David Davis
If our God, who is a Unitary Trinity of Beings, can’t let us tell jokes about Him, and His Acts that it pleased Him to do whe he was a young-‘un, and what the guys in the Pub thought of them, then what use are we to Him as ambassadors? He is (they are) our Ossifer: we can scrag and rag Him/Them (but we will try to follow Him, _/even/_ when He has a map and He Is Sure that He knows where we are, in the face of the Enemy…)
Humour drives out evil: DISCUSS.
He is of course all-powerful, omniscient and benevolent, as the great mathematician Gottfried Leibniz suggested, so it can’t matter that we cheek Him and take the piss out of Him. This is the real one-over that we have on all other versions of “God”…
We’ve really got, we Western liberals, the best possible God: if you think about it. The rest can eat cake.
With the cartoon you are probably heading into territory that will do you no good. In fact I would envisage confusion and chaos.
But as to the basic premise about a sense of humour. I do think God has a fairly profound sense of humour.
In the late 1970s I went with a mission group to Egypt. Christianity was not in any significant amount a more popular concept then than it is now (they had just managed to design a major road that simply had to be routed through a large church – cathedral – in Cairo.
The group was split in two to reduce its profile. Any group that might be considered to have a significant presence would be viewed with great hostility by Egytian authorities. The one went from Belgium to Brindisi, Italy, and crossed to Alexandria, the other went overland taking a whole week plus via Austria, through Hungary, Greece, Athens and to Alexandria.
We went to great lengths to separate the groups.
I went overland and after about ten days we were finally arriving in Alex harbour and I idly saw another boat was coming in.
We were travelling by camper vans and as we came off the boat, so the other camper van came off the other boat, and because of procedure we were forced to go through customs and immigration one behind the other with, as some sweetie had made, identical curtains gracing the windows.
The authorities treated us as a unit and I distinctly felt God saying to me that, really, we should not bother to defeat the attacks from enemy in our own strength. He is quite capable of achieving His objectives, according to His will and at His timing.
However, I don´t feel that God feels constrained to visit the local and trade crap with the locals in order to be accepted.
I don´t really feel that the ultimate authority of eternity needs ambassadors, either. Although, if He is the embodiment of love, I guess He would want to give those created with free will, every opportunity to enter His Kingdom.
So it would be appropriate that He does send messengers.
The fuss over this ad was surprising seeing as the church concerned are very well known for their humorous (and sometimes irreverent) publicity.
There are a couple of previous examples at mine.