December 21, 2022 with Keith Foskey on “A Christian Approach to Comedy & Humor”

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 21st day of December 2022.

I'm thrilled to have back on the program an old friend and a returning guest, Keith Foskey, one of three pastors of Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksonville, Florida, and the host of the podcast, Conversations with a Calvinist.

Today we're going to be approaching a Christian approach to comedy and humor in search of the very rare and nearly extinct smiling Calvinist, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to the Iron Sharpens Iron Radio program, Keith Foskey.

Yes, sir, Chris, I'm glad to be here as always, and thank you for having me on the show. I always enjoy it.

Always enjoy having you on, brother. And for the sake of our listeners who have not yet heard you on this program or are unfamiliar with you from any other media, tell us about Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksonville.

Sovereign Grace Family Church is a Reformed Baptist church on the north side of Jacksonville. We're about five minutes from the Jacksonville International Airport, so if you are anywhere in Jacksonville, you probably know where the airport is.

We are only a couple of miles away from the airport, and just a quick run from there. We are committed to expository preaching. We hold to the 1646 London Baptist Confession. That's the first London Baptist Confession.

It predates the Westminster Confession. It predates the Westminster.

Yes, and we're an elder-led church. We have three ordained ministers, myself, Mike, and Andy serve as our elders, and you are good friends with one of those, a former pastor of yours, I believe.

Not a former pastor of mine. Andy Montoro was a former pastor of my late wife, Julie. Andy Montoro and Dawn Blend were her pastors at First Baptist Church of Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, and had many great memories of fellowship with Andy, and both laughter-filled and tear-filled, and a great brother in Christ, and I believe, I like to take credit for things whenever I can.

I believe it was me that actually led him to your church, and which eventually led to him becoming one of the pastors there.

Yeah, he had retired from being a pastor of a different church, and had come here as a member, and after some time, became one of our elders, yeah, as one of our pastors. So yes, absolutely, you were instrumental in that, so thank you.

And if I'm not mistaken, the first time I met you was when you had invited Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries to preach at Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksonville, and I happened to be in Florida on, I think it was a speaking tour that Dr. White was involved in, in different churches down in Florida, and that's why, I believe that's the first time I met you, isn't it?

Yeah, we may have shook hands before that at a conference or two, but that was the time we spent some time together. That was the time I got to hear you do your party-hardy Marty, Martin Luther, which I'll never forget that, and for those who don't know, we're going to be talking about Christian humor today.

People need to know Chris is a funny dude, Chris is a funny brother, and party-hardy Marty needs to be resurrected every October 31st. It needs to be something that we do on the annual basis.

Well, you know, I don't know if he still does it, but Bill Shishko, who was the pastor of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Franklin Square in New York, he is now pastoring an OPC church plant called The Haven in Comack, Long Island, New York, but when he was pastoring at the OPC, for years they would have a Reformation Day celebration, and they would always play the CD of that song.

So I was very honored by that. Well now tell us about your podcast, Conversations with a Calvinist, which obviously reveals that you are a theological bigot, because you're only having conversations with Calvinists.

Well, see that's the confusion, is I'm the Calvinist.

Oh!

See, I'm Keith Foskey, and I'm your Calvinist, is my sign-off. That's every show, that's how I sign-off.

So you have conversations that you sometimes have non-Calvinists on.

Oh, absolutely. In fact, I have a small group of guys who are regulars on the program, and one of them is named Matthew Henson, and we all refer to him as our not-yet-Calvinist friend, because he's not a Calvinist, but we just say that's just not yet, it's coming, it's coming.

Well this is a controversial issue that we are addressing because this issue, which should just be a time of reflecting on a merry heart maketh like a good medicine and should bring smiles to our faces, but there is a division in the body of Christ on humor.

We all should agree that filthy, coarse, vulgar jesting is always wrong. There are things that are unanimously held as being improper, if not even seriously dangerous in the spiritual realm when it comes to humor that is offensive to God and Christ.

But there are different views of humor, things that you and I think are completely fine to laugh at and cause others to laugh with. Some people raise their eyebrows and think that we are being improper, and I think that more than the other theological camps, I think that Calvinists may be the most guilty of that kind of sour reaction.

