“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things they do in secret” (Ephesians 5:11-12).

This Bible passage is bound to increasingly have Christian journalists in a bit of a double bind. Which is it—do we expose the works of darkness (verse 11)? Or is it shameful even to mention them (verse 12)?

I’m assuming that since the verses are back to back in the chapter, we need to figure out a way to comply with both somehow. So I will hazard to mention a recent deed of darkness and do it in the least shameful way possible, hoping to expose the act while avoiding the potential prurient pitfalls.

One good thing about not being a TV watcher is that I am impervious to the “frog in the pot syndrome.” Everything shocks me because the last I tuned in was to the 1960’s Bonanza.

So when my friend told me about the Sunday, October 25 episode of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, I suffered a genuine Alvin Toffler “future shock.” The plotline involves Larry David, who plays a caricature himself on the show, going to the bathroom in the home of a Catholic woman where there is a painting of Jesus on the wall next to the toilet. The David character somehow manages to spray a drop of urine onto the icon, and it lands on Jesus’ cheek, below his eye.

Later the woman emerges from the loo and announces that a miracle has happened: The Jesus picture is crying. The audience has a good laugh at the stupid Christian’s expense.

The German population of the 1930s didn’t wake up one morning and decide to kill Jews. The relentless poisoning of the atmosphere through media softened them up. For instance, Julius Streicher’s Der Sturner magazine ran cartoons featuring characters with large noses, engaged in immoral acts. Ridicule is the passport into the violence to come.

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