#415. The 5 stages of emailing friends an unintentionally funny Christian video.

A few weeks ago, a number of my friends sent me a link to an unintentionally funny Christian video. It was essentially three people breakdancing and rapping to duel synthesizers on the stage of what appears to be a large church.

What makes it so funny is that the routine was not designed to be comedy. It's unintentional. If you saw Saturday Night Live do the same exact skit you might laugh a little, but not nearly as much as you would when seeing a church really try to be serious about it. And as I debated on whether or not to email it to all my friends, I realized that when it comes to unintentionally funny Christian videos, I think there are five stages we all go through:

1. Denial and Isolation
"That can't be real. There is no way a church is doing that. That has to be fake. Maybe that is something the parody website, The Onion, did. That's got to be a joke. Am I the only Christian that thinks that is ridiculous? Is it bad that I think that is ridiculous? Is it wrong to mock something a church did? I am so alone."

2. Anger
"This is why God gets such a bad rap. When my friends say Christianity is corny or cheesy, this is the kind of stuff they're talking about. I hope the guys at work don’t see this and email it to me since I’m the ‘Christian guy’ in the office."

3. Bargaining
"I shouldn't send this to friends, but it’s so funny. Look at that moonwalk. I have to share this with the world. But if I email it out, am I just perpetuating the idea that Christians are cheesy? Or is it a good thing to send it to my friends? Maybe it will let them know, 'hey, I get it, this kind of stuff is silly, but we're not all like that. I promise.' I'll just send it to a few people. I won’t send it to my entire contact list."

4. Depression
"All hope is lost. That video was viewed 20 million times on youtube. It was even on "The Soup" with Joel McHale, whom I love and think is hilarious, but that's beside the point. It's everywhere. Now, millions of people have had their misconceptions about Christianity confirmed. And I emailed it to the guys at work. All hope is lost."

5. Acceptance
"OK God, you're in control. I don’t get to define what you are pleased with. Maybe that breakdancing was exactly what you wanted and there were people that were deeply moved by that. But between you and me, I hope that when I get to heaven you'll do a little pop and lock, pull me aside and whisper, 'hey, even I thought that video was funny.' But we'll just have to wait and see."

Those are exaggerated for certain and maybe you don't experience each of them when you get an unintentionally funny Christian video clip emailed to you. But I do, and I hope I keep getting video clips emailed to me, because they are awesome and they make me laugh and in some unexpected ways, they force me to think about my faith.

(Plus, they teach me fun songs, like Jesus is my friend. I know you’ve seen this 19 times already, and it’s actually posted in the Stuff Christians Like Facebook group, but this thing deserves about 22 views.)