728 Days to Flatten the Curve! A Dinner with the Babylon Bee!

All right, I would like to welcome you all to our event tonight. And I've been in contact with Kyle Mann of the Babylon Bee. He'll be logging in shortly. But this event is a charity event. We're raising money for the Women's Pregnancy Center here in town, as well as Lutherans for Life.

And so we have Pastor Salomink online with us today to give us a presentation, but he'll do that shortly. But what we'd like to do to start off with and you'll know, one of the things that we're going to do is we're going to put up on the screen at different intervals, a QR code that you can scan with your phone, and that you could then make a tax deductible donation that what we're going to do is the all of the proceeds, Roseboro doesn't get a cut.

Cotton's Vinegar doesn't get a cut. All of the proceeds are going to go for supporting our charitable events, our recipients tonight, the Women's Pregnancy Center, as well as Lutherans for Life. And so that being the case, what I'm going to do here real quick is I am going to share a video that we created for the Women's Pregnancy Center.

And we're premiering it tonight. This is the first time it's been seen in public. And so do I have the right audio settings, Josh?

Kyle begins at seven. What setting do I need the audio on for the video? All right, well,.

We'll try it this way. Let's see if this works. Here we go.

The Women's Pregnancy Center Video and the Ministry of Care

Well, the Women's Pregnancy Center has been serving women in our community since 1987. So we have helped a lot of women. And considering that 50 of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned or unexpected, that means that there's a lot of women looking for help.

So when a young woman comes through our door, we can tell that the emotions are running high. There's a lot of pressure that they carry in with them. In fact, it's like the weight of the world is on their shoulders because they're either carrying a secret that they haven't told anyone, or maybe they've told their boyfriend or roommate, and that person has given them advice on what they think she should do.

And it's a weighty thing to deal with when you're not sure. So our main objective whenever somebody comes in is to greet her with non-judgment, to love her where she's at. You know, we're a faith-based non-profit and we follow the best model.

We follow Jesus and how he cared and loved people. And so we want her to know that she's safe here and that our nurses will listen with unconditional care and support. So the first thing we would do would provide a pregnancy test.

And if that test comes back positive, then there would be options counseling and just a soul-searching activity. How's she responding to it? Is she happy? Is she sad? Is she frustrated? Is she probably falling apart?

There's a lot of tears here all the time. But the nurse from that point, and we only employ registered nurses because we want to make sure that the information we're giving is medically factual. But also our nurses need to be walking tight with the Lord because they need to be exceptionally loving and they need to be good listeners.

Because a lot of the soul-searching is about her, what her dreams are, what her values are, what she sees are adequate support systems or not. It all makes a difference in her decision. So what makes our center different from a regular medical clinic?

We have unrushed appointments for one thing and everything is completely free. Our nurses treat the whole client. So it's not only physical, but it's mental and spiritual as well. Usually they've been referred by a friend who has been served by our clinic in the past.

They know they can trust us and they know that it's easy to.

Talk to our nurses. The clients who enter the Women's Pregnancy Center range in age from anywhere from 14 to 40 years of age. Most of the individuals that we see are single. Some are married, but most of them have at least considered terminating their pregnancy and that's the one thing that they share in common.

We support them through free pregnancy testing, free first trimester ultrasounds, STD testing and treatment, as well as parenting classes that include shopping privileges in our baby boutique. And we do all of this completely free of charge.

We feel that the ultrasound is the most powerful tool that we have at the Women's Pregnancy Center. It allows us to show her the life that is within her. Most often we don't even need to use words. She's able to just look at the TV and see for herself that there is an undeniable separate living human being within her.

She's able to see arms and legs kicking. She's able to see the beating heart. She's able to see her baby turn over and move within her even though she's not able to feel any of this from inside. There's nothing quite like that powerful aha moment when you see a mom see her baby for the very first time, meet that baby for the first time through the ultrasound.

