in honour of becky’s return and her link to the frankly bizarre mark driscoll website on the song of solomon. if you’re wondering what happened to uncle remus from song of the south, then here’s your answer. btw. this time uncle remus has definitely unzippered-his-doodah! 
she was a stunner – but Solomon had a strange way of looking at things, he liked to compare everything with his favorite films and records
Comment by subo — September 19, 2008 @ 10:03 am
lol!
xxxx
Comment by Hayley — September 19, 2008 @ 10:04 am
That is such a weird site – whoever designed it must have been on something. BUT I do feel vindicated in my personal observations that some trees can look very…how can I put it…sexual. I always thought it must be me seeing things in a pervy way. I am on a course of combined deliverance and counselling. The good news is I’ve yet to see a tree making thrusting movements, though.
Anyway, can’t sit here rattling on all day…things to do, people to see…must remember to tether my fawns before I leave the house…
Comment by Carole — September 19, 2008 @ 10:16 am
Bambi on acid.
Comment by Carole — September 19, 2008 @ 10:17 am
The webcomic finally got a little bit brighter
ROFL
Comment by Magnus — September 19, 2008 @ 10:42 am
Yes, I think that it was at the breasts like gazelles bit that I finally gave up on the spiritualisation of the song of songs as representing Christ and the church…
Comment by Caroline Too — September 19, 2008 @ 11:00 am
A world without metaphor would be a very dull place…
Comment by Dr Ruth — September 19, 2008 @ 11:14 am
yes caroline… as much as some seem to want it to, it just doesn’t work does it?!
it is, however, a great erotic love poem… i’ll have to illustrate it one day. that’d raise a few eyebrows!
Comment by jonbirch — September 19, 2008 @ 11:20 am
I think there is a strong case to be made for Solomon having sampled the delights of “natural medicines” prior to writing what he did.
Anyway must go and check my apples
Comment by marcus — September 19, 2008 @ 11:20 am
magnus… oh yes, i’m not all doom and gloom!
carole… i know what you mean re. trees. glad i’m not the only one!
Comment by jonbirch — September 19, 2008 @ 11:22 am
haha marcus… think i’ll pop off and check me plums!
Comment by jonbirch — September 19, 2008 @ 11:22 am
I knew this guy’s name rang a bell with me – I remember reading something on Mark Berry’s blog.
He does seem to have a quirky way of expressing himself:
http://markjberry.blogs.com/way_out_west/2008/07/driscoll-on-enj.html
I would probably find the sermon series very entertaining, though possibly for all the wrong reasons.
Comment by Carole — September 19, 2008 @ 11:24 am
Comment by janetp — September 19, 2008 @ 12:20 pm
maybe Solomon was an early proponent of body modification?
Comment by marcus — September 19, 2008 @ 1:30 pm
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Pingback by postmodern vadå? » Blog Archive » Bokstavlig tolkning av Höga visan — September 19, 2008 @ 1:55 pm
why, oh why, does mark driscoll not use my friend jon birch or andi mac to do his animations?! who did he hire for that??? bizarre.
Comment by juli — September 19, 2008 @ 2:01 pm
Hey i think I know her…..
Thanks for the smile Jon!
Comment by drew — September 19, 2008 @ 2:51 pm
Bet she didn’t look like that after 10 pints though, eh, drew?
Comment by Carole — September 19, 2008 @ 3:10 pm
10 pints Carole, if I can still focus after 4 – I will accept that biblical miracles still happen today!
Comment by drew — September 19, 2008 @ 3:27 pm
12. Part of the Mars Hill Church experience is similar to your typical US seeker sensitive evangelical experience where a service is performed to give you a spiritual fix with very limited requirements on your end – this clearly fits the McChurch model of those who see church as serving their personal needs. The other part is Mark’s clearly mysogenistic rants – he tends to stick his foot in his mouth and up people’s rears far more than what I’ve seen from other super smily megachurch preaching pastors.
Re: song of solomon – in the teaching booklet they note that the greatest perversion to Christianity is sex. They have also reframed this story so that what I was taught to be erotic poetry where it’s unclear the marital status of the participants becomes a woman patiently waiting for her emperor king and the mind blowing sex that happens if you save yourself for marriage. If you want to follow this Christian crapola, the mars hill church website posts Driscoll’s blog on his sermons and an audio tape of his hour long sermons.
Jon – I’m back in and out – have a book due December 1st and then another one due December 1, 2009 but I do need breaks.
