South Park Christianity: Back to the Message

My brother and i were watching this South Park episode yesterday "Starvin' Marvin Goes to Space" (??) and i dramatically groaned and whined every now and then. It featured:

(1) missionaries to Africa who will not feed the children unless they read the Bible and accept Jesus as their Savior;
(2) same missionaries who impose their language upon the natives they're visiting; and
(3) Pat Robertson (of 700 Club) praying for money.

What can i say?

(1) Yes, it's happening.
(2) Yes, it's wrong.
(3) No, that's not what following Christ is all about. :)

(By the way, i love South Park; beyond the crass humor it has intelligent insight, especially in attacking hypocrisy and everything that's wrong with the world. So i actually thank Trey Parker and Matt Stone (or is it Trey Stone and Matt Parker? ;p) for bringing this to our collective attention :) )

We Christians are an imperfect bunch: that's exactly why we need a Savior (Biblical Christianity being the only faith/religion that relies not on what the person does but on what Jesus did for him or her). But this explanation does not at all justify the wrongdoings done in the name of Jesus, or God, or the Bible.

I know this is hard, but let's look beyond the messengers (see first set of three's) and back to the message itself:

(1) Jesus met and ministered to each person's needs; many times leading them to realize on their own that they've just encountered the one, true, living God. ("If I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.") The prosperity gospel and other "versions" of Christianity always have this danger of focusing on the self rather than on God (saying things like, "go to God so you will be blessed!"), and conveniently forget that persecution and suffering are guaranteed in following Christ. However, it is true that God is the source of all blessing: unconditional even. Jesus talked of how everyone gets sun and rain, and how all plants and animals get food --- without the "spiritual blackmail" shown, perhaps truthfully sometimes, in that SP episode.

(2) Jesus is fully God yet He descended into the earth and "demoted" Himself to become human. He took on a human form, He worked, He got tired, got thirsty, got tempted. He imposed standards of perfection and 100% holiness ("Be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect,"), yet only because He gave the simple (but NOT easy) solution: "Nothing is impossible with God." The solution is complete dependence on Him, the God who lived as a human and the only suitable God-Human Ambassador. ("I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.")

(3) We have a lot of requests, and Jesus did guarantee that anything asked of the Father in Jesus' name will be answered. But here is the BEST prayer i have encountered, spoken by Jesus on the eve of His excruciating death: "Father, not my will, but Yours, be done."


Let's go beyond South Park, beyond the awful Christians (myself included), and back to Christ Himself. :)