It's like a light bulb goes off and everything clicks and they can see that this is what they were made for.

So what I need you to really know is that we can't do any of this without you. We rely so heavily on donations. This is your invitation to be part of something that is so much bigger than anyone even can imagine.

You know those of us who work here and our volunteers who are mentors, we're invested. We need you to be invested with us and we just invite you. I invite you to be part of Women's.

Pregnancy Center where lives are changed every day. Give me a second here. I have to make sure.

My sound is on the right setting. Select a microphone. There we go. Jill is here in the.

Building with us. Now next up is Pastor Salmanik from the Lutherans for Life and I need to.

Ask him to unmute himself and I need to probably make it so that he can actually turn his video on. Hang on a second here because we have our security settings so that people can't start their video. But Pastor Salmanik, if you can unmute yourself and turn your video on, we'd like you to share for a couple minutes about Lutherans for Life and the importance of what you are doing there and how their support tonight will help your organization.

Let's see here. Ask to unmute and I'm having a zoom issue here. Hang on a second here. There he is. There he is. All right. Let's get you unmuted sir and I'm going to pin him. All right. Am I live? Yes, you are.

Great.

To see you Pastor. Likewise. Good evening Pastor and to the entire assembly. So there we go. So.

Tell us about Lutherans for Life and how we can support you guys in what we're doing here.

Lutherans for Life and the Sanctity of Life

Well, first of all, good evening everybody and thank you so much for the invitation and the opportunity to be a part of this wonderful event. Thank you for the benefit to Lutherans for Life. My family and I are gathered here in our living room, even have my folks here looking forward to the evening's events.

My name is Pastor Michael Salamink. I'm the Executive Director of Lutherans for Life. Lutherans for Life exists to equip Lutherans to be gospel motivated voices for life and we believe that Lutherans have a distinctive voice to bring to our culture's conversations about the sanctity of life.

Those conversations so frequently take place in a spirit of anger and fear and we believe as Lutherans that we can bring a message of joy and hope into those conversations. Of course as Lutherans we remember that we are motivated not by a political controversy or public opinion or personal choice.

When it comes to the sanctity of life we are motivated because life issues our people and the sanctity of life is the heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Every human life is precious because God has created us in his own image with his own hands.

He has redeemed us through his son our Savior Jesus Christ who came into our flesh and into our world first as an embryo and then grew up and gave his body on the cross to sanctify every one of our bodies and we believe that God has called each and every human life to be part of his family and his kingdom forever.

So Lutherans for Life is active across the United States in a ministry of educating and connecting the sanctity of life to the gospel Jesus Christ to the word of God and to Lutheran doctrine. We do this through a wide variety of programs that includes a vast library of print resources.

We put together congregational worship resources for Celebrating Life Sunday every year. Those are available free on our website as is most of what we have to offer. We also publish a quarterly journal called Life Date which is a collection of gospel motivated articles, commentary, bible studies, and reflections from the distinctively Lutheran perspective.

We have a large archive of video resources. We have bi-weekly webinars for both adults and youth as part of our Why for Life program. We also have national conferences, one coming up this year in October.

Information about that is available on our website and we have an extensive YouTube channel. Of course you guys are familiar with YouTube. Lots of video education there about how the gospel connects to sanctity of life issues like surprise pregnancy and terminal diagnosis.

We also have a nationwide network of over 150 volunteer communities. We call them state federations, life teams, life chapters, life ministry coordinators in all 50 states who are taking action on the local level to show the love of Christ and speak God's truth to people who are facing life issue situations.

So your support for our organization is going to help us accomplish all of those things this evening. And if you would like more information, I encourage you to visit our website www .lutheransforlife .org.

We also have a smartphone app. You can navigate to your app store and download that for your phone. It's absolutely free. That'll keep you up to date on all that we've got going on and connect you with our nationwide community.

Again, we're so grateful for your gospel motivated voices for life and we pray that God is going to bless our.

