âThe role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you donât see.â âJames Baldwin
A few days ago, a church skit by Druski went viral.
The scene was familiar to many who have spent time in or around certain megachurch cultures: a preacher suspended from the ceiling, dramatic entrances, exaggerated prophecies, emotional offerings, and an atmosphere thick with spectacle.
The video sparked immediate debate.
Some went so far as to accuse Druski of mocking God.
But I want to suggest a way that may run against the grain (pun intended).
What if this wasnât a mess, but a mirror?
Indulge me.
Art has always played a prophetic role in society.
Not prophecy in the predictive sense, but prophecy in the revealing sense.
Artists have a way of holding up a mirror to a culture and forcing it to see itself.
Satire, especially, does not invent reality; it amplifies it. It takes what already exists and turns the volume up so loud we can no longer ignore it.
And thatâs precisely why it makes us uncomfortable.
We can grow remarkably desensitized to our own excesses. Over time, what once felt strange becomes normal. What once felt heavy becomes entertaining. What once felt sacred slowly becomes familiar and eventually theatrical.
When an artist takes those same elements and puts them on display outside the controlled environment of, say, Sunday morning, we suddenly see them for what they are or at least, what they can become.
But in true human fashion, when we donât like our reflection, our instinct is often to blame the mirror.
We accuse it of distortion, question its motives, and argue about its tone.
Now, that doesnât mean everything in the skit was fair. Satire is, by nature, exaggerated. It flattens nuance. It collapses the good and the bad into a single caricature. But caricatures only work when thereâs enough truth in them to be recognizable.
No one laughed because it was foreign. They laughed because it was familiar.
And that familiarity should give the church pause.
For years, many churches, especially large, platform-driven ones, have blurred the line between worship and performance. Weâve borrowed heavily from entertainment culture, sometimes in the name of relevance, sometimes in the name of growth, and sometimes simply because it works.
But at some point, we have to ask an uncomfortable question:
What are we training people to expect when they come to meet God?
The danger is not that God canât move through spectacle. He can. The danger is that spectacle begins to replace substance, and no one notices because it still âworks.â
Attendance grows.
Clips go viral.
Giving increases.
Meanwhile, formation remains shallow, discernment weak, and faith increasingly dependent on stimulation.
Thatâs when parody stops being cruel and starts being clarifying.
Druski didnât invent flying pastors, over-the-top prophetic moments, or emotionally manipulative offering appeals. He simply held them up, stripping them of their spiritual language and placing them in the realm of the absurd. And when spiritual practices look absurd outside of their usual setting, it may be worth asking whether they were ever as sacred as we assumed.
And while weâre here, offering a critique of religious practices isnât new.
Jesus regularly exposed religious excess not by mocking God, but by confronting the systems that claimed to represent Him. He warned against public displays designed to impress rather than transform. His sharpest words were not for outsiders, but for insiders who had confused appearance with faithfulness.
To be clear, I am not comparing Druski to Jesus or parody to prophecy; I am simply observing that God has a long history of using unexpected moments to reveal uncomfortable truths to His people.
Thatâs why Iâm less concerned with whether this skit âoffendedâ the church, and more concerned with why it resonated so widely.
If the reflection makes us uncomfortable, the solution isnât to be outraged. Itâs repentance, or at least reflection.
Because mirrors, when used well, are gifts.
They show us where weâve drifted.
They reveal what weâve normalized.
They invite us to change.
So maybe the question isnât whether this moment was a mess or a mockery.
Maybe the better question is whether weâre willing to look at it long enough to learn something.
Against The Grain
Against the Grain is the second newsletter from the âwith Sean Dreherâ Substack. It focuses on culture, conscience, and curiosity. As a missional thinker, I remind myself that Paul said not to be conformed, he didnât say not to be informed. In these writings, Iâll wrestle with the cultural realities (and assumptions) of our day and how we can process them as followers of Jesus. Itâs my best attempt at imagining what Paul would say if he were writing a letter to America.