Refiner’s Fire: An Uneasy Smile for Satire

Many Christians feel uneasy about the reading and writing of satire, especially religious satire, because it does not seem a serious enough vehicle for religious topics. These Christians are often not against controversial writing per se. For example, if I should write a treatise against dispensationalism or against fraudulent religious advertising, or against shoddy country music, they would not consider such writing inappropriate. Of course, they might disagree with me and defend their silent, trumpetless raptures or their walk-where-Jesus-walked-stay-at-the-Capernaum-Hilton commercialism, or their “Jesus, Drop-Kick Me Over the Goal Post of Life” song, but they would not think it inappropriate for me to defend my point of view and write my argumentative essay. But to treat dispensationalism or Calvinism or prayer or any other religious topic satirically seems to violate religious propriety.

I defend satire; it attempts to expose that which is false and, at least implicitly, to set forth an alternative. Religious satire is in the company of argumentative literature that points out what is amiss in Christian walk or belief. It may suggest a more biblical view. And certainly, polemical Christian writing has a long (if not always venerable) tradition. From Paul to John Warwick Montgomery, from Augustine to Gordon Clark, Christians have disagreed with each other, and have said so—sometimes with Arnoldian sweetness and light, sometimes with more than a touch of vinegar.

The pigeon-holing of satire as controversial literature can perhaps be illustrated best with a few examples. “Holy Willie’s Prayer” by Burns and “Cracker Prayer” by Hughes castigate those Christians who plead special rights with the Lord and use their prayers to settle scores with their enemies. If there are such Christians and such prayers, then they ought to be exposed—and tins can be done by a sermon, by a magazine article, or by satire. Or take Dutch immigrant Calvinists. They were often extremely narrow and intolerant in their views of other Christians. Such an attitude often betrayed an unbiblical exclusivism and DeVries exposed it in his novel, The Blood of the Lamb.

I could cite other examples where an error could be exposed either straightforwardly or satirically. Since the intent is similar, at one level at least satire can be seen as a species of polemical writing.

One other point of similarity between satire and general polemical writing is worth pointing out. The charges are often made, and rightly so, that satire exaggerates, that it presents only one point of view, does not give a fair hearing to the opponent, and intimates the superiority of the author. But here again, I suggest that satire may have such traits in common with other controversial writers. Luther or Calvin sometimes used hyperbole and superiority. I’m not arguing here for the propriety of such strong polemic, but I am stressing that satire shares certain characteristics with other argumentative modes. Moreover, I often prefer the sharpness of satire to that of the polemicist, because the former at least has the grace of wit. Also, the satirist may ultimately be more aware of his exaggeration and superiority—it’s part of his technique, a pose he may not take too seriously, the polemicist’s dead earnestness does not allow for such a distance.

A book that warns us not to sit in the seat of the scornful and scoffers will perhaps not be the most promising source for satire. Remembering what happened to Goliath and Rabshakeh, one ought to be careful to emulate some of the satirists of Scripture. But there are other examples.

Probably the best known example is Elijah’s sarcastic encouragement of the Baal prophets: “Yes, you have a god, but he’s probably taking a snooze.” The spirit of these remarks is reminiscent of our Lord’s laughing at those who exalt themselves against his rule (Ps. 2). But often the barbs are aimed at God’s own people. In Jeremiah 8:7 God ridicules his people by comparing their knowledge to that of the stork, turtle, and swallow who can discern their appointed time, which the people cannot. Isaiah similarly mocks the people who try to divine the truth from the wizards who can only produce a silly peeping and muttering (8:19). Earlier he has a scathing portrayal of the women of Jerusalem. Although there’s very little wit here, the balance of ornamental spices, belts, and coiffure with stink, rope, and baldness does have sardonic intent. Elsewhere God turns his sarcasm on erring servants. Jonah’s pique, first at seeing his enemies spared and then at seeing his parasol destroyed, is greeted with the Lord’s incredulous “Do you well to be angry?” (4:4, 9). And Job’s challenging “Let the Almighty answer me” (31:35) is greeted by the Almighty’s “Where were you when I put my tape measure around the universe?” followed by the refrains of “Can you …” and “Have you been there?” and “Deck yourself with majesty” (chapters 38–41). Of course, Job had previously withered his comfortless friends with “No doubt, you are the people, and wisdom shall die with you” (12:1), and he later called them, in effect, “windbags” (16:3). Of a somewhat different nature are some of the Proverbs, which thus nicely characterize our taste for juicy gossip: “Gossip is so tasty! How we love to swallow it” (26:22, GNB). Or the delightful satire of the lazy man who shuts the alarm clock off and says “I better not go to work today; there may be a hungry lion out on [the] street” (26:13). And, although much of the advice and reprimand of Proverbs seems to be addressed to males, women are not totally neglected, as in the unflattering comparison of a nagging woman to a leaky roof (27:15). Christ’s lampooning of the Pharisees is, of course, well known, but familiarity may have dulled us to the vignette of a church elder passing the collection plate to the accompaniment of a trumpet fanfare, or another with a camel traveling down his esophagus while he’s busy straining a fly out of his drink.

