Yes, you should read the Bible. Yes, you can start with the poop jokes
Here’s why
UPDATE 12/30/21: I’ve decided to make both my books (Ophelia, Alive and Murder-Bears, Moonshine, and Mayhem) permanently available for free to everyone who signs up for my Substack. Click the link below to start reading both immediately:
Author’s note: Back when my book Murder-Bears, Moonshine, and Mayhem was getting ready to launch, they had me write several promotional pieces for it. My publicity team never managed to place them anywhere, though, so I’m putting one here on my Substack. It makes sense to me, since a lot of the authors I follow who released books last year are still promoting them pretty hard — 2020 was apparently a very disappointing year for book launches. Hard to make an impact without bookstore visibility, touring, etc., I guess. Anyway, if you like this piece, you can buy my book.
What I’m about to talk about can be kind of a tricky subject, so let me start by trotting out an old tidbit from my English teacher days: A lot of the phrases you use every day were coined by William Shakespeare. Stuff like “a sorry sight” (Macbeth 2.2) and “bated breath” (The Merchant of Venice 1.3) and “break the ice” (The Taming of the Shrew 1.2). Some of you have been influenced by the Bard without even knowing it. Pretty cool, right?
Now, all of that, but about the Bible.
There are certain things that have been so profoundly influential on modern culture that they’ve become almost invisible; Shakespeare is one of them, but the Bible is another, even in the simplest ways. If you’ve ever used phrases like “all things to all people” (1 Corinthians 9:22), “the skin of my teeth” (Job 19:20), “bottomless pit” (Revelation 9:1), or “scapegoat” (Leviticus 16:8), you owe the King James Bible a dollar. Even beyond that, though, the Bible has been … well, I’ll let atheist scholar Tom Holland (no, not the guy who plays Spider-Man, but wouldn’t it be cool if he were?) fill you in:
Assumptions that I had grown up with—about how a society should be organised, and the principles that it should uphold—were not bred of classical antiquity, still less of ‘human nature,’ but very distinctively of that civilisation’s Christian past. So profound has been the impact of Christianity on the development of Western civilisation that it has come to be hidden from view.
That’s a quote from a 600-page tome Holland published in 2019 called Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, in which he explains how a lot of ideas most of us take for granted — super-basic stuff, like, say, human rights and dignity — was nowhere to be found in the Western world prior to the rise of Christianity. Smarter people than me have expressed disagreement with it, but Holland himself is also a lot smarter than me, so I’ll let you draw your own conclusions — but maybe, before you do, you should read the Bible?
Everyone, in my experience, seems to have a very strong opinion about the Bible — what it is, what it means, what we should all think about it — but eighty percent of people admit to never having read it. That’s unfortunate, since the Bible is — to borrow a metaphor from the now–Deeply Problematic™️ David Foster Wallace — the water we’re all swimming in. And if right now you’re thinking, “Ugh, fine, I guess I should read the Bible or whatever, but it’s soooooo borrrrrring,” I’ve got good news for you: The Bible, like Shakespeare, isn’t just a bunch of flowery language; like Shakespeare, it’s full of bizarre violence, depraved sex, and so, so, many poop jokes.
That’s why I wrote my book, Murder-Bears, Moonshine, and Mayhem: Strange Stories from the Bible to Leave You Amused, Bemused, and (Hopefully) Informed. Reading it won’t be quite the same thing as reading the Bible, obviously, but I wrote it in hopes that it would give readers a window into one of the most influential, and arguably least boring, books of all time. I’ve carefully catalogued all the poop jokes, bear maulings, incest, and murder-circumcision combos, so there’s something in it for everyone. (I mean — maybe not everyone. If you’re the sort of person who buys books like Jesus Can Be Your Boyfriend NOW or Amish Romance #2,355, this book might not be for you — but the good news is, there are already a lot of books for you.)
There might be a modestly evangelistic goal here — I wouldn’t have written Murder-Bears if I didn’t like the Bible — but there doesn’t have to be. I wrote Murder-Bears with the intent not to convert, but to invite. The Bible didn’t descend from heaven fully formed — printed, stitched, and bound in rich Corinthian (see what I did there?) leather. While a lot of us believe it was “inspired,” it is still a deeply human book, and it’s written with deeply human concerns in mind. If you’re the sort who believes the Bible is God’s message for all of humanity, it should come as no surprise that there’s something in it for everyone — not just the overeducated theologians, or the prudish old ladies, or the creepy homeschool kids working the Chick-fil-A counter. It’s also for the lowbrow types — the poor, the oppressed, the broken. If you believe the stuff Jesus and the prophets had to say, it’s actually mostly for that crowd. So, yeah, it will have poop jokes.
The best poop jokes.
Divine poop jokes.
I hope you’ll pick up my book, and I hope you’ll sit with me for a few hours, mouth agape at the secret, strange riches the Bible has to offer. But more importantly, I hope you’ll pick up a Bible and explore the water you’ve been swimming in your whole life.
Poop-filled water.
Wait, sorry, that metaphor got away from me.
Stuff I’ve been enjoying lately
Sometimes you end up asking yourself, “Is this actually good, or do I just like it because it checks all my boxes?” This is especially true in an era when all our entertainment is served to us by algorithms — which is how I discovered alt-rock duo Neoni. Spotify was like, “We bet you’ll eat this up, you mindless beast of consumption,” and I was like, “Yep, I sure will.”
What can I say? I’m a sucker for soaring female vocals, creepy lyrics, and 1990s industrial–influenced production. That’s basically what the sisters who constitute Neoni are serving up, and I’m here for it.
But nah, these two are talented, and they just dropped their first full-length album. Check ‘em out.
Me, elsewhere
Since the whole point of this piece is that you should buy my book, maybe you should go do that mess right now.
I’m pleased to announce the new season of my podcast Changed My Mind is underway. I kicked things off with an interview of Leigh Stein, founder of BinderCon and author of Self Care and What to Miss When. She told me about how she stopped thinking of feminism “as a religion.” You can hear it now by becoming a Patreon supporter.
I’m still having fun writing for Grunge. Here’s something I wrote about how Queen Elizabeth I might have been a man, here’s something on why Jesus taught in parables, and here’s the history of African Methodist Episcopal Church.