Tasha Dhanraj’s Thought for Week 3

Sometime around last Christmas I was pondering the nature of Jesus’ incarnation – as one typically does after three glasses of Buck’s fizz. Most Christians believe that the Holy Trinity existed as God the Son, God the Father and God the Holy Spirit from the get go of eternity.

So, what this means is that Jesus would have spent all the millions and billions of years of time before humans appeared hanging out in heaven with some creepy spirit being with a non-descript job title and his Dad. It sounds like the worst holiday ever.

What was he doing for all that time? Was he just playing canasta and waiting for his chance to get squeezed out of a woman’s vagina?

For some reason (alcohol) I decided that this would be a hilarious idea for a comedy play. Flash forward five months and somehow that play has become a real concept and is being performed at my college, Mansfield.

It’s only at this point that I’ve started to worry about whether what I’ve written is a tad offensive.

As a Theology student, I spend most of my time picking apart the inconsistencies in doctrine and reading up on the minutia of the Bible that most Christians try to ignore. Thinking lots of it is a bit silly, whilst still respecting the religion and its followers is something I’m used to.

Of course, the people who follow the religion might disagree with me.

It’s easy to forget how important Christianity is to the people who believe in it. It’s not just a matter of having ‘an imaginary friend’ as some non-religious folk seem to think, but it’s actually about having a personal relationship with the God who created them. To some people, being rude or mocking about their religion is as if you are being rude or mocking about their close friend.

Luckily for me, I’m a terrible friend and am regularly rude and mocking about all those I hold dear.

With anything I do, I never set out to be offensive. (I appreciate that’s not a particularly meaningful statement. Anyone who sets out with the agenda to be offensive is, quite frankly, an arsehole, but for the sake of my ego let’s pretend that I’m really unique and thoughtful.)

What I think is important with regards to jokes about religion is to make sure that you’re not mocking the belief in the religion or those who believe it, but just the content of it.

Everyone holds some things to be true that can’t be explained or can’t be proved. And to be honest, even if you think that someone’s belief is totally stupid, we’ve all been total idiots at one point or another and it’s just a douchebag move to go out and try to make people feel that stupid. Of course, it’s especially difficult for me to be rude about someone having any kind of faith when I myself believe in some kind of God.

When you’re mocking a religion, though, it’s not really the followers of the religion you should be afraid of offending. It is whichever God or deity whose religion you’re mocking. What if it turns out they were right all along?! What if God is real and is actually very precious and gets offended easily?

What if God is real and only really likes observational comedy? What if God reads the Daily Mail?

My play is on Friday and Saturday. I really hope laughter from some people I barely know is worth eternal damnation. (The Facebook event is here – say whaaaaat?!)