Time together this evening. There we go. And what I'm going to do real quick is I'm going to share.

The information and this is a QR code for this event. So I promised everybody we were going to ask you for money, but it's not for Kongsvink. It's not for Pastor Roseborough. It's to support Lutherans for Life and the Women's Pregnancy Center here in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

If you scan that QR code, it will take you to our website there on our PayPal, where you can make a tax deductible donation. And again, all the proceeds from tonight will be split evenly between Lutherans for Life and the Women's Pregnancy Center here in town.

So if you haven't already scanned the code, scan it, head over to the website and make your tax deductible contribution. Now I'm going to stop sharing here for a second here, not because I don't like to share, but we have a special guest that we've invited for tonight to regale us with the stories of, well, I'm not sure how to describe it.

Kyle Mann, let's get you unmuted and get your camera on, and I'm going to hit ask to start video. And there we go, Kyle Mann. I'm going to spotlight you for everybody. And there we go. So are you joining us from your secret bunker there in.

Southern California? Yeah, I'm joining you from the Bat Cave here. All right, very good. Now,.

We named this event something like 728 Days to Flatten the Curve. And I think we're officially up on like, you know, two years since lockdown, something like that. Yeah, I think we're on two.

Years now. So two years of two weeks to flatten the curve and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.

Well, what I'm going to do, sir, is I'm going to pass things off to you. I'm going to turn off my video and I'm going to sit and enjoy your time with us tonight. So.

Why Satire Matters in an Absurd Age

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for joining us, everybody. And I wanted to thank Pastor Chris and the Kongsfinger Lutheran Church, as well as Lutherans for Life and the local pregnancy center for hosting this event and for having me.

This is going to be a lot of fun. We're just going to kind of talk about humor and satire and why that's so important. Obviously, a live Zoom event isn't as fun as being in person, but hopefully we can still have a good time.

I when Pastor Chris asked me to come on, I was excited to I haven't given I haven't been able to give as many speeches lately because of covid. And it's always such a blessing to be able to share what we do at the Babylon Bee and with everybody.

And the fact that it's for such a great cause is is awesome. So I'm sure we'll get the QR code and all that back up on the screen soon after my after my little session here so that anybody that's following any Babylon Bee fans that have tuned in that you can you can donate to Lutherans for Life.

And that will also be split with the local pregnancy center. So, yeah, just to get started, I had stumbled upon this G .K. Chesterton quote and being in the satire business, it really struck me. Chesterton wrote in 1908 that satire has weakened in our epic for several reasons, but chiefly, I think, because the world has become too absurd to be satirized.

If that was the case 115 years ago, how much more is that true today in 2022? It feels like every year Chesterton's prophecy of how satire would become so difficult and almost impossible becomes more and more true.

Chesterton faced a world that was increasingly encroached upon by modernism, which, of course, was eventually replaced by post-modernism. And this threatened to upend social orders and establish traditions that were painstakingly discovered through thousands of years of trial and error and God's guiding hand.

It seems like Chesterton and men like him stood like a lighthouse warning the world of the rocks of relativism and they hauled out false moralism upon which it would soon crash and how much we have seen that come true.

It feels like if Chesterton felt like the world was too absurd to be satirized, we have no hope in 2022. And that's something that I feel intensely day to day as the editor-in-chief of the Babylon Bee.

Now, if you don't know what the Babylon Bee is, you're probably at the wrong conference, but just in case you don't, we are a Christian satire site. We cover politics, general everyday family life. We cover religion, church life, lots of worship leader jokes, all kinds of fun stuff.

We started out mostly parodying the modern church, the prosperity gospel, American evangelicalism, and all the craziness that we see there. And obviously that's a ripe target, but we quickly expanded to commenting on the insanity of the world that we live in.

And I guess the question that I want to ask today or the topic that I want to explore is it's a pretty dark time. I was talking to some of the event organizers earlier this week when we scheduled this event, we didn't know that we would be talking about World War III.

