Car Insurance… or Eternal-Life Insurance? You be the judge.

 Writer’s note: I edited the *rewritten* commercial today to make it even better

*CRASH* This is not the time to wish you had Accident Forgiveness.

Now is the time to sign up for Accident Forgiveness.

Starting the day you sign up, your rates won’t go up just because you had an accident, even if it’s your fault.

Don’t drive another day without Accident Forgiveness.

*Cue spokes-actor and logo* Are you in good hands?

This commercial just hit me — how many insurance commercials do we see on TV, and how many of them could be Christian messages if you just tweaked them a little?

Take this one…

The end of your life is definitely NOT the time to wish you had Christ’s Forgiveness in your life.

Now is the time to get Christ’s Forgiveness!

Starting the day you are baptized, you CAN GET INTO HEAVEN — even if you’ve sinned.

Don’t go another day without Jesus!

*cue spokes-Prophet and crucifix* Are you in good hands?

Well… are you?

Catholic Chuckles

So in my days of lying around on the couch with bronchitis, I’ve been watching a lot of stand-up on Comedy Central, and a few things have stuck out to me…

Lewis Black said (not a new bit for him, btw),
“Patriotism and religion are only good and only in balance when they have a sense of humor. When they don’t, things go awry. All we have to do is look at our enemy. That’s a group that does not have a sense of humor. That’s a group that’s just snapped. And that’s what happens when you don’t laugh. You get all wound up in what you’re believing in and no one’s going ‘heh, heh, heh’, and you’re screwed.”

Now, I don’t know about that being the root cause of why “our enemy” is after us and all that, but I think he does have a partial point there: We have to be able to laugh about the exact things that we take to be the most precious and serious things in the world to us. Because if we don’t, we’re screwed! That’s why in addition to being able to laugh at others, we have to be able to laugh at ourselves!

I think that humans, made in God’s image and likeness, have such a propensity for laughing, that God MUST have a sense of humor. Oftentimes, for me, it’s what makes life manageable… it’s what brings me the greatest joy. And I don’t feel guilty about it afterwards, either. (Well, usually, anyway, laughing at others’ expense when we shouldn’t is a topic for some other writer, some other day)

So, in that vein, I wanted to share a little religiosity humor from Dane Cook that I saw on TV Sunday night, from his feature called Vicious Circle, which came out on DVD about a year ago:

These are bits and pieces of Dane Cook’s bit about “the sneeze”:

I say “God bless you”, by the way, when someone sneezes.
I don’t say “Bless you”.
I don’t say that because… I’m not THE LORD.
I can’t DO that.
I’m just a messenger for Big Guns upstairs, you know what I’m sayin’?

What am I supposed to say when an atheist sneezes?
“Uh, when you die, nothing happens.”

So he’s laughing at my beliefs, and finally, I just snap.
I go, “Well what about you? Okay? What about you? All right? What happens to you? You’re an atheist. What does that mean? What happens to you after you die?”
Now he gets very serious, like he’s going to school me, okay?
He looks at me, he goes, “Oh I can tell you young man, I can tell you. I know what’s going to happen to me after I die. After I pass on, my body will become one with this earth. From there, I will become a fertilizer for this planet. And with that, I will return as a huge beautiful tree.”
That’s what this guy believes. He’s laughing at me — He’s gonna come back as a f*cking ficus, and… Johnny Weeping Willow over here…
I wanted to slam this guy so bad for this, right? But then I stopped. I stopped, you guys. Please hear me out. I let it sink in, and I want you to as well. I hope when he dies, he DOES become a tree. I hope he’s in the middle of the wilderness and he’s doing his tree thing, whatever it is trees do — I know they do a lot of work with breezes. And wouldn’t it be FANTASTIC if while he was out there just enjoying his tree-ness, through the woods, a huge sweaty guy with an axe comes along, sees him and he (swush! swush! swush!), chops him down (smash!). You put a chain around him, drag him through the mud and the muck, throw him into a saw mill, grind him up (neeeeee!), then you pound him down into paper, and once he’s paper, YOU PRINT THE BIBLE ON HIM.

(And if you didn’t laugh like crazy at that, it’s because either it doesn’t come through well in written form, and you need to search “dane cook sneeze” on YouTube… or you need to get to the doctor right away because your funny bone is broken.)</

And just in case you’re worried that I’m laughing only at *others*, watch this little piece, which is one of THE FUNNIEST THINGS I’ve seen, kind of ever. Oh yeah, that’s right, Dane Cook’s Catholic, baby. Now, he does a lot of gross humor otherwise and whatnot, so I dunno about all claiming him as a “great” representative of the faith, but he’s frickin’ HILARIOUS in this bit.

It’s funny though, because the first time I saw this last bit was in college. A Lutheran was watching it and was reluctant to play it for me, since I was Catholic. I was like, “No way! I love Dane Cook! It’s okay!” and he played it for me. I just about DIED with laughter, and he was shocked: How could I laugh at him making fun of my religion?! But there’s a difference between laughing at yourself, making fun of misconceptions, being silly…. and mocking or deriding a religion in order to offend or shock people. Dane keeps it funny, and I appreciate that.