Welcome to another Freebie Friday!
Today I am, again, giving away a double prize:
- I am giving away a fine art print of my popular Bullies cartoon (shown above).
- Also, I am giving away my friend Kathy Escobar’s new book, Down We Go: Living Into the Wild Ways of Jesus.
Here’s a quote:
A theology of brokenness embraces our spiritual poverty, questions, doubts, and desire for love, hope and redemption, and reminds us that the stink and the beauty are wrapped into one. We can’t just focus on the group of people who will confirm that our ministry is a success. Instead, we must include people who will challenge our definitions of success and stretch our imaginations about what the kingdom of God looks like. It turns things upside-down. It includes people we wouldn’t. This is the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
All you have to do is:
- Sign up for my free daily newsletter, (if you haven’t already) and;
- Make a comment on this post!
The contest closes midnight tonight my time (Atlantic Time), and I’ll announce the winner of the double prize tomorrow!
Let’s have fun!
My name is David Hayward, and I am the nakedpastor. I am a graffiti artist on the walls of religion.
One of my favorites.
Do I get your newsletter> I don’t know. Love the cartoon, though.
I want to win. But I can’t push you to choose me. You are the one who makes the decision. So here I am, trying my luck.
I enjoyed reading all 58 comments. Some made me laugh (thanks, Sam, for the American Idol comment). Some made me reflect. I not only read Pastor Bruce’s response, but felt it as well. I must reiterate how much I love how you put your authentic self out there – it gives the rest of us the freedom to do it, too. To question what we believe and why we believe. Thank you.
I signed up for the newsletter – didn’t realize you had one. So excited about that. And no need to pick me. I am not here for the prize. I am here for the conversation. It is gift enough.
I love this cartoon so much and I’ll be sure to check out this book. I like the subtitle, “Living Into the Wild Ways of Jesus.” Whoo-hoo!
Really appreciate your content Dave
The bullies could all have steeples and crosses on top of their heads. David, your daily posts provide a welcome chance to stop everything for a moment, and to consider the point(s) being made in your sketches. It helps me to be able to see things from a larger perspective, and different points of view. Some days, they even serve to smarten me up, to give me the pictorial “smack across the face”!
I only found your blog recently, and I LOVE it! You’re doing amazing things here. Thank you!
I can relate to this comic on so many levels. Also, I like books. <3
I have a spot ready for this on my wall at work.
Got a space on my wall and shelf all ready for these!
Would love to win today! Thanks for the opportunity
Fab! Sounds like my kind of thing, if my sermon for Sunday night is anything to go by! Keep it up.
While I can understand that many feel that they have been manipulated, the fact that someone “dares” to doubt does not make him any more “authentic” by definition than the next guy.
Basically, you are saying the other guys are the Pharisees, when we are all needing to stand there like the Publican: Have mercy on ME, a sinner, not have mercy on that Pharisee over there, he really needs it.
This whole comparative business that we all like to engage in and puff ourselves up with, is wrong. And to say that someone is more “authentic” than another, is just one more way of being judgmental.
None of which means that people should not think for themselves, ask all the questions they want and change their minds on things.
There are a lot of bullies in churches. Most especially in ‘holiness churches’. Wherever you find pastors and preachers engaged in the process of “making you better”…you’d better run for the door.
God’s law exposes our sin and shows us our need of a Savior…and God’s gospel is love and forgiveness in the person of Christ Jesus.
That Word creates faith, and leads people to freedom.
The first thing that struck me about “Bullies” is how stiff and “upright” the gang of baseball bats(?) are and how crooked and question-mark-like the one alone is. His mouth is turned down as are the bullies’ but it looks more like sadness. Not self-pity or anger or fear — sadness for the way humans treat each other, a tear for the loveless bullies and all those ranked behind them that we cannot see. Though his body instinctively curls in self-protection, his spirit reaches out to the bullies seen and unseen, even as they persecute him.
Is this not Jesus standing before Caiaphas, the scribes and the elders? In my mind I imagine that the human in him had difficulty fighting off the body’s fear as it unconsciously drew inward, a fetal coiling. But Jesus’ spirit was at the same time reaching out to the bullies, loving them, weeping inwardly and perhaps outwardly for them with turned down mouth and saddened eyes and a long single tear down his cheek.
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This is my first time on your site. I am somewhat overwhelmed. I did not leave the church voluntarily. I was struck down by a mental illness that stripped me of almost everything I thought I was, even what I thought was a strong religious faith. I became a numbed emptiness. God didn’t forsake me, nor I God: He was simply an absence, a vacuum. But I knew he had been there, something like the ghost of a picture that is removed from a wall after many years of hanging in the same place leaving a brightness.
Over six years the numbness has gradually become tingly, like a foot waking from sleep. Feeling has slowly begun returning in bright bits here and there — I am still a crazy quilt of patches and voids. As I uncurled from the fetal position, my eyes met the light rectangle where the picture hung. I stared in wonder at the smallness of the frame that had encased my image of God. I still am gaping, yearning for the neat portrait that hung there. Day by day I am learning that it was a self-portrait painted over a lifetime, an attempt to capture a human likeness of a God that is nowhere and everywhere. As I thought I learned something of that vastness, I unconsciously brushed on the features of my own face, as if in an unseen mirror.
Now I am continually shocked when I see God everywhere, yet nowhere. Your cartoons have jolted me with their simple eloquence, each one, and I am overwhelmed.
‘the gang of baseball bats(?)’
The look like exclamation points (i.e. emphatic statements, dogma) to me.
Really captures the emotions of questioning, from the perspective of the questioner, to me. Scary stuff when you question ‘the accepted’ and the entrenched.
I’ll refuse or return and “win” At least can you see the conflict of interest generated by encouraging questioning and discussing on the one hand and attempting to build up a trade on the other?
Oh–don’t delete David. I won’t take the prize. I promise. You’d be going against all you stand for if you delete–what ever rationalization you bring to it.
Lorinda: You win the print and the book. I need your full name and mailing address. Please email it to me. Thanks! And congrats!
I’m so excited! I emailed you Dave.
Hi, Johnfom,
I realized the bullies were exclamation points the minute after I posted my comment, but there was no way to go back and edit it. I have to wonder what I would have conjured up had I recognized them from the beginning. As it is, let’s just say in a CYA way that I “went beyond the obvious” to something “much deeper”
I believe David deleted my “wuss” observation–all this talk about pathetic question marks and exclamation bullies. Question Authority. Question Everything. The shibboleths of mavericks in all areas–you can see it on the bumper stickers of students, at least–if not groan ups. The drift of these comments: vicitimization. Bully initially meant something GOOD. Bully for you! A bully pulpit (David’s Naked Pastor) Bring it. Pain is weakness leaving the body, say the Marines. Surely, goodness and mercy!