That wasn't really a topic of discussion, so we thought it'd be fun to have a light-hearted discussion about humor and satire. And now it feels like everything has gotten even more intense since then.

And that's kind of what I want to ask is why satire? Why humor? Why do we do these things? Is it important to joke? Is it important to have a good sense of humor about yourself? And of course I think so, that's why I do what I do.

But I'd like to kind of convince you of that, that it is important to laugh, whether that's reading the Babylon Bee or just having a really good sense of humor about yourself and about your own beliefs even, like being able to recognize hypocrisy in yourself and be able to recognize when you don't quite measure up.

Our satirists here at the Babylon Bee have a tough job. People ask me like, isn't it really easy to write satire for the Babylon Bee in 2022 because the crazy people on the far left and the far right, crazy Democrats, crazy Republicans, crazy Pentecostals, if I can go there.

This is a Lutheran crowd. I suppose that's a friendly joke. Crazy Lutherans even, right? People that are extremists or are just so over the top, you know. How do we wake up in this world every day and write satire that's more absurd than reality?

People think it's easy. People think we have our work all done for us, but it's actually quite difficult to write satire that is more absurd than what's already out there. We wake up every morning and we start to write our jokes and then we look at the real news and there's headlines like that men can get pregnant now that all the last couple years it's illegal to go outside and take your dog for a walk.

We see all kinds of these crazy stories and we have to face down these stories and somehow stare them dead in the eye and somehow come up with something that is even crazier. That's how a good satirist works is you're taking real stuff and you're just taking it to its logical conclusion or you're just pushing it that one step further over the cliff.

You're turning it up to 11. How do you out satirize a world that verges on self-parody and always seems to one-up itself when it comes to ridiculousness? Let me see if I can share my screen here. And do this presentation.

Are you able to enable that, Pastor Chris?

Yes, I'm able to enable that. Give me a second here. I've banned you from that, but give me a second here. Probably a good idea. Yeah, you can now try it, sir. All right, let me give that a.

Shot. I'm juggling two computers and let's see. I think I made it happen. See if you guys can see that. All right, so let me hit this button here. All right, so here's some headlines and I'll click back over to my video in a second, but here's some headlines that were satire when we wrote them and later quickly became true or at least very close to it.

Democrats propose replacing all police with traveling bands of hippies singing Imagine. And just a few months later, we had police in the UK revealed their rainbow car that would drive around and stop crime, inspire people to stop doing crime, I guess.

Here's another one. We joked in 2020 that BLM rioters would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and then several months later, they were actually nominated. They were nominated for one. This is a fun one.

We wrote this in early 2021. Triple masker looks down on people who only double mask and I promise this seemed like satire at the time and it seemed very absurd at the time we wrote it. And then the very next day, this news broadcast came out on NBC.

Cripple masking was much more efficient than double masking. And as much as I'd like to claim that we are modern day prophets, for all these headlines with the gifts of the spirit for today or whatever, satire constantly coming true isn't really a commentary on the quality of the satire.

It's a commentary on the absurdity of this world that we live in. That's really a scary thought. Any one of these ideas would have been so absurd as to not even really be a good joke just a few years ago.

Sometimes if satire is too over the top, it's too crazy, it's too wacky, it's too looney tunes or whatever, then it kind of loses its potency. And now we are having trouble staying ahead of tomorrow's headlines.

We've kind of pitched that as one of our Babylon B possible taglines, tomorrow's news today. It's not just real news though, of course, that makes our job difficult. People who are constantly progressing, trying to push our society towards some humanistic utopia, they seem increasingly determined to remain as humorless as possible.

It wasn't so long ago that we religious people were seen as kind of the fuddy duddies who didn't have a sense of humor, we couldn't laugh at ourselves. I don't necessarily think that that stereotype was true.

