Friday, October 11, 2019

How to Be a Perfect Christian, by The Babylon Bee

I picked up The Babylon Bee's How to Be a Perfect Christian thinking it might be little more than a compilation of articles from their their hilarious, satirical web site.  That's not what it is, but I was far from disappointed.  They manage to be profound by being absurd.  The basic pattern is to take the opposite position of what a perfect Christian would be, and get you to laugh at ways in which you might tend toward that opposite position.

Their main audience is American evangelicals, and their main target is cultural conformity.  They write, "to become perfect, you need to baptized in the glorious waters of Christian culture."  You have to listen on to Christian music, watch only Christian movies, attend the most popular, trendy megachurch, and speak in fluent Christianese.

There are plenty of shades and allusions to Babylon Bee articles.  If you've read the Bee for a while, you know what to expect in terms of tone and topics.  I love the way they have taken that site and created this topical book.  People who will likely enjoy this book the most are those who are in the midst of, or close to, popular modern evangelicalism.  How to Be a Perfect Christian is like a funhouse mirror for us, distorting our images in a hilarious way while forcing us to reflect on what real flaws may be hiding under the surface.

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