There seems something even more sinister than a constant dismissal of God in the British media. There seems to be a general laughing at God and the idea that it is an absolute joke that anyone should believe. It is a little out of kilter living in Northern Ireland, the small alcove of the United Kingdom where belief in God is still quite normal and you opt rather than in to faith. The general British media, when it comes to religion, is strangely alien to us weird Northern Irish. However, there are times when the childish scoffing at God is set aside. Such a situation occurred this week when I heard, on the radio, a headmaster finish an emotional statement about the tragic loss of two of his pupils in a bus crash with the words, “We are praying for their families and those who were injured.”
It is this British dichotomy of God that Regina Spektor, an American of Russian birth and Jewish faith, has dealt with in her song Laughing With God from her 2009 album Far. In her Kate-Bushian-quirky-way Spektor lists the places and scenarios in life when “no one’s laughing at God.” The first few lines give the gist –
“No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one’s laughing at God
When they’re starving or freezing or so very poor”
Her chorus then takes us to the places where God can become the easy butt of humour –
“But God can be funny
At a cocktail party when listening to a good God-themed joke, or
Or when the crazies say He hates us
And they get so red in the head you think they’re ‘bout to choke
God can be funny,
When told he’ll give you money if you just pray the right way
And when presented like a genie who does magic like Houdini
Or grants wishes like Jiminy Cricket and Santa Claus
God can be so hilarious
Ha ha”
The ironic sarcasm that Spektor uses at the end of the “God can be so hilarious” is a powerful prophetic preacher’s punch of subtlety. However the exposure of society’s hypocrisy at their big laugh at God and those who believe such nonsense, is coupled with a challenge to those who do believe and then present a God who is less than the robust one that Jesus revealed.
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