The Mantra of Jabez: Break on Though to the Other Side

by Douglas M. Jones III

Bruce Wilkinson's best-selling book, The Prayer of Jabez, is so popular with Evangelicals it just had to be bad. Wilkinson told us to be gimpers for God; Jones shows us how to be kippers for God. In this parody the conservative Christian author allows humor to reveal the more ridiculous assumptions driving the original book. Each chapter of the original is turned inside out so that we can really see what's being said. Though the parody is rather ruthless in its humor, it is not hopelessly cynical just for the sake of mockery. It points to a more constructive vision, a vision of Christianity's inherent riches of truth, beauty, and goodness that the original Jabez book passively trivializes. Get this parody for the laughs; get it for something greater.

Genres: Humor, Satire, Fiction, Audiobook, Religion, Theology

62 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 2001

About the author

Douglas Jones holds a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California, Irvine, and a Master of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Southern California.

Former senior editor of Credenda/Agenda and editor of Canon Press, he has taught philosophy at New Saint Andrews College and the University of Idaho, both in Moscow, Idaho, and Lewis-Clark State College in Lewiston, Idaho.

Among Jones's many writing credits are three children's books, Huguenot Garden, Scottish Seas, and Dutch Color, and contributions to Back to Basics: Rediscovering the Richness of the Reformed Faith, Repairing the Ruins: The Classical and Christian Challenge to Modern Education, Bound Only Once: The Failure of Open Theism. He co-authored Angels in the Architecture with Douglas Wilson.

Jones's scholarship and short creative writing credits include "Reading Trees," a review of Thomas Campanella's Republic of Shade: New England and the American Elm, in Books and Culture: A Christian Review, September/October 2003 and "Coverings," a poem in the Spring/Summer 2004 issue of Valparaiso Poetry Review. Jones contributed numerous pieces to Credenda/Agenda, including the volume 14, issue 4 cover article, "Just Wood," which was anthologized in Best Christian Writing 2004. He has also written several short plays, including "University Cafe," which was selected as a finalist for the 2005 Theatre Publicus Prize for Dramatic Literature.

Reviews

[ValeReads Kyriosity]

Meh. It probably would have been funnier in its day, but the Jabez craze is pretty well forgotten, and I never paid any attention to it in the first place. At least it was short.

[Brian]

I heard the author of the original work, herein parodied, and his appeals although for a good cause drove me bonkers. So I came home, and read this through. The word 'catharsis' comes to mind. As the Greeks would say, kudos to Doug Jones to making something really silly into something worth a few minutes of the day.

[Jeremy]

Probably would have enjoyed this more if I hadn't read the real version first and thought that it was okay.

Chapter 1: Little Mantra, Giant Score
10: key is that Jabez was more honorable than his brothers
11: it takes time to cultivate honor

Chapter 2: So Why Not Twist It?
20: are God's blessings always immaterial?
21: is the afterlife about you, or about "extending the kingdom throughout the earth and glorifying God"?

Chapter 3: Living Extra Large for God
24: the text is about actual territory, not spiritual opportunities
25: gnosticism
27: rewards come after time, the cultivation of virtues, and maturity

Chapter 4: Touched by Immaturity
36: maturity and virtue, not formulas

Chapter 5: Keeping Vacuum Sealed
37: develop spiritual habits and virtues
39: a poetic vision does not separate the physical and moral
42: maturity and spiritual habits

Chapter 6: Welcome to the Bungee-Jump
45: "Jabez was honorable, and then God answered his prayer"
47: why does Wilkinson's God bless only those in "full-time Christian service"?
49: time and maturity are required
50-51: bumper stickers

Chapter 7: Making Jabez Mine
53: God's blessings aren't automatic (on tap)

The Upturned Table Parody Series
57: goal is to skewer modern Evangelicals, of which the author and publisher are admittedly a part; those wounded or offended by the parody need to get over it; those who like Wilkinson's book should remember that medieval folks got warm and fuzzy feelings from their relics

[Douglas Wilson]

A lot of fun.

[Alisa]

A great, albeit snarky, parody of The Prayer of Jabez which highlights the superficiality and even Gnosticism of that book with correctives contained within the satire.

[Deanna Rinebolt]

Not quite as funny as Right Behind, but a good book non-the-less.

