I get a lot of emails from the conservative Christian perspective because of the home school groups I’m in. One came through a while ago very upset about the show Good Christian B*tches. It complained that our religious freedoms are at stake, directly linked to the amount of mockery Christians receive in the public arena. If television companies are allowed to make fun of Christianity in ways that it doesn’t make fun of other religions without someone crying foul then Christianity is on it’s way out and we should be very afraid. Disrespect = threat
So you know me. I had to see it for myself.
Oh, how I laughed.
You know what makes something funny? Something is funny if there is a nugget of truth in it, no matter how exaggerated it may be for comic effect.
I know the people who are upset about this show are probably not the same people the show is making fun of, they just happen to share a very broad religious designation that encompasses all sorts of different opinions and practices. I also know that there are many, many people who call themselves Christians and who live lives of sincere love and service for others.
Sadly, there are people out there like the ones this show is satirizing. There are people in this country who go to church every Sunday and still think black people are inferior to white people. There are still people who go to church every Sunday and care more about their social status and how perfect their lawn/nails/hair/car is than about the suffering, oppressed and dying in this world. There are people who call themselves Christian and believe that it’s their God given right as “believers” and citizens to live a life of ease.
You know what?
Those people deserve to be made fun of. They should have someone pointing out how ridiculous it is that they claim to follow Jesus, a guy who owned nothing, lived off of the generosity of others, and went about doing only good for people in need and saying things to deliberately piss off the religious elite, while they chase their nice American dream lives with their nice picket fences and their petty disagreements and their empty pursuits.
Because if you are really following Jesus it’s going to wreck your life. It’s going to make you uncomfortable with your comfort, it’s going to make your privilege sit uneasily upon your shoulders and you are going to have to do some serious soul searching about how you are going to live your life in such a way as brings redemption to this world, rather than feeds the brokenness and evil in it. You don’t get to choose your cross.
And if a satire hurts, if it pricks you and causes you to feel a little uncomfortable than maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe you should feel uncomfortable, and take a long close look in the mirror. Because the truth can hurt at times, but it can also set you free.
3 thoughts on “Good Christian B*tches – If the shoe fits…”
I love this show also. I do think that alongside the satire there is also a genuine kindness towards all the characters. All of them have some kind of redeeming virtue (Carleen, for instance, is entirely sincere in her commitment to her marriage and even to her faith), and all of them have moments that evoke sympathy, despite the show's initial set-up of good-secularist-vs.-hypocritical-mean-girl-Christians. All the GCB's are capable of doing such appalling things, but then just when you're not expecting it, the show will create a moment of genuine compassion. I think that's what makes the satire work, actually – it can zing without ever becoming mean-spirited.
(I especially laughed at the Christian singles group in last week's episode: "Alone. Together. In Him.")
I haven't watched that episode yet but just that quote has me laughing.
They do a very good job of making everyone a sympathetic character at one point or another. That's one of the things I like about it too.
I am very much enjoying this show, too! Everything you wrote above is true. If it hurts, there must be a reason for it.
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