What makes the deadly sins bad is that they are excessively self-centered versions of something good. Rest is an important part of life, for example, but slothful people greatly overdo it. We need to eat in order to live, but gluttony takes eating to an excess.

So what about greed? There is nothing wrong with wanting things, or with the motivation to make a profit. If no one ever wanted to excel by outwitting someone else, we would not have chess games or spelling bees!

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Can anyone remember knowing nearly as much about the congregation of a presidential candidate—or even of an actual president--as we know about the church from which the Obamas have now resigned? I feel sorry for the pastoral staff and congregants of the next church they join. Not only will every new sermon be examined closely for possible controversial content, but folks will be going into the archives of recordings of past worship services to see what might play on YouTube.

The Obamas had no choice but to make this decision to move on. However, now that they have joined that much-discussed demographic that we have come to label “church-shoppers,” I have a plea for them. Since the media will be reporting what they see and hear in the congregation you choose, be sure to pick one where the sermons remind all of us regularly to “do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly before our God.”

Having a rather perverse sense of humor myself, I struggle with this in very personal ways. Theologically, I am convinced that much of what is dismissed as disrespectful about religion is in fact a healthy critique of idolatrous conceptions of eternal things. We true-believer types need to lighten up a bit, and take religious humor as a gift that enables us to take a critical look at our own formulations. At the same time, there is such a thing as stuff that is simply bad taste, and yes, even sacrilege. If we want religious people to take a healthy look at themselves we should not shock them so much that they can’t get the point of a well-intended joke.