I stumbled upon this essay by Jonathan Acuff on CNN.com one day, which lead me to his blog, which lead me to his book Stuff Christians Like. I’m not a Christian, so why did I like this book so much? I think there are three reasons: it’s full of satire, subcultures, and kindness, three of my favorite things. Acuff might have intended his book to be a way for Christians to poke fun of their idiosyncrasies with inside jokes. But being a non-Christian, I never felt left out of the joke. It’s as if a really cool friend asked me to join him at his really awesome church, held my hand the whole time, made sure I was comfortable, and introduced me to all the lovely quirks of his community.
Honestly, I had no idea Christians could be so funny. I know. That’s ridiculously narrow-minded of me. Obviously Christianity is full of billions of people, each with his or her own unique traits, and odds are, lots of them have a sense of humor. I think the problem is our mainstream culture tends to affix subcultures with stereotypical labels that don’t often fit snuggly. People are not canned goods. So I had been under the false impression that the heathens on Comedy Central held the rights to the “funny” label. I was wrong. The funny thing is, one of the labels our culture tends to try to stick on Christians is “judgmental”, which honestly is the reason why I’ve personally never felt like joining the faith. And yet who was the one doing the judging here? I guess it’s true what Jesus said: “Judge not, that you be not judged.” (Matthew 7:1)