Comment by becky — September 19, 2008 @ 3:32 pm
Drew –
Becky: So he wasn’t just having a bad day, then?
Comment by Carole — September 19, 2008 @ 3:43 pm
the more I look at this picture the more she looks kind of cute…not sure thats a good thing to admit!! :-\
But with eyes like hers I bet Solomon looked pretty trippy!!!
Comment by marcus — September 19, 2008 @ 3:50 pm
I read Song of Songs again about a year ago… I’m not biblical scholar, so I may be missing a point but I just found the last chapter sad and disturbing… it doesn’t really seem like a happy ending…
Comment by Caroline Too — September 19, 2008 @ 4:10 pm
haha nice! loving the pair of gazelles?
Comment by chaino — September 19, 2008 @ 4:33 pm
Jon, that is brilliant! Way to take poetry literally. You rock!
Very clever.
Comment by Amy — September 19, 2008 @ 4:50 pm
that website is so scary!-made me laugh though!.
As a teenager in the small chapel youth group I went to we were asked to say which was our favourite book in the bible, i said songs of songs because I love the beautiful language. the church pastor ( and my uncle!!) told me I was not allowed that choice and anyway it was mistake and wasn’t suppose to be in the bible!
Comment by soniamain — September 19, 2008 @ 5:23 pm
Having just finished a 10x listen-thru of SofS (I’m listening thru the OT/NT), this made me laugh aloud, in my office, and will likely continue to do so.
Excellent!
Comment by Laura — September 19, 2008 @ 6:24 pm
we used one of the song of songs verses to embroider in sequins on a bra for a worship/ art installation we did one year at greenbelt, it was the wonderful and creative charlie’s (daube’s) idea, we then did a similar idea for her wedding present!!. On the greenbelt bra we used the verse your breasts are like twins of a gazelle!- seems a bit obscure now – but looks fab! and is hanging in my bedroom!
Comment by soniamain — September 19, 2008 @ 7:50 pm
Both the cartoon and the Web Site are hilarious… for different reasons… Jon, you brighten my day!
Comment by Mark Berry — September 19, 2008 @ 8:01 pm
I’m afraid I’m going to stand out here, please don’t stone me!
I have a lot of respect for Mark Driscoll, that doesn’t mean I agree with everything he says (I don’t, especially not his views on women and singleness), but I love the fact he has this really desire to preach the Gospel and not wander away from it because culture doesn’t like it (i.e. he lets the Bible interpret culture rather than culture edit the bible). Yes he does have a habit of offending people, but that is because he is passionate and he says it how he sees it, the thing is he is pretty humble about it and is willing to (and has a few times) apologise for causing un-necessary offence or speaking out of turn.
The biggest problem with Mark is that so many people love to take his words out of context, and he is very easy to mis-quote!
Comment by drnixck — September 19, 2008 @ 8:01 pm
I love the imagery of Song of Songs. If you remember D H Lawrence’s poem about a peach describing a lovely bottom it’s really the same, device-wise.
I love SoS, for both ways in which to take it.
Sas
Comment by sarah — September 19, 2008 @ 8:07 pm
Oh my, what do they put in the communion wine at Mars Hill?
Comment by calia77 — September 19, 2008 @ 8:37 pm
Thank you so much for this I must share it with my feminist theology group – we’ve just had an interesting session on the song of sololomon. It’s a wonderful book and great that it has its place in the canon – I try to encourage couples wanting to get married to read it as part of the preparation
Comment by jane stranz — September 19, 2008 @ 9:10 pm
21. No he wasn’t.
30. What offended me most about this service was that Mark Driscoll show up on stage to present his message after a two song warm-up and then he left very abruptly after he preached for an hour while the rest of the congregation gathered for the closing songs, a bit of prayer and a communion meal. His message was on Pray Like Jesus and yet he never prayed with his congregation or joined them in the meal. I have covered a lot of church services and this is the first time I’ve seen a pastor leave before the closing hymn unless there was a pastoral emergency.
Also there is NO room at Mars Hill Church to ask questions in a thoughtful and probing way – some teaching series like the Song of Songs will have an opportunity for people to text Qs but that’s not a real dialogue and interchange but more of an Ask the Pastor type dealie. After hearing his one hour message, I have about a dozen rather serious Qs based on his teachings (mainly he and I must be reading a different bible) but the general consensus is Mark is the preaching pastor and his word is how the congregation interprets the bible. I would have much more respect for Driscoll if he would create that space where people can genuinely dialogue over what he says. My take is that if I questioned Driscoll, I would be hammered with “Pastor Driscoll said this … ” comments.
