Preacher's Jokes And Quotes

He got the deviant joke loud and clear, the one about the biggest head case craving the taste of a psychiatrist. The little bit of a thing was smarter than most.

Two-thirds of all preachers, doctors and lawyers are hanging on to the coat tails of progress, shouting, whoa! while a good many of the rest are busy strewing banana peels along the line of march.

Most priests wish they were as righteous as they seem to most members of their congregations.

Well, I'm sorry you couldn't make it either. I'm sorry I had to sit there in that church--which, by the way, had a broken air conditioner--sweating, watching all those people march down the aisle to look in my mother's casket and whisper to themselves all this mess about how much she looked like herself, even though she didn't. I'm sorry you weren't there to hear the lame choir drag out, song after song. I'm sorry you weren't there to see my dad try his best to be upbeat, cracking bad jokes in his speech, choking on his words. I'm sorry you weren't there to watch me totally lose it and explode into tears. I'm sorry you weren't there for me, but it doesn't matter, because even if you were, you wouldn't be able to feel what I feel. Nobody can. Even the preacher said so.

Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing The world is full of women who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself if they had the chance. Quit dancing. Get some self-respect and a day job. Right. And minimum wage, and varicose veins, just standing in one place for eight hours behind a glass counter bundled up to the neck, instead of naked as a meat sandwich. Selling gloves, or something. Instead of what I do sell. You have to have talent to peddle a thing so nebulous and without material form. Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way you cut it, but I've a choice of how, and I'll take the money. I do give value. Like preachers, I sell vision, like perfume ads, desire or its facsimile. Like jokes or war, it's all in the timing. I sell men back their worst suspicions: that everything's for sale, and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see a chain-saw murder just before it happens, when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple are still connected. Such hatred leaps in them, my beery worshipers! That, or a bleary hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads and upturned eyes, imploring but ready to snap at my ankles, I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge to step on ants. I keep the beat, and dance for them because they can't. The music smells like foxes, crisp as heated metal searing the nostrils or humid as August, hazy and languorous as a looted city the day after, when all the rape's been done already, and the killing, and the survivors wander around looking for garbage to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion. Speaking of which, it's the smiling tires me out the most. This, and the pretense that I can't hear them. And I can't, because I'm after all a foreigner to them. The speech here is all warty gutturals, obvious as a slam of ham, but I come from the province of the gods where meaning are lilting and oblique. I don't let on to everyone, but lean close, and I'll whisper: My mothers was raped by a holy swan. You believe that? You can take me out to dinner. That's what we tell all the husbands. There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around. Not that anyone here but you would understand. The rest of them would like to watch me and feel nothing. Reduce me to components as in a clock factory or abattoir. Crush out the mystery. Wall me up alive in my own body. They'd like to see through me, but nothing is more opaque than absolute transparency. Look - my feet don't hit the marble! Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising, I hover six inches in the air in my blazing swan-egg of light. You think I'm not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn.

Like preachers, I sell vision, like perfume ads, desire or its facsimile. Like jokes or war, it’s all in the timing. I sell men back their worse suspicions: that everything’s for sale,

