ABSTRACT
When I was sorting through some bookshelves recently, I rediscovered a book of cartoons (Portlock 1990) depicting the absurd side of church life. One of them caught my eye. In it, a stern-looking little boy is addressing his rather alarmed, newspaper-reading, middle-aged father. The caption runs: ‘God told me last night if you didn’t buy me a bike before summer, he’d make you go bald.’ The cartoon is funny not only because of its absurdity, but also because it carries with it a grain of truth. The humour exposes the (mostly hidden and unacknowledged) potential in religious people to use their spirituality or their religious practice as an offensive weapon, seeking out a vulnerable spot in another person (in this case fear of baldness) to serve their own interests (getting a bike).