Although I do see a healthy rise of funny Calvinists around the United States and perhaps other parts of the world, so perhaps things are turning around, but tell us why humor is important to you and why you even wanted to discuss it today.

Well what brought up this topic is in the last couple of, well it really has only been in the last couple of months, I have begun to produce and distribute humorous videos which are intended to address truthful things within the body of Christ, but to do so in a somewhat satirical manner, and that's one of the things I did want to address today is the different types of humor.

There's satire, there is things that are intended to be exaggerated and hyperbolic, and all of those have use as tools, and I do believe that truth that is conveyed through humor is often some of the most memorable truth, and this is something my wife and I were talking about last night as I was preparing what I wanted to say today.

If we think about the things that have been said by some of our most famous Reformed preachers, the things that we tend to remember are the things that tend to make us, maybe not laugh, but at least kind of strike us, like how many people repeat Votie Bauckham saying, if you can't say amen, say ouch.

Well that's not a joke, but that's a humorous line, and how many times have people repeated it because they remember him saying it, and I have a line that I say in my church all the time, I say, and it was something I heard from a professor, I say, there's a Greek word for that, and it's baloney.

Anytime I hear somebody say something untrue, I'll say, well the Greek word for that is baloney, and now everybody in my church will make that joke, like we'll be out to dinner and we'll be talking about something that's false or untrue, and they'll say, well you know what Pastor Keith says, there's a Greek word for that, and it's baloney.

Well I got that from Professor Jerry Powers, who was one of my school, one of my teachers in seminary, and it's just those types of witty statements tend to stick with us. We tend to remember things that cause, that strike our funny bone, and even R .C. Sproul, when he said, what's wrong with you people, I mean he was serious when he said that, but if you listen to that recording, people laughed, because that was a funny thing, when he said, what is wrong with you people?

And so I started creating videos that were intended to be truth expressed in humor, and it all started with me recording, in my office I recorded a conversation with myself talking about Calvinism, and at the end of the conversation, the other guy who was the Arminian, he said, well Calvin killed Cervetus, that was how he tried to win the argument, was like just yelling that out of nowhere, because it shows the humor of when somebody doesn't have anything to say, they'll just throw out anything, and so that one little video got quite a lot of attention, and so I made another one, and I made another one, and now we have an entire series that's been viewed over a million and a half times on TikTok, it's been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on Twitter, and YouTube hasn't been as much viewed, but it's got thousands of views on YouTube, so my wife and I write these scripts, we write the skits, if you want to call them that, and then we film them, she helps me, she's my co-producer.

And unfortunately since Iron Sharpens Iron is solely audio, we can't even play what you do as far as those skits are concerned, because most of the humor is in the fact that you are every person, and it's showing you as four, five, maybe six different denominational ministers that you are cutting from one to another to another, reminiscent of Eddie Murphy's version of the Nutty Professor, when he, of course he had multi-million dollar prosthetics and everything on his face and body, but he was at a classic scene at a dinner table, where he was every single person eating, and he was just made up different, used different voices and so on, but they are hilarious, and by the way, how do we get a hold of our listeners, because I failed to mention this, Conversations with a Calvinist, how can they watch slash listen to that?

Okay, well, Conversations with a Calvinist, the easiest way to find is just to go to calvinistpodcast .com, it's just that simple, calvinistpodcast .com will take you directly to our YouTube page, which has all of our short videos and our long-form podcasts, and our podcasts are very serious, people wonder sometimes, is the humor from the short videos, does that mean our podcasts are comedic?

Well, our podcasts are funny, but they're not comedic, we address serious topics on the podcast, and sometimes we do deep dives into Greek studies and things like that, so the podcast is there, the short videos are there,.