Many readers are familiar with the spirit and the letter of the definition of “prayer”, as given by Ambrose Bierce in his Devil’s Dictionary. It runs like this, and is extremely easy to comprehend: Prayer: A petition that the laws of nature be suspended in favor of the petitioner; himself confessedly unworthy. Everybody can see the joke that is lodged within this entry: The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right. Half–buried in the contradiction is the distressing idea that nobody is in charge, or nobody with any moral authority. The call to prayer is self–cancelling. Those of us who don’t take part in it will justify our abstention on the grounds that we do not need, or care, to undergo the futile process of continuous reinforcement. Either our convictions are enough in themselves or they are not: At any rate they do require standing in a crowd and uttering constant and uniform incantations. This is ordered by one religion to take place five times a day, and by other monotheists for almost that number, while all of them set aside at least one whole day for the exclusive praise of the Lord, and Judaism seems to consist in its original constitution of a huge list of prohibitions that must be followed before all else. The tone of the prayers replicates the silliness of the mandate, in that god is enjoined or thanked to do what he was going to do anyway. Thus the Jewish male begins each day by thanking god for not making him into a woman (or a Gentile), while the Jewish woman contents herself with thanking the almighty for creating her “as she is.” Presumably the almighty is pleased to receive this tribute to his power and the approval of those he created. It’s just that, if he is truly almighty, the achievement would seem rather a slight one. Much the same applies to the idea that prayer, instead of making Christianity look foolish, makes it appear convincing. Now, it can be asserted with some confidence, first, that its deity is all–wise and all–powerful and, second, that its congregants stand in desperate need of that deity’s infinite wisdom and power. Just to give some elementary quotations, it is stated in the book of Philippians, 4:6, “Be careful for nothing; but in everything by prayer and supplication and thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.” Deuteronomy 32:4 proclaims that “he is the rock, his work is perfect,” and Isaiah 64:8 tells us, “Now O Lord, thou art our father; we art clay and thou our potter; and we are all the work of thy hand.” Note, then, that Christianity insists on the absolute dependence of its flock, and then only on the offering of undiluted praise and thanks. A person using prayer time to ask for the world to be set to rights, or to beseech god to bestow a favor upon himself, would in effect be guilty of a profound blasphemy or, at the very least, a pathetic misunderstanding. It is not for the mere human to be presuming that he or she can advise the divine. And this, sad to say, opens religion to the additional charge of corruption. The leaders of the church know perfectly well that prayer is not intended to gratify the devout. So that, every time they accept a donation in return for some petition, they are accepting a gross negation of their faith: a faith that depends on the passive acceptance of the devout and not on their making demands for betterment. Eventually, and after a bitter and schismatic quarrel, practices like the notorious “sale of indulgences” were abandoned. But many a fine basilica or chantry would not be standing today if this awful violation had not turned such a spectacularly good profit. And today it is easy enough to see, at the revival meetings of Protestant fundamentalists, the counting of the checks and bills before the laying on of hands by the preacher has even been completed. Again, the spectacle is a shameless one.

AS I EXPECTED, I was treated by Scipio's conquerors as a harmless old fool with wisdom. The criminals called me "The Preacher" or "The Professor," just as they had on the other side. I saw that many of them had tied ribbons around their upper arms as a sort of uniform. So when I came across a man who wasn't wearing a ribbon, I asked him jokingly, "Where's your uniform, Soldier?" "Preacher," he said, referring to his skin, "I was born in a uniform.

A preacher visiting his flock in the country happens to see a pig walking around on three legs. The preacher stops the farmer and says, “My son, what’s happened to your poor pig?” “Well,” says the farmer, “this pig is very special to my family and me. Just two months ago, I was working underneath my tractor when the jack fell and the tractor was crushing me. I yelled and my pig rushed to my rescue, dug me out, and pulled me away from the tractor.” “That’s very commendable,” says the preacher, “but—” “That’s not all, preacher. Last week, my house caught fire and my pig pulled my two young daughters to safety. The little fella even received a hero’s gold ribbon from the mayor.” “That’s marvelous,” says the preacher, “but that still doesn’t explain the missing leg.” “Like I said preacher, this pig is very special to my family and, well, we just can’t bring ourselves to eat it all at once.

You know, I'm still on somebody's list somewhere for giving him next to no money,' Clinton joked later, ' but it was a pretty good chunk of what I had.

Someone else out there?” Luke squints in Hallelujah’s direction. He stands. He steps over his log bench and pushes past Rachel. Hallelujah can’t move, can’t breathe, and in four more steps, Luke has her by the arm. He’s marching her into the light. When he sees who it is, he drops her arm quickly, looking disgusted. “Hallie. You’ve gotta be kidding me.” Behind him, Brad’s on his feet. “Well, glory, Hallelujah!” he whoops. The girl next to him shushes him, and he lowers his voice. But he keeps talking, giving his words a preacher-at-a-revival ebb and flow. “I never thought, Hallelujah, I’d see the day, Hallelujah, where you’d have the guts to show up here, Hallelujah,praise Jesus—” “Give it a rest,” Luke says. “What, it’s only funny when you do it?” “Nah, she’s always funny,” Luke says, looking back at Hallelujah, dismissing her with a roll of his eyes. “You just aren’t. You never do that joke right.” He walks back to his seat. He glances at Rachel. “Turns out, there’s a seat for you right here, next to me.” He pats the unclaimed bit of log to his right.

