Calvin Synod Herald, 2007 (108. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2007-03-01 / 3-4. szám
CALVIN SYNOD HERALD 5 “Geneva & Mad Magazine?” In 1965 Robert L. Short wrote “The Gospel According to Peanuts.” In 1970 Vemard Eller wrote “The Mad Morality or the Ten Commandments Revisited.” If you had even a minor interest in these two books you might want to read this article. Charles M. Schultz once put his calling as a cartoonist into this context. He said that he had two desires in his young life. One the one hand he wanted to be a great artist. On the other hand he wanted to be a great philosopher. At one point he realized that he was not talented enough to become either but he could draw philosophically thoughtful cartoons. Like many other seminarians I thought that I could be a great theologian. Then, of course, I become a pastor and read the great theologians and have been greatly humbled. So I gave reign to my odd interest in humor and particularly the one-liner tradition from Henny Youngman through Rodney Dangerfield. At one point it struck me, one-liners are set up the same way that catechism questions are. In the one-liner there is the set up and then the punch line. In the catechism there is the question and then the answer. After this discovery I wrote the book, God is Still Laughing: The Revised Heidelberg Catechism Joke Book. The title page asks the question “What if Rodney Dangerfield and Karl Barth wrote a book together?” The book is based on the outline of the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563. Not only does it have the three parts of “Guilt, Grace and Gratitude” but it also has the 19 divisions that are found in the Miller/Ostenhaven translation of 1963. Gabriel Fackre, the author of The Christian Story, was kind enough to write the foreword. He writes: “Niebuhr, too was UCC, and tried to help us break out of our somber mold. But it takes a Chris Anderson to show just how that works with the classic questions and answers of one of our charters.” (5) The following give a taste of what the book is like: PART I: GUILT Q. Do you believe in sin? A. I not only believe in it, I have seen it and done it myself. (Romans 3:23/HCQ #3) Q. What do you call someone who does not believe in sin? A. An easy target. (Proverbs 22:3) Q. How often does the norma! person say no to temptation? A. Once weakly. (Luke 11:4) PART II: GRACE Q. What can Mae West teach us about our justification? A. “Goodness had nothing to do with it.” (HC Q. # 21) Q. Where do atheists come from? A. God created them. (Genesis 1:26-31/HC Q # 26) Q. What is a theologian? A. A person who knows a lot concerning how little we know about God. (Romans 11:33-36/Augusinte, De Trinitate V. 1.) PART III: GRATITUDE Q. What mathematical symbol summarizes Part III? A. 10 Q. (“You’re welcome.”) (HC Q # 86) Q. What is the problem with religion today? A. Many practice it but few are good at it. (HC Q # 114) Q. What didn't Jesus answer when the disciples asked: "Lord, teach us to pray...? ” A. “Pray the prayer of Jabez.” (Luke 11:1/1 Chronicles 4:10) These one-liners fill the book and the 19 sections of the catechism. I have had many great reactions to the book. Cal Samra, the author of Holy Humor and the leader of “the fellowship of Merry Christians” has called this first book “outrageously funny.” (The Joyful Noiseletter June/July 2006) J. Bennett Guess has called it “...his own testament to the power of laughter - UCC style.” (United Church News March 2006) The second book is titled God Is Still Laughing II: Aid to the Revised Heidelberg Catechism. In 1904 James I Good wrote the book, Aid to the Heidelberg Catechism. Since 1995 I have served the same church that Good served from 1875 to 1877. The title page of my book asks the question: “What if Alfred E. Newman and Rev. James I Good wrote a book together?” You all remember the need that the Ethiopian of Acts 8 had for an interpreter of the scriptures. The second book, in many ways, interprets the first. It contains 19 sermons that cover the Godhead, Creation, the Fall, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Church, Salvation, Living and the Consummation. The first sermon gives an overview of "The Three G’s.” Gabriel Fackre has said concerning these: “Homilies and humor - do they go together? While a joke is a joke is a joke and disappears by attempts to explain, the mix here of homily and humor is magic. Things appear you haven’t seen but should. Don’t miss the theological insights that go with grinning sights in God is Still Laughing II.” Lee Barrett, the author of The Heidelberg Catechism: A New Translation (due out in 2007), wrote the foreword. He writes “Consistently it juxtaposes the sort of one-liners you would expect from a stand-up comic with serious theological considerations. Laughter and edification are bound together in a single package. The jokes serve as a spring-board to introduce some of the most essential doctrinal theses of the Christian message.” (5) It is hard to realize that I will never write something that will stand like Augustine’s De Trinitate, Bernard’s Sermons on the Song of Songs, Calvin’s Institutes, Bullinger’s The Decades or Barth’s Church Dogmatics but then Schultz never got to be either Rembrandt or Kierkegaard. Dr. Chris Anderson (http://home.comcast.net/~fcba) Rev. Dr. F. Chris Anderson is the author of: “God is Still Laughing: The Revised Heidelberg Catechism Joke Book” and “God Is Still Laughing II: Aid to the Revised Heidelberg Catechism.”
