The Peanuts Comic Strip and the Gospel

Today, after a long break, I finished a book titled: 'The Gospel According to Peanuts' by Robert L. Short.

This is a wonderful book, especially for the final two chapters. First, we have a chapter titled "Good Grief". If anyone is familiar with the Peanuts comic strip, you know that this is something that Charlie Brown utters with some frequency. Good grief may seem to be a contradiction. Its existence is the same reason that we as Christians can claim that the Friday before Easter is good. After all, there are two types of grief. Good and not so good grief. As St. Paul writes by the Holy Spirit, "For godly grief produces repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death" (2 Corinthians 7:10).

So, good grief speaks of the Christian life as a life of putting to death the old sinful man so that he is crucified and dies. In his place, a new man springs forth to life and joy.

The final chapter is a wonderful explanation of that part of the Christian life. This chapter is titled, "The Hound of Heaven". As we all know, dogs are very loyal and devoted to their master. This is the way that you and I are to be in relation to our master, our Savior Jesus Christ. This is to say, that God creates everything out of nothing. We who are brought into the church through baptism are made nothing. We are humiliated so that we will see our true place as the devoted hound of heaven in relation to our master and Savior, Jesus Christ. Again, as Soren Kierkegaard puts it, "and everything which God is to use he first reduces to nothing."*

*"The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard", ed. and tr. Alexander Dru (London: Oxford University Press, 1938) p. 232.