This is one of my favorite things ever. I like to call it the “Christian disclaimer.” Have you ever heard one of these? Have you ever said one of these? I have.
It’s not just restricted to television though. I use it most often when it comes to music. I have confessed several, several times that I like rap. And sometimes I listen to songs on the radio that I just don’t think good Christians should listen to. For instance, there’s a song out right now that Kanye West does a cameo on and it’s pretty vulgar. So if I was going to tell my Bible study guys about it, I might say something like:
“The other day I was quickly flipping through the radio when I heard a snippet of a song by Kanye West. It was pretty wild.”
See what I did right there? I did four little sneaky Christian disclaimers:
1. Quickly
I used this word to indicate that I was moving along pretty fast. Hopefully when you hear this word you will mistakenly think I did not stop and listen to the song.
2. Flipping through
Instead of saying, “I hit number 4 on my preset stations so that I could listen to V103 the people’s station,” I made it seem as if I was just skipping through a field of radio stations like a school girl in a field of flowers, la la la. When suddenly, completely by chance, I landed on this song. What a weird thing to accidentally happen.
3. Snippet
Ohh, so tricky. I used to call anything that wasn’t the complete song or show a “snippet.” Did you only watch 27 minutes of the show, “The Hills” on MTV? Then you saw “part” of it, just a snippet or a few clips. God is probably cool with that.
4. It was pretty wild
Lean in close and I’ll tell you a little secret. Sometimes, I used to throw out ideas just to see how you’d react. I would say something like, “Yeah, this guy I know went to that new night club and said it was crazy.” Then, I would pause and get your reaction. If you responded by saying, “I hate night clubs and so does God,” I would agree and say something like, “Amen, God wants to smite them. Probably use sulfur, if I had to guess.” But if you said something like, “Let’s go check it out,” I would say, “Yeah, that sounds fun.” It’s kind of like how coal mines used to have a canary down in the shaft with them. If the bird died, something was wrong with the air quality. Well what I do is introduce a verbal canary. Then, if you kill it, I can still look holy and say something like, “yeah that bird sucked anyway.”
You are more honest than me. I admittedly struggle with lying or exaggerating or manipulating my words like Houdini. I promise, you probably don’t struggle with this nonsense like I do, but how I tell you about watching or listening to something that does not feed my soul is not really the point. The point is that I’m watching or listening to that stuff in the first place. That’s what’s not cool.
Thanks David M. for the idea.
