashley Madison too hard on the proverbial back and the old girl, with her brazen tag line, “Life is short. Have an Affair” —- she coughed up the names of more than a few million account holders who paid bona fide bucks to hook them up with someone to aid and abet them in their premeditated decision to make a sham of their marriage vows. Ashley Madison hacked up more than one or two names of some well known, soul-hurting Christians.

You don’t want to know how the gossip and social media sites howled.

So what if — the idea went — what if somebody married the idea of pretty adult colouring pages with some calming, soothing Jesus quotes, with a bit of the very Word of God — and packaged the whole thing to hit the shelves by Easter?

Just in time for that gravy train headed toward Easter— you know, that time of year when we fall flat on our faces before the Cross of Christ because the Creator of the Cosmos rent open a vein and drained Himself dry for a hemorrhaging-to-death world. Which, you never know, might be the perfect time for us to go around peddling pretty colouring books?

You know they’re out there laughing at us all, right?

They’re laughing at us because we make the Gospel a comedy with our hypocrisy, and our lack of monogamy, and our puffed up religiosity and dishonesty and our self-righteous animosity.

They’re laughing at us because we trivialize the Gospel because we monetize it, because we cheapen it and we sell it, because we make ourselves comfortable with it —- instead of dying for it.

...The life of Jesus would radically suggest: The most conservative in theology, should be the most liberal in loving.

The life of Jesus would radically suggest: Don’t advertise your beautiful faith without advertising your broken-down faults — because those broken-down faults are the exact reason why you need your beautiful faith.

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