After years of his wife's pleading, this rich good ole'boy finally goes with her to her little local church on Sunday morning. He was so moved by the preacher's sermon that on the way out he stopped to shake his hand. He said, "Reverend, that was the best damn sermon I ever did hear!" The preacher replied, "Oh!!Why, thank you sir, but please, I'd appreciate it if you didn’t use profanity in the Lord's house." The man said, "I’m sorry Reverend, but I can't help myself, it was such a damn good sermon! The Reverend said, "Sir, PLEASE, I CANNOT HAVE YOU BEHAVING THIS WAY IN CHURCH!" The man said, “Okay Reverend, but I just wanted you to know that I thought it was so damn good, I put $5000 in that there collection plate." And the Reverend said, "That was damn nice of you, Sir!

A preacher goes into a bar and says, “Anybody who wants to go to heaven, stand up.” Everybody stands up except for a drunk in the corner. The preacher says, “My son, don’t you want to go to heaven when you die?” “When I die? Sure. I thought you were taking a load up now.

E-13 No wonder it makes a man blush. No wonder a real true preacher look upon his congregation and try to lead them before the throne of God, and visit their homes and find them smoking cigarettes, telling dirty jokes to each other, entertaining in the back yard with beer parties, walking around on the streets, their young women, and middle age, and so forth, and even grandmother with little shorts on. Mother out on the street with a baby on one arm, dressed sexy enough to attract the attention of any bootlegger that walked the street, and calling themselves Christians? It would make any true man of God blush to bring such a person in the Presence of God. Right. ( "A Blushing Prophet" Preached on Sunday evening, 25th November 1956 at the Branham Tabernacle in Jeffersonville, Indiana, U.S.A. - See Paragraph E-13 ).

Who someone is and what they do is all that matters. This is especially true because who we are changes as we grow and as we change our minds. Furthermore, we are never really of one mind about anything. Belief is never the point—actions are. We can be of two minds about biology or God but treat everyone around us with kindness. If we wait for correct ideas to save us—theological or otherwise—we’ll never be saved, even from ourselves. Why? Because we can never have a fully correct idea. Why? Because however we label ourselves, we are still only half-evolved primates in two or more minds and multiple moods. All we have is our stories. Today’s great art is tomorrow’s joke. Today’s joke is tomorrow’s great art. Today’s atheist is tomorrow’s ardent convert. Today’s preacher is tomorrow’s atheist author. I can’t objectively describe reality because I’m trapped in the moving target we call time. That’s what the word “evolution” means. The very fabric of the universe is unknowable and stranger than we can imagine and has a message for us: climb down off that high atheist, religious or agnostic pedestal!

One of our favorite family stories tells about a preacher who stopped by one day while Daddy was hard at work. This particular preacher was never much of a help to anybody and seemed to show up only when he was out beatin' the bushes for money. Well, this snooty parson in his starched collar stopped by the fence while my daddy was sweating and groaning and trying to get a stump out of the ground, and he said, "Hello, Lee, this is a right nice place you and the Lord have here." Daddy wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve and said, "Yeah, well, you should have seen the som'bitch when the Lord had it by hisself." I have often joked that we had "two rooms and a path, and running water, if you were willing to run to get it.