[Scott]

This is a hilarious parody of the Prayer of Jabez.

[J]

Amid the rather harsh satire in this exceedingly slim volume there are some powerfully positive things about a truly Christian way of life. His main target is obvious (the woefully decontextualized abuse of 1 Chronicles 4:9-10 that sadly sold millions of copies, not all of them in America) but along the way Jones also skewers some evangelicals' focus on narrow evangelism (rendered here, with painful accuracy, as the attempt to put Christian sentences into other people's heads), tendencies towards over-spiritualism or even gnosticism, and a kind of feebleness both in the face of culture, earthy real life and its opportunities and also in the face of temptation to sin.

I was particularly struck by this passage [remember, it’s satire, by an ‘insider’]:
“Personal sanctification is a bit of a fraud, too. If the Holy Spirit were really able to mature people out of childish lusts, then why do so many ministers fall into sin, drop out of ministry, and leave a mess in their wake? It’s quite unbelievable, especially given the number of Christian sentences in their heads.* But it does show us that real maturity isn’t possible. The Holy Spirit doesn’t work that way, so it’s best to become vacuum-sealed as soon as possible.” (38)

[* For a deeply-felt non-satirical and wonderfully hope-filled book inspired partly by a tragedy of that nature, see [book:Your God Is Too Glorious|35138437]]

And by what followed [yup, still satire]:
“When booklets like this talk about temptation, we always mean sexual temptation, nothing else. One of the grand benefits of holding to a very literalistic, scientific, non poetic, non symbolic grid of biblical interpretation is that it allows one always to be eternally threatened by sexual temptation of the silliest sort. Pornography looks at sex from a scientific angle; their bodies are just measurable quantities…
The dangerous thing would be to look at the world poetically or symbolically. That always leads to liberalism, communism, and sonnets. If we were to look at the world poetically then porn would too quickly lose its appeal. A poetic vision allows me to see goodness and beauty far beyond what the microscope could pick up. But porn stars are impersonal, disconnected from my marriage history and name wife’s sacrifices for goodness. In the poetic vision the older my wife gets the more lovely and alluring she becomes because her history, sacrifice and goodness cannot be separated from her body. Everyone would pale beside her maturing poetry.
At some point this could get so dangerous that porn would actually look ugly, because it tries to strip goodness from beauty. In this vision we would have to worry that forty-year old men would no longer find teenage girls sexually alluring because their bodies are symbolically tied to youthful shallowness and silliness. But thank goodness for literality in our walk. We don’t have to worry about any of this. We can just flee at the faintest hint of a breast in our vicinity.” (38-40)

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First read around 2006. Re-read as it came to the surface during a major re-organising of our Christian books. Found it mildly amusing and mildly perplexing last time. More amusing and less perplexing this time.

[Will Dole]

Satire has one primary job: be funny. It doesn’t work as a critique unless it accomplishes this first goal.

This book was simply too cynical a reading and of Wilkinson’s original to be funny. So it doesn’t work as a critique of his thesis.

At least the audiobook was only 49 minutes long.

[Shea Stacy]

Pretty funny.

[Chrissy Chaldecott]

Absolutely Brilliant!

[Nathan Miller]

I found this on my in-law's shelf, never heard of it before, but I had a free half-hour and it looked short.

I've never read the Prayer of Jabez and all the reviews my friends wrote were written 12+years ago--however, I'm still familiar with the evangelical movement that's being addressed here. I felt like I was trying to reconstruct a conversation using the transcript from only one participant. So some of the sections fell flat, but I would assume that he's parodying some element of his original source. Overall, I'm sure it was a great response in the moment, but not all that valuable to read now that the Prayer of Jabez has long since exited stage left.

[Bob Wolniak]

Hilarity (parody) abounds! My favorite chapter is "Touched by Immaturity." While laugh out loud at times, Jones creatively teaches us, yes satirically and without mercy, but effectively raising issues we want to teach in the church. Do you want to be a kipper for God?

[James]

Great!!

[Mark Lickliter]

Funny

[Martin]

Plenty of laughs. Shows what is wrong with the thinking behind the other one: The Prayer of Jabez.

[Christopher]

This book is killer, and it's point about Christian immaturity is as real and important as it gets.