(It’s guest post Friday! Still can’t believe John Ortberg wrote a guest post for Stuff Christians Like. If you’re not familiar with his many, many awesome books, start with his latest, “The Me I Want to Be
The Self-Deprecating Faux Pas – By John Ortberg
A staple for people who speak regularly on the evangelical circuit is the self-deprecating faux pas (SDFP) designed to show the speaker is normal like everyone else. It has to be vulnerable enough to be embarrassing, but not so vulnerable as to get you kicked out of ministry employment.
The key is being able to derive spiritual object lessons from such a story, to justify telling it as a ministry experience (much like justifying an expense as a tax write-off for the IRS). With a little practice, you too can excel at this.
I will give you a (true) example from a good friend who shall remain nameless, but who teaches at highly-regarded Christian institution.
He and his wife have a cat that regularly captures small creatures and brings them under their bed to put them in a shoe or hat or purse to paw at. On a recent occasion my friend hauled himself out of bed and ‘muttering curses at the cat’ (an important Christian phrase, we’ll come back to that) spent a half hour trying unsuccessfully to find whatever the cat dragged in.
The next morning he got dressed, put on his shoes that were under the bed and checked once more while down there for the creature—nothing. He spent a normal day doing normal Christian teacher things.
At night, when he took of his right shoe, he thought to himself: ‘that smells much worse than usual.’ Careful examination revealed an odd smear at the heel near the “PowerStep” insole. When he pulled out the insole and grabbed at the smear, he peeled an entire mouse from the bowels of his shoe, completely intact except that, over the course of 15 hours, it had been squashed flat as a credit card.
On the bright side, he said his other shoes do not smell that bad by comparison.
How do you turn this into a useable SDFP? A few critical guidelines:
1. Any story involving death, rot, rodents, or nausea-induction should be immediately tied to sin. Just remember the connecting phrase “in a similar way…” (“In a similar way, we can end up carting around our ego/greed/lust/pride/failure-to-journal/tolerance-for-quasi-universalism/etc. without ever noticing an offense that reeks to the world around us”)
2. Note the use of ‘muttering curses’ at the cat. This is a great example of the ‘embarrassing but not too revealing’ standard. By using the word ‘curses’ you let people know that you are human, but by not specifying which curse in particular you remain above reproach. Knowing how much vulnerability is ‘too much’ requires discretion. For instance, even if you are a pastor you can reveal which curse words you used if you are Tony Campolo or if you work at a large edgy latte church in the Seattle area. But you can’t refer to a specific curse word if you bill yourself as a Christian comedian. It is an oddity of our times that Christian pastors can now use swear words that Christian comedians can’t. Theologically, this is known as the mysterium tremendum.
3. If you are speaking to an older audience, you can tie this story to a commonly-shared piece of folk-wisdom that sounds vaguely Proverbial: ‘Never criticize someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes. Unless they have a mouse in their shoes; then it’s every man for himself.’
4. You may need to tailor this to your particular audience. If you are speaking to a Christian environmental group, you will want to say that you prayed a prayer of forgiveness for what you did to the mouse. If you are speaking to a Pentecostal group, it may add humor to say that you prayed in tongues when you found the mouse. If you are speaking to a Pentecostal environmental group, you may want to say you prayed in tongues for the mouse to be brought back to life. For bonus points, produce the resurrected rodent.
5. Always be prepared to give appropriate attribution. I think this story was actually used by Charles Spurgeon in a sermon in the 1880’s.
6. A good death tie-in is never fails to touch the heart. You might hold up the Visa-Mouse-Carcass by the tail and say, “You know, you may not reach the end of your life by getting walked on for fifteen hours straight, but one day you too will die. Are you ready for that day? What does eternity hold for you on ‘the other side of the shoe?’”
7. Look for tie-ins to some of your other ‘ministry resources’. (You can find more examples of this in my book: The Me I Want to Be
8. Above all, make sure you have an unforgettable ending for your story. I wish I had one right now.
(For more awesomeness from John Ortberg, check out his site, JohnOrtberg.com and Monvee.com)
