How to Share Your Faith Using Homer Simpson
Virtually every teen in America is familiar with The Simpsons. Love 'em or hate 'em, Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie have been entertaining teens for years with their wacky adventures. What's the appeal, rerun after rerun? How have they managed to stay around after all these years? And more importantly, how can Homer Simpson ever help you share your faith with your friends?
Most teens enjoy humor that takes potshots at society. Script writers for The Simpsons have finely-honed this skill!! School, television, politics and religion are only a few of the targets of The Simpson's humorous satire.
Homer Simpson is disrespectful of just about everyone and everything, so it should come as no surprise when he has some irreverent things to say about religion! But despite Homer's digs at religion and at his thoroughly religious and conscientious neighbor, Ned Flanders, Homer clues us in on his impressions of God and sometimes tells us, point blank, what he thinks God is like.
Poor Homer holds a sadly distorted view of God. His God is angry, vengeful and bribable.
Homer actually says of God in one episode, "He's always mad." Many people share this view of God, but is this what God's really like? The Bible tells us:
"God is love . . . This is how God showed His love for us: God sent his one and only son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins." (1 John 4:8-10)
Homer's missing one of the most important parts of the picture - God is Love! That's not to say that God doesn't care about sin and people's rejection of him and his gift of salvation. But God has a plan for helping us get back into relationship with him because he loves us, not because he's mad at us. For help in understanding or explaining this see The G.O.S.P.E.L Journey.
Homer's God is not only angry, he's also vengeful. Homer's house catches fire one Sunday while he's home skipping church. Homer's conclusion? "The Lord is vengeful. O Spiteful One, show me who to smite and he shall be smoten!" Does God really go around ready to strike us with a lightening bolt every time we mess up? Referring to our past lives of sin and selfishness, Eph. 2:3-7 says,
"It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus." (The Message)
On this side of the cross, it's God's mercy and grace that are poured out on us, when we trust in Jesus - not his vengeance!
As for Homer's view of a bribable God, consider this snapshot: Homer is praying - "For the first time in my life everything is absolutely perfect the way it is, so here's the deal; you freeze everything as it is and I won't ask for anything more. If that's OK, please give me absolutely no sign. (Pause) OK, deal. In gratitude, I present you this offering of cookies and milk. If you want me to eat them for you, please give me absolutely no sign. (Pause) They will be done." - And he eats the food.
Have you ever tried to bargain with God - like you totally know better than he does and you can buy him off to get your way? Perhaps in Homer's prayer you see the exaggerated reality of your own 'prayer bargaining' efforts. You need to remember that God is compassionate - you don't need to bribe him into doing what's best for you!
So the next time you're watching a rerun of the Simpson's with friends and Homer spouts out one of his distorted views of God, use it as a conversation starter to talk about what God's REALLLY like. Ask your friends if they think God is mad, vengeful or open to bribery. Share the truth of his love, mercy and compassion! Poor Homer - he really is clueless, but that doesn't mean we have to be!