And it's just calvinistpodcast .com. Great, and you were just mentioning in one of your skits, how a non-Calvinist just blurts out, well, Calvin killed for Cervetus, that was basically all that an opponent of Dr. James R. White had to say years ago, this would have been in the early 2000s, he debated a Unitarian Pentecostal, a Oneness Pentecostal, Robert Sabin, who is one of the most well-known defenders of the anti-Trinitarian position, the Oneness Pentecostal position, and we were all waiting with bated breath to hear Mr. Sabin's articulate biblical defense that there is no Trinity, and basically he, for the vast majority of the debate, eulogized Michael Cervetus, that's all he really did to try to pull at the heartstrings of those in the audience, so it was a big letdown, because we actually didn't want to see a challenging debate, but so when you do these humorous skits and other things, when you use humor as a Christian pastor, what goes into your mind before you do them, as far as now, am I gonna offend this person, am I gonna offend that person, to give you an example, I had a very long opening routine recently, I was the master of ceremonies at a fundraising banquet for a classical Christian school, Pete Hegseth of Fox News was the keynote speaker, and when I was sitting there being, waiting to be introduced, and I had all these jokes written out, and I'm looking around the audience, and I'm like, whoops, well there are people wearing masks, got to take that out of the routine, whoops, there's that person that I didn't know would be here, you know, that kind of thing, because I knew they'd be offended by what I was gonna say, so I probably cut my whole routine in half, but what goes through your head, if at all, in concerns over who you may offend, because you are poking fun at other denominations, but I think in a light-hearted way, I can't even imagine that somebody would actually be offended by what you do, and I think you also use, you know, you're making fun of Calvinists too, on occasion, so tell us.

Yeah, I think that where the.

Fair game lies is, as long as you're willing to poke fun at yourself, then you can, you know, then you can say things that might, other people might not get away with, because people understand you're doing it with, in a sense of light-heartedness, you know, I'm not coming in and smacking people around, there are times when I say things that are pretty rough, but at the same time, I'm, you know, I would like to say equal opportunity offense, you know, everybody gets it.

The one character that seems to be the most popular is the Presbyterian, and I'm not Presbyterian, but I wear a big bowtie, and I wear a sweater vest, and some people have even accused me of being Doug.

Wilson, that I'm trying to be Doug Wilson. Well, you do call yourself a deepwater Presbyterian, I love.

That line. Yeah, that's my, yeah, I got that, I don't remember what pastor said that years ago, but that stuck with me. Again, that's a funny thing that stuck with me, and being a deepwater Presbyterian, meaning I'm a Reformed Baptist, I feel like I can poke fun at Presbyterians in a way that's not mean, because the whole idea of the Presbyterian character is that he thinks that his theology is the best.

Well, I've never met a Presbyterian who didn't think his theology was the best, you know, they're very confident in the Westminster Standards, and so none of them seem to take issue with it, because I'm exaggerating it, but it sort of does hold.

Now, the one I have gotten some grief over is I've been told I'm unfair to Methodists, because I tend to make Methodists very liberal, and the argument is, well, not all Methodists are liberal. I say, yeah, I know, but they're all Arminian, and so I can, that's my thing, I say I'm a Calvinist, I'm going to give the Arminian a hard time, and so that's, again, just being fair, and I did one video one time very early on, where I did a video where there were some ladies who were singing about being pastors, like how God had ordained them as pastors, and I cut into the video some words.

Well, I thought they were Roman Catholics. They weren't. They were Anglicans, and that's the only video I felt bad about, because I said something about Roman Catholicism that was incorrect, so as long as, if I say something wrong, I'll own it, but otherwise, it's just humor, and so, you know, truth, you know, like I said, truth or humor, as long as what I'm saying is correct,.

I don't feel so, I don't feel bad about it. So, go a little bit further into this whole concept of why it is completely appropriate, acceptable, and even healthy and beneficial for Christians.

To be involved in comedy and humor. Well, I think in a lot of ways that when we hear the term sober-minded, I think that we think that that automatically means that we have to be always super serious, but at the same time, I don't think that that's what that means.

I think sober-minded means that we have to be mature. I think we have to be respectful. I think we have to be godly, and yet, at the same time, I see a place for, again, even in Scripture, a place for satire, a place for, I think Jesus used sarcasm.

I hope people don't get offended when I say sarcasm, but I think there were times where he was sarcastic in the sense of where he would say things to people that were intentionally to drive a point home.

I mean, when you say to Nicodemus, you know, you're the teacher of Israel and you don't know this, right? I mean, like, there's a little bit of, you know, sanctified sarcasm. Or how about the.

Account of Mount Carmel in the Old Testament, where God is saying, where is your God?

