Why We're So Cynical

This is funny. Why? Because it’s true, and we like the fact that someone was willing to say it so directly.

We laugh because in this artwork the cliché kindergarten advice: “You can be whatever you want to be” is shown to be a cotton-candy fluffpiece of rhetoric that melts away in the dreary rain of reality.

Guess what, kids? Cinderella’s castle is mostly just an empty façade, constructed entirely for its commercial value. And that pretty woman in the ball gown? She’s not really a princess, either.

And this is a good thing. It would be delusional to live in Fantasyland. So we laugh at cynical drawings like these.

But sometimes I think we laugh because it hurts and we don’t want to admit it. We have seen dreams die. We have told ourselves we will never be good enough for something—marriage, a career, a goal, a eulogy filled with purpose and impact. We know people with the potential to be something great who have been shoved down by circumstances of life. We are surrounded by broken things and failures and big blank pages of our future stories that we have no control over. And it scares us, but we don’t know how to be scared.

The Gated Community: Who Are You Keeping Out?

In case you missed it, this is a spectacular Silly Song from the days when most of us weren't watching VeggieTales movies anymore. Seriously. Listen to it. I am making this post extra short to account for the lost time. It’s social commentary with singing vegetables—basically, stir fry satire.

Okay, now that you’ve watched it, here’s a question: in what ways do we tend to make Christianity into a “gated community”?

That wasn’t rhetorical. I want you to actually think about it and come up with some answers.

Another way to ask this question might be, "Who is the kid with the ball in your life? Who is the maintenance man/vegetable who everyone tries to ignore?"

In some ways, I tend to be even worse than the suburbanites displayed in the video. I’m not ignoring the world while grilling; I’m ignoring the world while philosophizing about the best kind of barbeque sauce and the ethical implications of eating meat.

I’m not saying it’s bad to care about theology. But I do think it’s bad to care about theology—or politics, or winning arguments, or creating great music, or sports or art or pretty much anything you might be passionate about—more than people.

Especially if those people need help. Especially if they feel left out, or judged, or think that whatever religion I represent clearly doesn't want them and their problems around.

Any time I feel comfortable with my life as it is, I watch this clip and remember that loving others as I love myself is more than just being a good person. It means actually doing something, taking little opportunities to help others, and not shutting myself off from people who might need me.

“And so what we have learned applies to our lives today.” There’s your daily dose of children’s animated conviction. Hope it made you think the way it did for me.

Christian Satire: Is Sarcasm a Sin?

No. Sarcasm is not a sin. I’m pretty sure of this for a lot of ethical reasons, but it’s also worth noting that Elijah, Isaiah, and others used sarcasm pretty heavily sometimes (Elijah decides the reason Baal isn’t showing up is probably because he’s on the toilet, Isaiah 44 makes fun of people who take a block of wood and worship half of it and use the other half to cook dinner).

Can you sin by using sarcasm? Yep. You certainly can. Since I’m a writer, I’m going to approach this from the angle of satire, a written form of sarcasm used to make a point. But you can apply it to just about anything, from Facebook posts to witty comebacks. You see, the danger of satire or sarcasm isn’t really that people might misunderstand you.

The real danger is that you might start caring more about your image than other people.

Well, that escalated quickly.

It's your lucky day!

Let me explain why being good at satire can feed a writer's (or, you know, just a normal human being's) already-well-developed narcissism. (Keep in mind that this is a few days after I posted a satire post on the evils of letter-writing. So I can say things like that.)