I think about all my patients who've died. Older people, most of them. But not all. Looking back, I try to remember if the young ones were marked somehow. Whether they might have done something to bring their fates down on themselves. But they didn't, Danny. One day God or Fate just said, 'I will not let you be happy. I will not give you children. I will not let you breathe another day. I will take away your ability to move."'" "Warren-" "No, listen. This is important. I've tried to believe, all my life. To have faith that there was justice in life, some larger plan or meaning. But I can't do it any more. I've watched some of the best people I ever met get crippled or taken before they reached thirty, forty, whatever. Babies, too. I've watched babies die of leuke mia. I've watched infants die from infections, bleeding from their eyes and ears. Terrible birth defects...I look for a reason, a pattern, anything that might justify all that. But nothing does. Nothing does. Until I got sick myself, I played the same game of denial that all doctors do. But, Danny, my cancer ripped the scales from my eyes. I go to these funerals and listen to smug preachers telling grieving people that God has a plan. Well, that's a lie. All my life I've followed the rules. I've toed the line, given to the less fortunate, followed the Commandments . . . and it hasn't mattered one bit. And don't tell me about Job, okay? If you tell me God is testing me by killing me... that's like saying we had to destroy a village in order to save it. It's a cruel joke that we play on ourselves. And don't tell me it's all made right in the afterlife, because you know what? The agony of one infant dying senselessly mocks all the golden trumpets of heaven. I don't want to sit at the right hand of a God who can torture children, or even one who sits by and allows them to be tortured. Free will, my ass. I made no choice to die at thirty seven. This one's on God's account, Major. We look for meaning where there is none, because we're too afraid to accept randomness. Well, I've accepted it. Embraced it, even. And once you do that, the world just doesn't look the same anymore.

According to my Baptist Sunday-school teachers, a child is denied entrance to heaven merely for being born in the Congo rather than, say, north Georgia, where she could attend church regularly. This was the sticking point in my own little lame march to salvation: admission to heaven is gained by the luck of the draw. At age five I raised my good left hand in Sunday school and used a month’s ration of words to point out this problem to Miss Betty Nagy. Getting born within earshot of a preacher, I reasoned, is entirely up to chance. Would Our Lord be such a hit-or-miss kind of Saviour as that? Would he really condemn some children to eternal suffering just for the accident of a heathen birth, and reward others for a privilege they did nothing to earn? I waited for Leah and the other pupils to seize on this very obvious point of argument and jump in with their overflowing brace of words. To my dismay, they did not. Not even my own twin, who ought to know about unearned privilege. This was before Leah and I were gifted; I was still Dumb Adah. Slowpoke poison-oak running joke Adah, subject to frequent thimble whacks on the head. Miss Betty sent me to the corner for the rest of the hour to pray for my own soul while kneeling on grains of uncooked rice. When I finally got up with sharp grains imbedded in my knees I found, to my surprise, that I no longer believed in God. The other children still did, apparently. As I limped back to my place, they turned their eyes away from my stippled sinner’s knees. How could they not even question their state of grace? I lacked their confidence, alas. I had spent more time than the average child pondering unfortunate accidents of birth.

I love being the bad one. That’s what happens to a strict preacher’s daughter. You’d think by now, preachers would get the joke about their kids and quit having them. We’re loads of delicious trouble.

I love being the bad one. That’s what happens to a strict preacher’s daughter. You’d think by now, preachers would get the joke about their kids and quit having them. We’re loads of delicious trouble.

Pie’s party, and I told him about meeting Gloria Dump. Winn-Dixie lay on the floor, waiting for the preacher to leave so he could hop up on the bed like he always did. When I was done talking, the preacher kissed me good night, and then he leaned way over and gave Winn-Dixie a kiss, too, right on top of his head. “You can go ahead and get up there now,” he said to Winn-Dixie. Winn-Dixie looked at the preacher. He didn’t smile at him, but he opened his mouth wide like he was laughing, like the preacher had just told him the funniest joke in the world; and this is what amazed me the most: The preacher laughed back. Winn-Dixie hopped up on the bed, and the preacher got up and turned out the light. I leaned over and kissed Winn-Dixie, too, right on the nose, but he didn’t notice. He was already asleep and snoring. That

The preacher released a pent-up breath as he sagged in relief. “Thank God he's gone.” His eyes narrowed at Alexander as he bit out, “Did you know that man had the nerve to lasso me while I was out in the woods?