To his credit, at least he knows his bible and makes some effort to allow people the opportunity to connect in small groups and other ways – items often missing from mainline churches. I am going to note that in my critique.
Comment by becky — September 20, 2008 @ 7:20 am
I saw a greetings card once with the verse “shall i compare thee to one of Pharaoh’s horses” on the front. Inside it said “Use this compliment with care”
@ 30 Don’t worry Dr Nick, you’re quite safe: We all ran out of first stones a long time ago.
I don’t know anything about Mark Driscoll, but on an artistic level i quite liked the intro animation personally… did i miss something? i wasn’t paying it that much attention.
Sas yes absolutely – why do people say it has to be one and not the other? Like all good poetry, Solomon is weaving lots of stuff together here. I reckon if we’ve only found two of the things he’s thinking through, we’re still missing a lot.
I think SoS would be a good thing for couples to read. I’m sure it would help the pillow talk along nicely. Is it true that Jewish boys weren’t allowed to read it until they were 21? I heard that somewhere but think its probably a myth.
Comment by Linus — September 20, 2008 @ 7:22 am
this cartoon made me smile. i’ve been studying it for a few years (from an us & God point of view) and the imagery is amazing, it sometimes feels me with so much life to know how he feels about us.
Comment by dan — September 20, 2008 @ 9:46 am
Can’t believe I missed this party
I love the way in which the video is a truly unique and original way of making you think about what is going on with the SOS…
… and then the standard evangelical sermon series talk is transplanted in there! It is totally incongruous (sp?). Until that point I was thinking “wow, I love metaphore but some of these don’t quite work do they”. Then I was left feeling like I had been televangalised – or worse – like I was sat in our local super church.
“And I’ll see you on Sunday”!
Comment by Robb — September 20, 2008 @ 11:09 am
Hey Sonia
Awww my lovely wedding present – not that it fits at the moment with my humungous pregnancy breasts!
For the record I love Song of Songs (we always used to call it Snog of Snogs and as a teenager I rewrote the name of it in my God News Bible – is that a bad thing??)
My darling husband loved the fact that I told him Song of Songs was pretty much the Bible’s version of porn (he’s not really into reading and literature so that was the easiest explanation!) – and he insisted on reading it at our wedding
Comment by dadube — September 20, 2008 @ 11:18 am
3. Carole
sexy trees LOL hehehe
love trees, but not in that way
great cartoon… so funny..
I think there are great spiritual lessons in the SofS and believe God’s Spirit caused it to be included in the canon for a reason that is more than to do with human sexuality…
but trying to make English translations fit into our ideas of the relationship between Jesus and his Church is not always good…
we lose some stuff in translation.
Comment by smudge77 — September 20, 2008 @ 1:11 pm
I’ve just got the meaning of ‘gazelles.’
They jump up and down, don’t they [albeit gracefully]
there is an answer for that problem.
Comment by smudge77 — September 20, 2008 @ 1:15 pm
Sorry I haven’t time to read all the comments as I’ve Mount Laundry to climb, but IMO this is your funniest ever cartoon, jon.
Like smudge77 @ #40, I’ve always wondered in what sense her breasts were like gazelles and why it was a Good Thing!
Comment by AnneDroid — September 20, 2008 @ 8:23 pm
not sure about SofS being a picture of the church – well not any church I’ve stumbled into, (though maybe Dickis christmas punch came close) it does though helpfully explain where babies come from, and it’s not a gooseberry bush after all:-
I found you under the apricot tree,
and woke you up to love.
Your mother went into labor under that tree,
and under that very tree she bore you.
Comment by subo — September 20, 2008 @ 10:36 pm
If you value your litle girl’s childhod innocence, don’t bring her to church for this Sunday sermon series.
Comment by Seymore S. — September 22, 2008 @ 7:54 am
This is absolutely HILARIOUS!!!! THank you for creating this. I love it so much.
Comment by Michelle Burrill — September 23, 2008 @ 5:52 am
I keep coming back to this one, Jon. It’s still making me laugh.
Comment by janetp — September 23, 2008 @ 9:22 am
The interesting thing is this is not the first time he has preached through this topic. Last time he did this a vast number of people were saved.
Comment by beatthedrum — September 23, 2008 @ 11:25 am
[...] but Solomon loved her. Posted by: Richard @ 12:14 pm | Trackback | Permalink [...]
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