In my last article I covered finding ways to circumvent using language that might not be ‘family friendly,’ and getting more laughs by doing it.

But honestly, sometimes you want to address something important, something not funny in a funny story. I have evolved from ‘just being funny’ to ‘being funny but slipping in a message here and there.’ My dad, a pastor for about 100 years said, “If you can get them laughing, you can shove anything down their throat.”

And as REM said, “Lenny Bruce is not afraid.” When I get worried about using humor to address serious situations I think of Lenny Bruce. A very, very funny man who wasn’t afraid to tell the truth.

Here’s a piece from my story Fortune Cookies, set in the late 1980s, which digs into some of my problems with certain segments of the modern American Christian church. It’s meant to sting, but also be funny.

“They called themselves a church. The outside of their building looked like a church. But what those folks believed differed greatly from most mainstream American Christian churches in those days. Nowadays they would fit right in. They weren’t really hurting anybody with their crazy Jesus, so for the most part we just let them be. Whatever was wrong with them, most folks thought it wasn’t contagious. Again, time proved us wrong.

Their preacher liked to yell and scream and warn his congregants about the dangers in this world. He was fond of talking about how everyone was out to get them.

When your primary religious dogma is based on the idea that everyone is out to get you, you are not practicing religion. You are living an exceptionally self-centered existence. Sure, the world may dislike you, but they aren’t going to come all the way to Halfdollar, West Virginia, to do something about it. They’ll launch a strike on LA or New York City and hope the effects trickle down to you.

That preacher was named Lester Gwinn, and Lester only had one eye.

Pastor Lester Gwinn lost his eye when he was in the Army. Not in a heroic way.

He’d been stationed out in California and was driving, admiring the women in their bikinis, looking at the ocean, and eating a corndog. He was watching the women so intently that he forgot he was driving until sideview mirrors started bouncing off the side of his car. His car had drifted to the right, and he side-swiped eleven parked cars. He swerved and hit a dump truck, which stopped him. He remembered he had been eating when the corndog stick went into his eye.

He was medically discharged from the Army. They fitted him with a glass eye. Lester had no way to get home or make money. He was in a bar one night, and the fella next to him told Lester a joke. “You hear about the guy who bet the bartender $10 he could lick his own eye?”

“No,” said Lester, trying to figure out if he was being made fun of.

“Well,” continued the joke teller, “this fella bets the bartender, and the bartender takes the bet, and then this guy pulls out his glass eye, and licks it!” The guy didn’t tell jokes well.

Lester could have gotten sore but instead he saw a job opportunity. He made his way from California to West Virginia, stopping in at every bar, betting people he could lick his own eye. When he got back to Halfdollar it took about six minutes to run out of people to make that bet with because we only had one bar in the county, and Lester was out of work again. So, he became a preacher, like people do. They figure if the disciples could do it, so can they. A lot of people think Jesus or the Holy Spirit call them to preach. Some of those people need to keep in mind that they might be wrong. Thinking that just because you fish and sin you are qualified to be the next great disciple is like equating Kim Kardashian to Helen Keller because they both learned to talk.

I doubt Lester had read the Bible, and certainly not any commentaries, and so he made interesting mistakes. I’ll never forget when he told the congregation that Jesus, “…suffered under Pontius’s Pilates.”

Pilates, like the exercise. Get it?

I do not think I could be more clear in this story that I am being unpleasant toward a certain segment of “Christians.” I am also certain some people who attend a “church” like Lester’s are often in my audience, or maybe even a preacher like Lester is sitting out there. I’m not trying to offend those people. I’m trying to enlighten them. I want them to laugh and think, “Yeah that guy Lester and his followers are idiots,” and then later maybe they’ll think, “Hey wait a minute… am I Lester?”

This article has far exceeded my self-imposed 800-word limit, but almost 600 of them are the story excerpt....

When I get ready to put serious commentary or satire in my story I ask myself:

Is it necessary to the story? Or am I saying it just to say it?

If you are just saying it to say it, recraft your story so what you are saying is integral.

I am sometimes asked to preach, and I realized just now that when I write a sermon, I’m asking myself the opposite question. I ask, “Am I putting this bit in the sermon just to be funny, or it necessary to the message.”

Am I just saying it to be mean?

Am I, as they say, punching down?

and most importantly I ask

Do I believe what I am saying?

If I don’t truly believe the message I’m presenting, I won’t say it.