Anybody who's been a member of any good church for any amount of time knows the good sense of humor that a lot of the folks have and knows that there's a lot of good humor pointed at us. But that was kind of the stereotype that we were the guys who were sitting haughtily in the corner of a party looking down our noses at people who laugh and have fun.

Or maybe that was just us Baptists. But more and more, it seems that that stereotype rings true more for leftist zealots than it does for Christians. It rings true more for extremists on the secular end of the spectrum, because really secularism has become a religion.

It has its priests in the form of agenda-driven scientists and politicians. It has its dogma and things like Marxism and critical race theory. It has its end times predictions in climate alarmism and hysteria and pandemics.

And it even has its own saviors in progressive politicians and policies. There is some truth, though, that the blindly religious cannot take a joke. We've encountered this time after time as we put our satire out there on social media for the world to see.

We've been fact-checked many times as a satire site, which is bizarre. We've been fact-checked by Snopes, USA Today, the Associated Press, PolitiFact. You name the fact-checking website and we've been fact-checked by them.

The left claims that there's so much sinister fake news and Russian disinformation or whatever out there, but they sure seem to have a lot of time to fact-check jokes. Deliberately obtuse fact-checkers, big tech social media sites, and news networks pretend not to understand our humor and regularly accuse us of sharing dangerous far-right disinformation.

Powerful people on the left wielding massive platforms and plenty of funding use their platforms to try to suppress us and silence us merely because they disagree with our positions. And I'm kind of rattling off this laundry list of people who have attacked us, not to sound like we're persecuted.

Obviously, there's Christians and people all around the world who face much worse persecution than us as a humor site. But I think there is certainly some commentary about our society that just telling jokes draws so much ire.

Just telling jokes makes people so upset of us and really try to use all their power to shut us down. I think it does say something about the state of our society and where we're headed. And that's why tonight I'd like to argue for the power of humor and the importance of laughter.

And I know we're dealing with heavy topics today, like the World War III possibility, Russia invading Ukraine, all kinds of things are going on. We're obviously dealing with pro-life organizations, Lutherans for Life and the Pregnancy Center.

Abortion is not a topic to be taken lightly. And yet, I think satire and humor can play a role in exposing the evil of those things. And we'll deal with that in just a little bit. But first, let me see if I can do this again.

Sorry, bear with me here. So, here's some of the people that have attacked us as the Babylon Bee over the years. This is Brian Stelter. He called us a fake news site. So, this is Donny O'Sullivan of CNN.

And he was mad. I won't read that whole wordy tweet. But he was mad at us because a Babylon Bee article got more shares than the CNN story on the same topic. And he posted this to shame us and claim that that was evidence that we were actually sharing disinformation.

And what's more interesting is that post, that tweet that he's sharing there is from an ex-CIA agent who called us disinformation. In that tweet thread that he quotes, she goes on to say that we use the word satire as a shield to protect us from anti-disinformation activity.

And we're not actually a humor site. We're just a far-right misinformation site. This is a quote from the New York Times associating us and calling us far-right misinformation. A far-right misinformation site that uses the word satire to protect our presence on Facebook.

And they say, for example, the Babylon Bee, a right-leaning site, sometimes trafficked in misinformation under the guise of satire. And here's a couple of fact checks that we've gotten in the past, which are all bizarre.

We wrote a joke saying that after water had been discovered on the moon, Trump proposed a space navy. And this was classified as dangerous misinformation and fact-checked by USA Today. Another one that USA Today fact-checked is we claimed that the Ninth Circuit overturned Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death.

And these fact checks, if you get a chance, you really should go look up these fact checks because they're hilarious. They're almost funnier than the original article. The USA Today fact-checker here goes and she actually calls the, she says she actually called the Ninth Circuit court to ask them if they had overturned Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death as part of her fact check.

So that was awesome. So we did, we wrote this article, Senator Hirono demands Amy Coney Barrett be weighed against a duck to see if she is a witch. And you won't get that unless you know Monty Python.

