With all the criticism sent their way for the truly wretched gospel presentation the Babylon Bee gave billionaire Elon Musk during an interview with him, you’d think they’d be a little more introspective and contrite about how it all shook out, but apparently not.
During a recent segment, the crew addressed the controversy, responding to a clip of a critic who took them to task and chastised them by saying:
“Number one is you cannot ‘do me a quick solid by accepting Jesus.’ That’s just not how it works. Number two is the emotional music does nothing for the video. Because there’s no substance to the gospel presentation or what they like to call it. If the gospel does not have the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, that He saved you from your sins, and all it takes is belief in Him, then it’s not the gospel.
In response to the critique, the Babylon Bee crew starts laughing uproariously, revealing:
“Pwnd. Wow, I don’t think we could ever do that again though.”
Kyle Mann: “I’ve seen some criticisms of that, like one guy released a video of that, and then everybody else dogpiled on it like ‘Oh, yeah, I hated that too.’ Yeah, the interview’s been up for a month and no one said anything.
But I actually hadn’t seen – some of them were a little more in-depth, where they’re just like, ‘oh, I wasn’t comfortable with joking around with the guy who’s actually not a believer.’ And, and making the gospel kind of a joke, even though they understood that it was satire and we were just being silly. But I hadn’t seen that. He’s like, ‘You guys did a terrible job at presenting the gospel.”
They conclude by talking about the emotional music that was overlayed at the end, revealing that it was on purpose, “It’s almost like that was the joke. That’s exactly what we were trying to parody.”
In short, The Babylon Bee and Editor-in-Chief Kyle Mann continue to treat the whole thing as a joke, sharing that they never intended the presentation to be taken seriously and never truly intended to present the gospel to Musk because after all, they were “just being silly” and parodying a real gospel presentation.
What a waste.
[Editor’s note: I wonder what Paul would have said, and if he would have seen the “parody” of the gospel as “another gospel” like he did in Galatia.]
