This post is brought to you by the wildly popular Christian satire site, The Babylon Bee. Be sure to check out their debut book, How to Be a Perfect Christian, available NOW!
The Christian life is no walk on the beach, despite what a certain sappy poem will tell you. Sanctification is more like a slog through the sloughs of despair than a skip along the coast while you and Jesus toss a football around.
In fact, the Christian life is so difficult, we began wondering if there was a shortcut. Could we identify simple steps Christians could take to leapfrog over years of painful discipleship? Well, by golly, we found out through years of biblical study and research that there are tons of shortcuts. If you pay close attention to Christian culture, you too can find ways to conform to the status quo and become holier while putting in hardly any real effort at all.
Sound too good to be true? It’s not! Over at The Babylon Bee, we’re experts on Christian perfection. We literally wrote the book on it, chronicling the exact steps you need to take to become holier than Kirk Cameron himself. (If you want to reach peak holiness, sorry, you’re gonna have to buy our book—in bulk, preferably.)
But we’re good guys, and we want even freeloaders like you to garner a few spiritual points. So we’re willing to lay out 7 qualities that define the perfect Christian, at no charge. What?! You heard that right.
Model your life after these shining examples, and even Tim Tebow will be in awe of your walk with Christ in no time.
1.) The perfect Christian has every DC Talk song memorized, even the ones from Nu Thang.
Even carnal Christians know the lyrics to “Jesus Freak,” but a true believer can rap along with T-Mac, Kevin, and the Taitster on the deepest cuts. Can you recite Mrs. Morgan’s anti-drummer rant? Can you spit out the phat rhymes in “I Love Rap Music” with your backward cabby hat sitting on your head just right? Can you pull off the whole breakdown in “Jesus Is Just All Right” without breaking a sweat? Then you’re well on the way, Christian soldier!
2.) The perfect Christian plasters every obnoxious Christian bumper sticker known to man all over their car.
Don’t limit your holy bumper stickers to just the bumper. Slap those puppies all over your rear window, your side doors, heck, even your windshield. Here are three of the best bumper sticker ideas to get you started: “THE KING JAMES VERSION: GOOD ENOUGH FOR JESUS, GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME.” “ARE YOU FOLLOWING JESUS THIS CLOSELY?” “MY BOSS IS A JEWISH CARPENTER!”
3.) The perfect Christian screams, “THE DEVIL’S DRINK!” whenever they see someone drinking alcohol.
You can’t be too careful: yelling at the top of your lungs anytime you observe a fellow restaurant patron sipping a Bud Light ensures you’re not tempted to take a whiff of Satan’s favorite beverage, and it also alerts the heathens who drink alcohol that you are a Perfect Christian ™. Advanced Christians even leap across the restaurant and smack the accursed stuff right out of their hands. It’s for their own good, after all.
4.) The perfect Christian leaves a few hundred Chick tracts in every public restroom they visit.
The Bible tells us to “redeem the time.” You can practice this spiritual discipline the next time you’re in a public establishment and need to use the facilities: bring along your favorite judgmental Chick tract—we recommend the tried and true classic “Dark Dungeons”—and litter the whole restroom with that bad boy. When the resident janitor has to clean all those up later, he’ll be touched by your evangelistic fervor.
5.) The perfect Christian lifts their hands like they scored a touchdown during the entire worship set every Sunday.
If you lift your hands after the worship song starts, it’s already too late. Even the Pharisees and the tax collectors know to raise their hands when the worship leader starts in on the bridge to “Oceans.” You need to be better than that! Get those outstretched arms up there like you’re an NFL ref calling a field goal, and don’t you dare put them down until the sermon starts.
6.) The perfect Christian always takes a picture of their quiet time and shares it to Instagram.
Got your Bible open? Got your fresh-pressed morning coffee ready to go? Before you actually read the Word of God, spend 15-20 minutes setting up the perfect shot. Take two or three thousand if you have to. Once you have a perfectly framed and filtered pic, upload that masterpiece to Instagram and rake in those likes! If you don’t actually ever get around to reading the morning’s Scripture passage, that’s alright—you already got the glory, and that’s what’s important.
7.) The perfect Christian makes up hundreds of legalistic rules above and beyond what the Bible teaches and judges everybody by whether or not they measure up to this new man-made standard.
If following the Bible is good, isn’t following the Bible PLUS your own man-made rules just that much better? Of course it is. Trust us—we asked literally two theologians this question, and they agreed. Well, technically, they just looked at us funny, but that’s pretty much agreement. So get to it: make up five or six hundred rules and judge everybody according to your own convictions.
Do you live up to the model of Christian perfection? If not, simply try harder—isn’t that what the Christian life is all about?
This post is brought to you by the wildly popular Christian satire site, The Babylon Bee. Be sure to check out their debut book, How to Be a Perfect Christian, available NOW!