And it got removed from Facebook's, who said that it was inciting violence. So let me see if I can pause this again. So, and I, and I kind of, you know, just have a laundry list of all those times we've been attacked just to kind of prove the point that there is this bizarre pushback against us.

Snopes has accused us of muddying the waters of current events in order to confuse and mislead people for clicks. And they draw no distinction between our humorous and obviously clearly labeled satire and people who actually publish fake news.

Whenever they fact check the onion, it's always very, you know, it's always very positive towards the onion and it kind of accused, Snopes will kind of accuse the readers of being the ones who are fooled.

When they fact check us, they accuse us of intentionally misleading people. So there's, there's an obvious kind of bias there when it comes to the way that we are fact-checked. The probably the most absurd one we got is that Facebook threatened our site with the deplatforming and demonetization for sharing fake news.

And the headline, if I can get that one up again, sorry, I'm learning zoom here. So we did this headline CNN purchasing purchases, industrial sized washing machine to spin the news before publication.

Sorry, it's not up there. Maybe now you can see it. Giant washing machine. So this was the article that got us threatened with deplatforming and demonetization from Facebook. I mean, it's just so absurd on its face.

You know, no one on planet earth ever believed that headline. Nobody actually thought that CNN purchases purchased the giant washing machine to spin the news. It doesn't even make sense. And yet we were facing the complete destruction of our platform and the ability to reach our audience merely because we were making fun of the left.

It's absolutely insane. And just for fun, here's a few other, here's a few other Babylon P headlines that Snopes has fact checked in the past. Trump, I have done more for Christianity than Jesus. California Christians must now register Bibles as assault weapons.

That might be true. Just that's one of those that's just not true yet. Thanks to new laws, VeggieTales finally introduces new cannabis character. Sorry, there's kids in the room. I'll get this moving along here.

Joel Osteen launches line of pastoral wear, sheep's clothing. Sorry, you guys are all...

Oh, I like that.

You sound offended. Is there a bunch of Joel Osteen fans there? I don't know. Ocasio-Cortez appears on The Price is Right, guesses everything is free. And here's another one that was fact checked. Pope Francis says COVID vaccine will now be required to enter heaven.

I read a lot of very concerned tweets from Italian grandmothers in Italian. That he was going to actually do this. So this one started making the rounds in Italy. Let me see if I can get back to my beautiful face here.

Satire was of course fine in the liberal wonder years of the Colbert Report and the glory days of Saturday Night Live and not to mention The Onion. And none of these sites were ever fact checking these guys are going all, you know, calling them disinformation.

You know, Saturday Night Live had a bit where Sarah Palin said that she could see Russia from her house. You know, and that's like, there's still people today who think she actually said that because of the Saturday Night Live bit.

And you don't really, you don't see these sites raising this massive concern about fake news and misinformation. When nearly 100 of comedy was coming from the left, liberals pretended to be cool with satire.

And when attacks started coming in their direction, they quickly changed their tune. And the question I kind of want to ask is, you know, is satire worth defending in the face of this kind of an onslaught?

Should conservatives and religious people throw in the towel and seed this ground of culture and art to the left? As we've seen happen in the art and the realm of art and music and movies over the past several decades?

Well, of course, as the editor in chief of the Bound1B, I believe it is time for us to take a stand. It's time for us to create something good, to create something true, to create something funny and beautiful and fight back, especially when it comes to satire.

Satire is a powerful and a multifaceted tool with a long and storied history within Christianity. So I'll kind of spend the rest of the time here just talking about a few of the benefits that satire has and some of the roles that it can play in the church and in the culture, just kind of as a supporting argument for the fact that we need to defend satire.

I classify kind of the first advantage of using humor and satire as that satire has a prophetic role to play. And of course, I'm not arguing for modern day, you know, craziness or anything. I'm talking about a prophetic role to play in the sense that it is speaking truth, as sometimes the word prophecy is used to refer to in the Bible.

