[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mII6-IyaT3o[/youtube]

I love satire for its capacity to speak some remarkable truths in really funny ways.  Mr Diety is definitely satire and it often takes on the philosophical and apparent humorous tensions within Christianity.  It's not always fair, and often it borders on mean, but sometimes it really calls out the issues.

In this absurd take on the relationship of the Trinity, Mr. Diety explores the relationship of Jesus to God. You can hear the influence of Abbot and Costello's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOXdpO36Ojw" target="_blank">Who's On First</a>, and they even reference it during the skit.

At 2:50 the skit turns to the meaning of the set up.
<blockquote>Jesus: What's the point of this?

Mr. Diety: The point is to save the human's from the original sin and to show, you know, my love.

Jesus: To show <em>your</em> love?

Mr. Diety: Yeah, by sacrificing myself, in the person of you, to myself.  That's loving.

Jesus: Wait, don't you mean sacrificing me to you?

Mr. Diety: Look this is a beautiful thing I'm doing to satisfy my own sense of unyielding justice.</blockquote>
This skit strays at this point from the traditional evangelical story, suggesting Adam didn't really exist, but at this point it doesn't matter.  The skit has shown the tension.  Is God demanding the death of his own son to appease his own sense of divine justice.

As strange as it may sound, this is the tension of our Western understanding of the Gospel.  The meaning of the Gospel is found in our understanding of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonement_in_Christianity" target="_blank">atonement</a>, or why did Jesus die on the cross? It describes how humanity is reconciled with God.  Although there are many theories of atonement in history, this theory (also called subsitutionary and later penal substitutionary atonement) underlines the historical basis for much of our Western theology, especially within the Evangelical community.  It's the story of the Gospel and provides a basis for our belief systems.

And in a postmodern age, people are calling out a big "Fail" to the idea. The theory of justice doesn't seem all that loving.  Some would even suggest that it makes God a child killer.  And if so, what kind of God would do that. All Mr. Diety is doing is giving voice to that tension.  As when we don't like reflecting on our own understanding of the Gospel, one that holds profound implications for our understanding of God's character and the framework for justice, someone else will.  If we want to be honest about our own faith, it requires wrestling with these tensions.

What if there was a different way of understanding the cross, one that reconciles with our understanding of love and justice and the event that unfold?  What if God is not satisfying a divine sense of cosmic justice (or even paying a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransom_theory_of_atonement" target="_blank">Ransom to Satan</a>), but instead God is meeting our warped demands for proof that we are worth it.

&nbsp;