Musings in Search of a Muse

Sometime last Tuesday I was in my usual procrastination mode doing my usual procrastination activity, surfing the Web. That doesn’t mean that I was diligently researching weighty and important information toward a well-meaning and satisfying goal. It means I was randomly clicking on links, poking around, and exploring with no set purpose but telling myself that something was going to come of the activity so the sleep that I was missing would be not lost without a return on the value.

Lo and behold, I found something cool: The Door. This magazine, first available in print nearly 35 years ago and then known as The Wittenburg Door, satirizes “something we love – the Church, and more generally people of faith – with the hope that our prodding might generate some course corrections while inducing a laugh or two... or three” (citation).

This excerpt from the contents of issue #179 January/February (2002) appears to be typical of the content over the years:

• Southpark’s Salvation: The Revelation of Kenny
• ARTICLE: The Search for the History Kenny – We’ve “liberated” a page from Spong’s new opus! By Becky Garrison
• ARTICLE: A Letter from Osama – Bin Laden spills it all for you – “The Perils and Virtues of Living by the Sword by Alexander Lombard
• ARTICLE : “It’s a Wonderful Taliban Life” – What if George found Zuzu’s petals in Mazar-e-Sharif? By Skippy R.
• ARTICLE: Why Athiests Don’t Exist – Why should they care” by Doug Fattig
• INTERVIEW: Mark Levin – Keeping an eye on the Army of God – On the Front Lines with Soldiers in the Army of God. By Becky Garrison
• FEATURE: Form Letter from an Internet Church – Next up: dot.communion by Ed L Wier
• FEATURE: Least Popular Christian Self Help Books – How to Sue for Sexual Harassment if You are Touched by an Angel by Becky Garrison
• FEATURE: Religious Home Shopping Catalogues – A sure-fire cure for Post-Yule Depression by Ed L. Wier
• FEATURE: You Know It’s Time to Volunteer to Teach Sunday School When…your child puts her entire allowance in the class offering, then refers to it as “seed money.” By Tamara Jaffe-Notier
• ARTICLE: Plain Brown Computer – And lo, they stored the files on their hard drives, some unknowingly and in violation of local statutes. By Dan Murphy
• FEATURE: Here They Stand: How the Major Strands of Christianity Stack up .. or not, as the case may be. By Ben Johnson
• ARTICLE: The Democratic National Convention Proudly Presents: The Rev. Jesse “Action” Jackson vs. the Rev. Al “The Showstopper” Sharpton, Oh my! By Becky Garrison
• FEATURE: Selections from Mike Murdock’s One Minute Manager’s Bible – Take a deep breath and repeat after us. By James Bowley
• FEATURE: The Ballad of the PTL – Men who laugh and cry and yes; The strange men of the PTL by Ed L. Wier
• ARTICLE: The Ultimate Survivor – Who will be the last moderate to survive at Southern Seminary? By Todd Outcalt
• CARTOONS: “Biblical Budget Cuts” by Jennifer Berman and “Nice Jugs” by Judd
  

Finally! Heretics have their own publication! Seriously, though, the articles, interviews, and cartoons are rather good. Take, for example, the interview with actress, gymnast, and comedian Victoria Jackson from the September/October 1999 issue.

DOOR: What's your take on religion, Hollywood-style?
JACKSON: It seems like they always have a new phase. Like when I first came out here, everyone was into crystals and now it's Kaballah, with New Age was in between. But my dad just gave me a book called, When the World Will Be As One, and it traces New Age back to the garden of Eden when Satan said, “Don't you want to be equal with God?” I think Hollywood and the world in general is searching for the truth. They will not look at Jesus. And there's this huge anger. “Why do they use His name in vain if they don't even believe in Him?” I don't understand why they don't say, “Oh Buddha!” when they hit their finger with a nail. They're desperately searching for meaning in their lives but they will not crack the Bible open. And that proves to me that it's the truth. They're so scared of it. They're so scared that it's gonna convict them or something. It doesn't make your life stop being fun to be a Christian. I think they're afraid to confront the truth so they find all these stupid false religions, false gives them a good feeling or something.

The editors and writers examine Christianity with a warped lens that many might consider sacrilegious, but critics would be missing the nitty-gritty core value that Christianity is to be enjoyed, not suffered -- unless you are Catholic, but I digress. When Christ suffered for our sins He didn’t say “Thou shalt not have a good time hereafter.” Being a Christian doesn’t mean that you need to stick with activities that are 100% free from sin’s taint. Our faith means that, with the grace of our Lord, we have the ability to recognize sin and abstain if it is too much. Thus I watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer on the tele with its plot based on battling evil, themes that touch on homosexuality, and scripts that don’t shy away from contemporary language.

Apparently, someone at The Door likes Buffy, too. She was named “Theologian of the Year” in one article. It begins thusly:

"Perilous times call for bold theology. Let's face it. Evil is running rampant. Terrorists strike without warning. Corporate executives defraud the public and their own employees. Politicians tear apart the fabric of national unity for their own agendas. Popular culture has become a banal river of unadulterated trash, a 'hellmouth' slowly dumbing down our sense of reality. The people are paralyzed by indecision, ennui or terminal cynicism. Meanwhile, the ozone layer is perforated, glaciers are melting, and crazies set wildfires that denude the landscape. While Generation X passes the baton to Generation Y, adolescence is still hell, AND THERE'S ONLY ONE LETTER LEFT! We need someone who can not only deconstruct the problem of evil, but kick it's hiney; someone with a preternatural sense of comic timing and an eye for fashion. We need Buffy."

Deep within the satire and irreverence, the article acknowledges the show’s ability to clearly identify good and evil, spell out the consequences of each, and put all this in a package that appeals to just the audience that Christianity needs to target, the demographic of males and females between the ages of 17 and 34 with some time on their hands and disposable income.

The editorials – and it might comfort you to hear this – are strictly business when it comes to training a critical eye on our community. After all, Christian values are set in the Bible but interpretations of these are available with a wide variety of flavors that would make Baskin-Robbins jealous. I rather the editorial titled “When did Christians become champions?”:

Does it bother you at all when you see a pampered professional athlete being interviewed after winning a game tell the audience, "I'm just giving the Lord Jesus Christ all the glory". (Isn't that big of him?) How about when some prancing peacock preacher tells you, "God's will for your life is to be a champion."

It makes me think of a child in our community named Shannon. Shannon will never be a champion. Weighing only two or three pounds at her premature birth, with every imaginable health problem, I have often thought that from God's standpoint she is the most important member of our group. She is totally helpless with no hope of ever excelling in anything valued by the world.

But she is a thousand times more important to the kingdom of God than all the champions on earth because she's totally without guile or self-seeking. Shannon teaches us all how to love. Jesus told us that, "whatsoever is highly esteemed among men is an abomination unto God." He always chooses the foolish things to confound the wise and the weak things to confound the mighty.

Let the church aspire to be weak, and the world will stand in awe.

After I manage to reach my fill of articles in The Door’s archives I believe that I will start a subscription. I’m old enough to appreciate the feel of coated paper and sharp binder staples in my hands but still yet young enough to enjoy that unusual perspective offered by the magazine. Well, that is if I can stop procrastinating.

Magazine covers (c) The Trinity Foundation, Inc.

Other links of interest:

• CNN article: "Is 'religious humor' an oxymoron?"
• Ship of Fools, another site for religion from a different perspective
• Lark News: The Door with an edge (?)