Sliced Vegetables, Artistic Adaptation and Jesus’ use of Humor
When I need to find out the news beyond the headline story of the day, I have found that one of the best places to go to get a pulse of what’s news and what news is actually interesting for discussion, I often go to FARK. (Warning: If you go there, you’re best bet is to avoid the comment threads on the RH side, which can be vulgar. Additionally, some actual discernment is needed when selecting the stories to read, so it’s not something I recommend to children or immature adults, either).
Imagine my surprise last summer when I checked out the list of stories and found this one:
(Some Tomato)Â ”Christian” website declares war on the Veggie Tales. What will QWERTY say about this?
[NOTE: The link is dead, but you can see the source being linked to.]
After reading the story and the sad comment thread beneath it, I braced myself and decided to read the FARK comment thread about the article. It was truly sad to see how the outside world viewed this intra-church sniping and foolishness. (mild examples: Wow. Someone there disses “Adventures in Oddysey” by Focus on the Family. THAT is hardcore. or It’s gotta be tough to write for Landover Baptist when the real sites are this unintentionally satirical. )
Well, it’s not uncommon to expect such foolishness to repeat itself, and so it has… and I have to say that I’m still a bit perplexed on a number of items:
Cartoons and Artistic Adaptation
This article takes issue with the upcoming Veggie Tales adaptation of The Prodigal Son, set against a Wizard of Oz meme.
The producers of these Veggie Tales movies desecrate Holy Scripture by perverting it into upbeat do-good stories completely absent the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Read that sentence again. Holy Scripture. That’s what we teach our children that the Bible is. Holy. Untouchable. Sacred. Must not be tampered with. But we are considered freaks in a world where nothing is sacred. Nothing is holy. Nothing is untouchable, particularly if there is cash to be made. These people are getting wealthy off the mistreatment of the Word of God.
First off, I’m failing to see where such hysteria is warranted. It is not as if Phil Vischer (producer of VT) is claiming that Veggie Tales is scripture, or a tool aimed at evangelizing children with a full outlay of the plan of salvation. Rather, it is, and always has been, a modern method of relaying some scriptural stories and parables to children, typically pre-school and lower elementary school aged. Additionally, enough (clean) pop-culture and catchy music is woven in so that adults aren’t bored to tears, but will be conversant and interested enough that good discussion might arise between parent and child on the topics presented. There is no ‘mistreatment of the Word of God’, despite the screeching hyperbole to the contrary.
This goes without saying, though, that if a child’s sole (or primary or secondary) exposure to scripture is to Veggie Tales, he or she is sorely lacking in biblical instruction. No argument here. However, in a marketplace of mindless, violent or vulgar media choices, I can’t think of many better children’s ‘entertainment’ for this particular age group than Veggie Tales and Adventures in Odyssey, both of which adapt biblical texts and stories into a format for children (though AiO is aimed at an older contingent).
So the question becomes: Is it acceptable for artistic works, be they for children or adults, to adapt parts of scripture in non-literal renderings which may include humorous devices? Assuming that scripture is not mis-interpreted or treated as irrelevant or mocked, I see no scriptural basis for arguing the contrary.Â
The Use of Humor
The mindset accompanying this blog article also has consistently posited that Jesus had no sense of humor and that comedy has no place in a Christian lexionary. I would severely disagree, and the primary key to my disagreement is acknowledged and lauded in the opening paragraph of this particular article:
When Dr. John MacArthur was here in Milwaukee for one of our VCY America rallies earlier this year, his message was on the powerful Bible story of the Prodigal Son. He didn’t skim over the surface as so many preachers do and hit all the obvious points. He went deep into the Middle Eastern context of the story which enabled us to understand even more just how amazing the response of the father in the story actually was. Each detail of the Bible’s account took on new significance as we were taught about the social rules of the day and what the father’s condescension because of love for His son really meant. There is so much depth to this story as you carefully study it.
That is the key to understanding Jesus’ humor – the context! (Side note: Ironically, I have heard JMac’s sermon on the Prodigal Son and on the Good Samaritan, both of which drew their first century details from the a source like Brad Young’s The Parables, an excellent resource I highly recommend, and were almost verbatim as taught by Rob Bell and Ray VanderLaan…)
In narrative, the two primary thematic directions are drama and comedy. Drama is seated in the emotion and easily translates across cultures, because of the similarity of the human experience. Comedy, on the other hand, is seated in the intellect, and is highly contextual. Apart from slapstick (considered the lowest form of comedy), it does not translate well across cultures, because of its contextuality. So, the key to Jesus’ humor is in knowing the culture.
One example lies in the story of the Good Samaritan.
A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side.
This is pretty funny, don’t you think? No? How about I add this detail: Jesus places this story on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.  This “road” is about 2 – 3 feet wide, with a steep wall on one side of it and a steep, 100+ foot drop off on the other side.  It still exists today, and people still die falling off of it today. In Jesus story, the priest and the Levite to “pass by on the other side”. There is no ‘other side’! So now, imagine what these two figures had to do to avoid dealing with the half-dead man in the road. This mental picture is very similar to other humor found in other contemporary Jewish works.
There are numerous other examples, particularly laced in Jesus’ parables, which have been identified as humorous elements in his stories and in his life. Additionally, some of the chief commands of the Old Testament dealt with the seven Jewish festivals, five of which were to be joyous occasions, not solemn remembrences.
In Ecclesiastes, Solomon teaches that everything, when taken apart from God, is meaningless. In it, though, he notes:
There is a time for everything,
      and a season for every activity under heaven:a time to be born and a time to die,
      a time to plant and a time to uproot,a time to kill and a time to heal,
      a time to tear down and a time to build,a time to weep and a time to laugh,
      a time to mourn and a time to dance,
And this is true – there is a time for everything, including humor and laughter - especially when it is used to glorify its creator, rather than denigrate Him or to tear down those made in His own image.
– and I agree with your well-stated disagreement. There’s a narrow blinders-impaired view that keeps us sometimes from considering any other possibility, and that’s what I see happening so many times in these pieces. There’s an unwillingness to discover something new, even though “new every morning” is one of the promises we have.
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