For the past few years, The Babylon Bee has been for me a source of both much enjoyment and much frustration. If you haven’t heard of it before, The Babylon Bee calls itself “Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire.” They have a fantastic spread of delightful satire pieces that do everything from mock Christian subculture, portray the implications of living out either end of the spectrum in common theological dichotomies (i.e. predestination vs. free will), point out ways everyday Christians evade obeying the Bible, even poke fun at prominent figures like John Piper.
But lately, The Bee has gotten, well…political. That’s not to say that Christians must abstain completely from involvement in politics. Quite the opposite: We must use whatever positions God has placed us in and whatever power He has given us to honor Him and to pursue justice and mercy, but that’s an article for another day. When The Bee gets political, it often furthers the idea that Biblical Christianity and Conservative Republicanism are one and the same.
Very occasionally, they publish an article that fairly portrays two sides of a controversial political issue, that is to say, they make both sides look equally idiotic, as they do in their article on gun control. However, when The Bee oversteps its bounds, as it often does, it becomes the antithesis of the Christian call to love.
For the Christian, the purpose of satire is twofold:
The first is to bring humor, which The Bee does very well when it speaks of John Piper knocking out a tooth or walloping a fly during a sermon. Absolutely hilarious. Or when it tells of a mountain climber living by the Christian cliche to “let go and let God.” Or in this article, where a man waits 60 years for his wife to finish socializing after church. The Bee holds a special place in my heart when it speaks to the woes of the A/V tech folks, who quite literally keep services running.
The more powerful purpose of satire is to, as my social justice-minded friends would say, “speak truth to power.” This too, The Bee has done very well, when it chooses its target with discernment. When it satirizes things within Christian subculture, it speaks to its main audience–Christians–bringing out the things that aren’t quite right within the church and within Christian subculture, such as the way we treat singleness, superficially choose churches, take the Bible out of context, use social media to boast about our spirituality or ignore the Great Commission in our everyday lives. Sometimes The Bee goes after televangelists that preach a false gospel of prosperity, while continuing to pocket millions of dollars. I think it also continues to speak truth to power when it when it satirizes the overwhelming Evangelical support of Trump, despite his clear lack of moral character.
But satire should not be used to drown out and justify ignoring those with whom one does not agree. Such satire is equivalent to a child on a playground plugging his ears and shouting endless ad hominem insults. The Bee’s treatment of “the Left,” and any topic that the Left vaguely espouses, amounts to this. (Except when it talks about Trump. The Bee seems to hate Trump and Clinton equally.) The Bee portrays liberals on the Left as lazy bums who refuse to get jobs, as well as people plotting to silence and censor them. This perpetuates an “us versus them” mentality that justifies the ridicule and dismissal of anything a liberal brings to the table. For instance, these satirical pieces that target feminism and trigger warnings, in a way that immediately shuts down any conversations about male privilege or trauma and mental health.
But The Bee‘s most grievous offenses have been in their treatment of sensitive topics, such as abortion, homosexuality, and transgender issues*, topics on which mainstream evangelical Christianity’s position is known all too well, after years of shaming, picketing, and shouting from street corners. Regardless of your opinions on what you think the Bible says about homosexuality or whether people should switch genders, The Bee’s use of satire in this way has been downright unloving, insensitive, and unchristian. These are nuanced and complicated subjects, things bring real hurt and pain into the narratives of those involved (much of it from Christian culture). These are things that are part of the stories and identities of real people. They are not things to be taken lightly. Satire should never be used to further put down an already marginalized group. To target those who are considering abortion, the LGBTQ+ community, and many others who have already experienced enough stigma and shame from the church and the culture at large is nothing less than cruel.
Every time I see one of those articles from The Bee, it brings up a feeling of revulsion, even anger for those whom it would hurt. And I wonder, “What would they think of Christians in light of this?” More than that, “What would they think of Christ?”
1 Peter 2:12 gives us this command:
Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. (ESV)
To me, much of The Bee’s insensitive satire does not align with this Biblical mandate to keep one’s conduct in the unbelieving world honorable. Instead, it has been abrasive, tactless, hurtful, ungracious, and unrepresentative of the love and compassion that Christ showed to the broken. I think of Jesus’s interaction with the woman at the well in John 4. Though He did not agree with or approve of the things she had done in her life, He chose to engage with her, listening and dialoguing with her. Or the love he showed in John 8, to the woman who was about to be stoned by the religious leaders, the moral police of their day. Though He called her to leave her life of adultery, He did not join in to condemn her but sat with her until her accusers had all left.
Instead of shooting blindingly with vicious satire at the topics and communities that they have never stopped to truly see, The Bee, and Christian culture as a whole, should take a cue from Jesus, stop shouting condemnation, satirical or not, and take a moment to listen with compassion to the stories of the hurting and broken.
* Also this, this, this, and this.
a cup of kimitea 