Is he going to the bathroom somewhere? Yeah, exactly, exactly, and that one, you know, I've heard that used to defend crass joking, you know, people who use foul language and things like that. I think we have to be careful.

I know that's not what you're saying, but I do think we have to be careful that we don't oversell, you know, like say, well, he said your God's on the toilet, so that means I can use whatever word I want to use.

I can say a curse word or something, and I'm very careful. I don't use any curse language. Obviously, I don't, as a pastor, I wouldn't want to do that anyway, and I try to always, you know, I just present things in a way that I think are truthful and yet at the same time funny.

You know, a pastor who, the thing about the firetruck baptism, I did my very first denominations video, I talked, one of the guys was Big Eva. Big Eva is the guy who is, you know, the multi-site campus church guy, and I said, you know, Big Eva was talking about their 60-foot water slide baptism and their firetruck baptistry for little kids, and what's funny is both of those things, maybe not the 60-foot slide, but I have seen in churches where they have created these six flags over Jesus atmospheres where everything is meant to be playful, and that was what the joke was about, is churches have become six flags over Jesus.

So I think there's a place for truth or humor, and again, it seems to resonate with people, and it seems to cause people to remember it, and that's, you know, part of what teaching does,.

Teaching that sticks, you know. Who are some of your favorite comedians that you promote and share their humor with your congregants and friends and so on? I mean, immediately the person who comes to mind when it comes to specifically Christian humor is Hans Feeney, and I am, or Feeney, please forgive me, Hans, if you're listening, because I can't remember how to pronounce his name even though I interviewed him once, but he is the genius behind Lutheran satire, and some of those videos are the funniest things I've ever seen in my life, inside or outside secular comedy.

So who are some of your favorites? Well, let me say this about that. I'm glad you.

Brought that up, because Hans, if you're listening, two things. One, I would love to do a collaboration with you, a Calvinist and Lutheran do something funny together. I think that would be awesome. So Hans, if you're listening, if you're listening, I want to do something.

I don't do, I don't do the cartoons like you do, so I do all my own very cheesy videos, but I'm putting it out there, because yes, you're right, Hans is brilliant. So that's the first thing. Second thing, he's got a video on how Luther and Zwingli and Calvin, they do this little, Luther's like, I'm starting my Reformation, and then Zwingli comes up and he goes, it is my Reformation, and then Calvin comes in, no, no, it is my Reformation.

And that video is my favorite, even though I think his Horace Ruins Christmas is probably the one I've shown people the most. The video, I just want to say those two things. So Hans, if you ever see this brother, I love you.

I think you're great. So yeah, he's definitely a number one, for sure.

Anybody else?

Yeah, I've got a, I got a list. I don't know how long before our first break, but I could,.

But I know about three minutes.

Okay. All right. Well, the first one on my mind is someone that maybe people have never heard of, but he's an older Christian comedian, and his name is Dennis Swanberg. He was known as the Minister of Encouragement.

That was what his title was. And you can find his videos online, Dennis Swanberg, they called him the Swan, and he was a Christian Impressionist, and he did impressions of Don Knotts, and the guy from It's a Wonderful Life, Jimmy Stewart.

He did all these great old actors, and he was such a fine Impressionist, and I used to watch his stuff for hours. I could watch him do his Don Knotts impression just forever. So Dennis Swanberg was a tremendous Christian comedian, and he would go to churches, and he would put on Christian comedy shows, similar to Tim Hawkins today.

Tim Hawkins would be another Christian comic today, but Dennis Swanberg was the last generation of that, from like the 70s, who did that. And so I would say those two guys. Another one would be Ray Stevens.

Ray Stevens was one of my favorite musical comedians. You know, The Squirrel Went Berserk and The First Self-Righteous Church must be one of the greatest of all times as far as poking fun at Christianity.

I mean, if you listen to The Squirrel Went Berserk, you know, that song pokes so much fun at the church. He's got the Sister Bertha Better Than You is a great line, you know, and so those would be that.

And there's also a few secular comedians that I think are really funny. Probably the guy who I like the most right now, who's very clean, his name is Nate Bargatze. He's a clean, secular comedian. He has a podcast that he does with some other guys who are clean comedians, and they are all known for that.

