"Don't Run with Knives!"

"Don't run with knives!"    Love, Mother.

"If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."    Love, Mother.

When it comes to satire, one of these is good advice. The other is not. 

We have a little problem here. Somewhere way back in mankind's illustrious linguistic history somebody found out that the big, ugly playground bullies with their lethally aimed "sticks and stones" aren't the only pain-inflicting villains to be wary of. "Words will never hurt me!" has always been a defense mechanism. And a lie. We've learned that a quick cut from a knife blade can hurt much worse and for far longer than a couple of good whacks from a bully's stick. 

A word is a knife. Or can be. Consider the word "Sarcasm." It's Greek. Means "flesh cutting." Pretty picture, yes? And most of us know the biting feel of sarcasm's blade. In literary circles it's called satire. Same thing, just people started making money off of it in the early 18th century. Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, Dryden, Defoe--everyone was doing it! But it didn't make people any less mad then. 

Since then, we've come a long ways. We've civilized ourselves and set up walls against those cutting words. The most ostensibly moralistic one is a nice little--no, fairly good-sized two-word phrase: "politically correct." (This phrase is actually intellectual-ese for "lying through my teeth.") Because we can't say anything that might offend someone. So we just try to change people by keeping a "good Christian testimony" or something like that. 

Well, recently there seems to be a rediscovering of the fact that--gasp!--Jesus said offensive things! Not just offensive, but funny too! So they cut the flesh--and made people laugh! It's not just Jesus, either. God does it in other places of Scripture to. He makes fun of idol worshipers who chop down a tree and, very economically, use one half out of which to carve their idol and the other part of the tree for firewood! 

The defense of satire as a mode used in Scripture is growing. This is good. Pastors such as Mark Driscoll and Douglas Wilson offer some well thought-out and helpful looks at Biblical satire. So, we're allowed to be sarcastic again! 

Here's what scares me (and you satirists can satirize me for my unease): sarcasm has always been fun. At least for the one holding the knife. (The one getting his flesh mutilated, eh, not so fun.) And now with this rediscovery of satire, it's like being given a gift (and satire requires a degree of wit that really is a gift) at Christmas--one you really like! So you run around showing it off to everyone. Or trying it out on everyone--hey, it's fun! 

Not the thing to do with knives. This is not the same thing as having the gift of encouragement. While there are things you should not encourage, by and large, encouragement is pretty safe for anyone to use and to use in almost any conversation. My father-in-law is known as "the nicest person you will ever meet" because of his constantly encouraging attitude. That's ok. He hasn't ruined his kids. He knows when to put his "frowny face" on. But he can be confident in random words of encouragement--it's ok to run with that. 

But with sarcasm we must be more strategic. Driscoll says, "Feed the sheep; shoot the wolves; rebuke the swine; bark at the dogs." This means that the words we choose (literarily: our mode) must be determined by our audience--not by what mood we're in, not by whether those words are fun or not. I fear we've pulled out our newly found, Biblical wittiness from its sheath and (rather unlike a deliberate surgeon) taken off at a sprint, perhaps tripping and stumbling and cutting some of the sheep where there was no need for surgery at all. This is not good. This is sad. 

I'm not trying to be the Holy Spirit telling you when to be "nice" and when to be cutting. Just this: Be careful, my witty brothers and sisters; please listen to your mother: "Don't run with knives!"