I like Jon Stewart. His program - The Daily Show - is a favorite with my kids, so I often pause to watch it if it's on TV when I'm in the room.
Political satires - in Canada we have This Hour Has 22 Minutes - have long played important roles in society, making us question what we too often take for granted. Modern political satirists remind me of medieval court jesters, who humorously mocked and critiqued the worlds they lived in. (Shakespeare's plays reveal the important political role they played.)
I was watching The Daily Show a few weeks ago (or was it months ago now?), when Jon mentioned that a Christian minister had suggested (after months of experts trying unsuccessfully to stop a serious oil leak off the US east coast) - that Christians pray about it. I'm sure many had - especially those whose lives had been directly affected. At least, I hope they had. But until then, nobody had made this public appeal to the community at large to pray.
Jon's response was to suggest that God had done enough already - in creating the oil, covering it with rock down in the depths. But as for the oil leak, we were to blame: We had made the efforts to get at the oil, and now we were faced with an oil leak that was our responsibility. Hadn't God done enough already? I remember him saying... In other words, Don't bother God...
But not long afterward, the oil leak slipped quietly out of the news... the leak had apparently been repaired...
I don't think it was a co-incidence... I think it was an answer to public prayer... God likes to be bothered when we come to Him in prayer... (And I hope Jon Stewart noticed!)
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