If you’re a Christian who likes The Onion, you’ll love The Holy Observer. Current headlines:
- Ark of the Covenant Discovered on Craig’s List
- Goodyear Blimp Covers Saddleback Services
- Mom Achieves 100% VBS Coverage
- and my personal favorite -
Christian Personal Ad Gets Too “Personal”
A popular Christian dating site has gone nearly silent after a controversial listing created an uproar last month. A male poster to ChurchyDate.com placed an ad titled, “Song of Solomon man seeks Ezekiel 23 Woman.”
The site doesn’t skewer the Christian faith. Here’s what the writers have to say about it -
The Truth
We at The Holy Observer want to let you in on a little secret: we are all really serious about Christianity. We cling to our faith in the one triune God and affirm the classic Christian consensus—those essentials of the faith that have been believed by all Christians, everywhere, and stated best in documents such as the Apostles’ Creed.
That said, we are acutely aware of two facts that drive the content on this site:
1. Laughter is good for the soul.
2. Satire is an appropriate way—and maybe one of the better ways—to comment on the state of Christianity as it is believed and practiced today.Christians, at times, take themselves too seriously! We can poke fun at the idiosyncrasies that we all have without crossing the line into sacrilege. Just because Christ and the Holy Bible are sacred, doesn’t mean that everything that humans do in the name of Christianity is sacred. Every other belief or ideal that we hold apart from our religion has always been open game. We poke fun at politics, our jobs, and even our families. It’s healthy. It helps us point out the inconsistencies and ridiculousness in our lives in a lighthearted and constructive way. The same should be true for our religious practices. We are human, and our practice of religion is imperfect, just as we all are imperfect. Pointing that out in a good-natured, lighthearted way is not sacrilegious. In fact, it’s constructive. So read our articles looking for the message behind the jab, and have a good laugh. We hope that it helps you take yourself a little less seriously.
One common misconception about this type of humor is that it fosters disunity and animosity among Christians of different traditions and worship styles. Ironically, much of our content that is accused of this is actually designed in a way that we believe brings to light some of the ridiculous presumptions and stereotypes that are the premises of the text. That is, the attacker many times ends up looking more ignorant than the attacked—which is probably the case with many of the issues that cause real division within the church. We fully support the prayer of Christ where he calls all believers to be one “so that the world may believe” (John 17).
On the other hand, we also believe it is reasonable to question and criticize certain behaviors, beliefs, and practices of supposed Christians. God surely gives each of us grace to cover our theological shortcomings, but part of our conversation with God and others must include a humble analysis of differing belief systems.
Ultimately, the actions of any individual can be unhealthy if the motivation is not based on godly ideals. Our intention (besides our intention to make you laugh) is not to harm, but to provoke thought and to keep the human aspects of our relationship with God in proper perspective. We cannot emphasize enough the gravity and seriousness of dealing rightly with the eternal verities of life.
We love Jesus; we love our religion; and we love the church, despite of all its gaffes and blunders (after all, we are all only human!). Thanks for laughing along with us, and hopefully we will all “go on from grace to grace” (to quote John Wesley) and make this world a better place while we’re all here together.
Sincerely,
THO Staff
Non-Christians won’t enjoy this site because they won’t understand quite of lot of it. But if you’re a Christian with a slightly warped and irreverent sense of humor, you’ll bookmark it and visit often.
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