Throughout the Bible and church history, God used humor to mock the foolish and to call people to see through the fleetingness of current events and to behold that which is transcendent. There's, of course, the famous example is when Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal and he did not attempt to reason with them.

He didn't write a 3 ,000 word blog post arguing of why Baal is a false god and not that there's not a place for apologetics and argument and blog posts and theology, but there comes a time for mockery.

And Baal, of course, Elijah mocked their god asking if their god was absent because he was too busy relieving himself. Of course, you guys have read the passage and they took the bowl that was given them and they prepared it and called upon the name of Baal for morning till noon saying, oh Baal, answer us.

But there was no voice and no one answered and they limped around the altar that they had made. And at noon, Elijah mocked them saying, cry aloud for he is a god. Either he is musing or he's relieving himself or maybe he's on a journey or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.

That's pretty brutal. I mean, think of it from our perspective if someone was saying, hey, your god is not answering your prayers. And obviously, atheists will do this kind of argument. God is not answering your prayers.

Maybe he's asleep. He's just this magic sky fairy or whatever. And Elijah uses this kind of mockery very effectively. Satire speaks to false cultural beliefs by absolutely skewering them. We use satire and humor to speak to the culture.

And just as an aside, there's people that will say, you know, as the Babylon Bee or you guys as Christians, you know, you shouldn't write jokes about things that are going on in the culture. You should stick to satire about the church.

You know, you should only use satire to point inward. Otherwise, it's, you know, punching down or bullying or all kinds of arguments that they'll make there. And that's not what Elijah is doing here. You know, he's not using satire just as this tool to expose hypocrisy or sin within the community.

He's using it to point to cultural beliefs outside that are threatening Israel and threatening the people of God. So I think there's even an example here in the Bible of satire mocking cultural beliefs that are ridiculous.

And I think that is a powerful place for satire. Even God himself, speaking through Isaiah, mocked idol worship, turning the powerful lens of satire on his own people. In Isaiah 44, we read the word of the Lord, the woodcarver uses part of the wood to make a fire.

With it, he warms himself and bakes his bread. Then, yes, it's true, he takes the rest of it and makes himself a god to worship. He makes an idol and bows down in front of it. He burns part of the tree to roast his meat and to keep himself warm.

He says, ah, that fire feels good. Then he takes what's left and makes his God a carved idol. He falls down in front of it, worshiping and praying to it. Rescue me, he says, you are my God. This passage literally just cracks me up sometimes because God is, Isaiah is just mocking, absolutely mocking the idol worship within Israel and saying, you know, you go cut down a tree, how do you know that you didn't cut the wrong half of the tree for firewood and the wrong half for the idol and you're accidentally worshiping firewood, you know, and oops, you burned your God because you picked the wrong side.

It's a really powerful tool. So, we can also see how humor can be prophetic and that it's a way that it could expose sin and folly within the congregation, within our own community. And just as another side note that I just thought of, this is one criticism of satire that you'll get for Christians using satire is that satire always good satire is supposed to punch up.

You can only make fun of the powerful, you know, the rich and powerful or whatever. And you're not supposed to make fun of the poor or whoever they say, whoever, you know, the people making this argument would say is the oppressed or the lowly, you know, you're not supposed to make fun of them.

You're only supposed to make fun of the correct groups or else it's not actually satire. But that's not what's happening here. You know, Isaiah's words are going out to the poorest farmer, the poorest shepherd, and he's exposing sin in their lives.

So, satire can target all kinds of things, not just the powerful. Satire can target sin in our own lives, no matter what class we happen to be a part of. Jesus mocked his foes, of course, you know, we know some of the vicious words of Jesus and just even the very clever turns of phrases that when he's asked if the disciples asked if they should pay taxes and they hand him the coin, you know, the coin says Caesar is the son of God and he's like, give Caesar his coins, then give him his blasphemous coins if he's the son of God, you know, and it's a way for him to get out of this trap.