Can I defend, backup, what I said if I am confronted?

I think asking myself this question prepares me best for saying things that might spark anger. I am ready, if an audience member approaches me, to carefully, clearly, and calmly explain why I said what I said, and why I thought it was important.

One easy trick to saying controversial things is to create a character who would say the things you need said. I created Mrs. Crankberry who is, “…the meanest woman I ever met. She was the Chairwoman down at the church for The Committee of Little Old Ladies Who want to be Angry About Something.” That woman can say anything because people expect a woman like that to speak her mind. Unfortunately, I killed her off like two paragraphs later. But a woman like that could say, “You know, none of the people who signed The Declaration of Independence were American citizens, and seven of them weren’t even born in this country.” Oh the possibilities.

Or, find a folk tale. Folk tales, as Donald Davis once said, let us explore the dark subjects and thoughts we have. In Hansel and Gretel the adults take their children out into the woods to starve to death. That’s not nice, but if you’ve ever had children, no matter how good a parent you are, you have thought, “I’d like to take you to the woods…” Folk tales cover lots of subjects, and you can tell them, or rework them, to fit your needs, but under the academic cover that what you are saying is traditional.

Push the absurd. I seriously doubt Rev. Gwinn in Halfdollar, WV, in 1987, had ever heard the word ‘Pilates,’ but his using it establishes the tall-tale nature of the story. His glass-eye-licking, Scripture misquoting persona pushes him close to the limits believability, and opens him up to let me expose his real self, cloaked in humor.

One more, and I know there is a lot of religion in this article, but a lot of what I say that might cause anger is my critique of the modern American ‘church.’

Poor Mr. Peterson said: “Proverbs 14:31 says something like, ‘Whoever oppresses the poor insults God, but they who are generous to the needy honor God.’ Or, ‘He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker: but he that honoureth him hath mercy on the poor.’ Learn it in King James’ version, kids, and they can’t argue with you.”

“Who can’t argue?”

Poor Mr. Peterson said, “The kind of people who would. The scripture says be generous to the poor; it doesn’t say ask why the person is poor. You kids gotta remember that too many people only read the parts of the Bible where it says what God or Jesus can do for them but they ignore the parts about what we’re supposed to do for others.”

Give somebody an excuse to say what needs to be said, and then see if you can add humor.

One thing we need to keep in mind is that storytelling audiences come to festivals to be entertained, not lectured.

“Don’t take your audience hostage,” as Ed Stivender says.

At a storytelling festival you need to be mindful that your primary job is entertainer. However, storytelling has always always always been a tool for teaching. Remember that for every audience member you might rankle, there is another audience member who might need to hear you say, “I love queer people,” or, “Your pastor might be wrong,” or whatever it is.

I don’t tell at a lot of open mics or comedy clubs, but my guess is that the rules are different there. You have a different audience and can probably say a whole lot more than you can at a standard storytelling festival.

Y’all I’m about the straightest, whitest guy you’re going to run into. I go to church and I own guns, but not the mass murder kind (that right there could be offensive, but I believe it is important to say). I come from a deep red state. People look sat me and think, “Conservative.” After Timothy McVeigh bombed Oklahoma City, I got pulled out of every security line at airports and thoroughly searched. But, I feel like that gives me a certain responsibility. If someone with differing views than I is in my audience and thinks, “I bet this guy thinks like me. I trust this guy,” and then I say something that person disagrees with, maybe they will rethink their view. Maybe.

Whether I like it or not, I have become an Elder in the storytelling world. I have been telling to some specific audiences for twenty-five years. Over that period of time they have come to trust me. They know that I am primarily funny, but also apt to slip in a little commentary. I can say things to some audiences that you can’t because me and that audience have a relationship.

And I built that relationship by being careful. You go up on stage full shock and awe and people will hear the words that come out of your mouth but they won’t listen to them, and you will never be invited back. If you go up on stage a competent and engaging storyteller (you don’t have to be funny) and say necessary, well thought out things, people will listen to you, hear you.

Share

All right y’all, that’s it for this lesson. I’m sorry it is so long. I may need to pay YOU $8…

Please consider subscribing to this Substack. And, if you found this useful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. $8 a month, $80 for the year. I’ll try and publish tips at least once a week.

Bil Lepp is a professional storyteller and is available for storytelling, classroom and corporate events. He does workshops, too!