And I love clean stand-up guys that I can watch. Dry Bar Comedy, which I think is actually put out by Mormon, so I have to be careful to promote that. But Dry Bar Comedy is a group of clean, it's a clean comedy.

I've seen that. I had no idea there was a Mormon connection.

I believe it's in, I actually think it's in Utah. I think it's actually in Salt Lake. But it's those, typically everybody on there is clean. But Nate Bargatze had a, is a guy that I would say is, you know, for the most part, I mean, he is secular.

I don't, he might be a Christian. I think he's talked about that some, but he's not a Christian comic. Guys, like I said, Christian comics would be Tim Hawkins, Dennis Swanberg, and then, of course, Ray Stevens, who is, I know these are generationally, modern people don't know who they are.

Now, I have one for you that you might remember, Chris, because you go back a little ways, like I do. Do you remember Mike Warnke? Oh, yeah, and he turned out to be a fraud. He was,.

Yes, he was, he was telling people that he was in a satanic cult and witnessed a human sacrifice and all kinds of things like that.

Yeah, well, Mike Warnke, you know, for all that he was, as far as his falsehoods, I've never heard a better storyteller. Mike Warnke, and again, he was, you know, it comes with the territory if you're telling falsehoods.

But, but Mike Warnke, I used to have all of his tapes, and I listened to them growing up. And so that was the type of thing that somebody who could tell a good story was what really got my attention. So that was influences.

Yeah, yeah. And the Jim Gaffigan had for years made me split my gut and he never cursed or anything like that. Then he started to let them fly once in a while during his routine unexpectedly more recently.

And then he became overly critical against conservatives. And it started to get a little bit annoying to me. And I don't, I don't enjoy him as much as I used to. But I think that he made a fatal error in becoming overly political, unnecessarily offending a huge portion of his audience, no doubt, since he was clean.

But we have to go to our first break right now. And if anybody has a question for Keith Foskey on comedy and humor in the Christian faith, send it to ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N gmail .com.

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We are now back with Keith Foskey, who is pastor of Sovereign Grace Family Church in Jacksonville, Florida. He's also the host of the podcast known as Conversations with a Calvinist, and if you have a question for Pastor Keith, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, c-h-r-i-s-a-r-n-z-e-n at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. We are discussing a Christian approach to comedy and humor, and we already do have a question for you from all the way over in Metro Manila in the Philippines, Keith.

We have Ramon who says, can you ask Keith.

What his favorite Bible verse on humor is? I don't know if I've ever been asked that question, so I don't know that I can give a great answer. Let's see. We mentioned it earlier. Proverbs 17 22 says, a merry heart doeth good like a medicine.

I'll tell you how that works out in real life for me. I know that some of the most difficult ministry times that I have had to be a part of were times where people were going through a tremendous amount of grief, and certainly you don't want to be a clown or a fool when people are grieving, but sometimes a word that is rightly spoken in a way that can bring a smile to someone's face in a moment of difficulty can be like a medicine, and I do think that when it says a merry heart doeth good like a medicine, I think that is something for us to consider.

Again, not being a fool or being a jester, but our words can be soothing, our words can be comforting, our words can be funny. So I would say that. I would say Proverbs 17 22, probably the one that I would point to the most quickly.

And you know there is a verse that I'm probably the only one on the planet who thinks it's funny. I remember the first time I heard it as a new Christian. I kind of chuckled, and I still chuckle when I hear it, because it is to me

I don't know if Jesus was using a sense of humor here, but in Matthew 21, it says when they approached Jerusalem and had come to Bethpage at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples saying to them, go into the village opposite you and immediately you will find a donkey tied there and a colt with it.

Untie them and bring them to me. And if anybody asks, if anyone says anything to you, you shall say, the Lord needs them, and he will send them on immediately. Now that just seems like you know, if anybody's asking you while you're doing something, and you just say, oh the Lord needs them, and they're going to be satisfied with that.

That just always has struck me funny, but it might be because I'm a bit mentally ill. I don't know why. And by the way, thanks Ramon for for sending in the question, and keep listening to Iron Radio, and spreading the word about the show in the Philippines and beyond.