But enough of examples. Is there any pattern here? Any similarities? Yes. They all answer part of my definition of satire: an attempt at reproof and correction through humor and ridicule. Certainly Elijah wants to expose the Baal prophets, and the Lord reproves his stubborn people as well as his balking prophet. So in the proverb the preacher inveighs against nagging and laziness and Christ against nit-and-fly-picking hypocrisy. And the ridicule runs the gamut from the Lord’s gentle mocking of Jonah: “Do you well?” through Job’s sarcasm against his friends, to Elijah’s taunting of the Baalites. In all of these examples the ridicule is carried by different kinds of humor or wit—sometimes through exaggeration, or a far-fetched comparison, or simply by demonstrating an incongruity, such as Jonah’s being more concerned about his sunburn than he would be with God’s fire raining down upon the children and animals of Nineveh.

Even though I approve of religious satire, I think that there are limits. It’s difficult to prescribe what the boundaries are, and I don’t find this boxing in of a writer a very congenial task. But let me suggest a few guidelines.

Satire can (and often is) an attack upon the person. Pope’s Dunciad and Philip Roth’s Our Gang are explicit attacks on the personalities and actions of individuals. And it may well be that such personal attacks are not appropriate in the Christian community.

You must distinguish between beliefs, views, writings, and practices, and the person’s character. Perhaps the old distinction between sin and sinner is applicable here. Interestingly, in The Humor of Christ, Elton Trueblood suggests that Christ’s attacks on the Pharisees, which were often satiric, were directed against the Pharisaic spirit, rather than individual Pharisees.

Of course, you cannot completely separate a person from his opinions. But it remains true that the satire (as, I suppose, most other argumentative writing) ought to be very careful in its aim and not attempt to assassinate character. This distinction is perhaps essential for the defense of religious satire.

I reach an impasse with subjects for satire. You should not ridicule God’s ordained vessels, but don’t the shenanigans of some ministers invite healthy laughter? God’s house may be holy, but don’t some of the more ostentatious churches seem a bit inappropriate to followers of one who didn’t have a place to sleep and had to get by on a lot of free meals? You see my point. In some way all religious subjects are sacred and demand reverence. But once these subjects have been appropriated by us, they have a way of going awry, and then the satirist’s job is to show the incongruities of our ways. Perhaps biblical subjects and incidents should not be satirized (certainly not the way Twain does), but even then there are incidents that can be highlighted with a humorous twist. Thus, though reverence would forbid us to satirize the Lord and his name, no other facets of our religious and moral life can be considered taboo in themselves. Rather, the tone determines the limit.

Some definitions of satire are framed in such a way that no Christian could use that form. Such definitions focus nearly exclusively on the destructive, vicious potential of satire, in which the writer vents his spleen (however one does that). Satire can be jovial as well as vicious, mild as well as bitter, zany as well as malicious, and provoke a chuckle rather than a sneer.

Satire is not essential—but it can be useful and promote health in the body ecclesiastic. Just think of some rather typical situations. The traditional role of the pastor who is revered and hallowed and sometimes feared has built-in potential for pomposity and pretensions. A preacher writes seriously that the mark of a good Christian family is the wearing of bibs by the children, which say “I love my preacher,” and another seems so devoid of mortal blood that even his wife seems to have forgotten his Christian name and calls him “the reverend.” The satirist can perform a useful function in such cases.

Again, we are a people who take our faith and our Bible seriously. We should. But then we begin to take our particular interpretation of it equally seriously. And then we get theologians who seriously speculate how many angels can waltz on the point of a needle or modern-day biblical mathematicians who can manipulate Kissinger’s name to make it read 666 (I suppose those who were busy doing so a few years ago are now wondering why Kissinger isn’t enthroned in Rome and wonder what they can do with Vance). Or to hit closer to my home, there once were Dutch Reformed folk who became concerned when their new minister smoked neither pipe nor cigar, since that made him suspiciously similar to the Baptist minister who was not only infralapsarian, but an Arminian.

And then there are the profiteers who find that the gospel of self-denial is a rich source of treasures that are susceptible to moth and rust. And here too we have an unvenerable tradition of selling indulgences and plastic dashboard saints, of promoting Christian charm for the right price and sponsoring Holy Land tours that partake more of Mammon than Yahweh. Foibles, silliness, blind spots, incongruities. And what does satire do? It exposes fraud, deflates sanctified pomposity, slays holy cows, pricks inflated pious balloons, puts a banana peel in front of the unctuous posture.

Thus the kind of satire I’ve been describing does not mock the serious things of life, but man taking himself too seriously—not God, but man’s ecclesiastical idols, not God’s Word, but man’s interpretations of that word, not the faith once delivered to the saints, but the sometimes silly caperings of those saints.

And we will not bestow on our satirists honorary doctor of divinity degrees, nor name our libraries after them or even give them imitation-leather-gold-trimmed King James Bibles. But they do deserve our applause when they expose what we think to be the moral blemishes of the church and our uneasy smile when they hit targets dear to us.

Harry Boonstra is director of libraries, Hope College, Holland, Michigan.

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