Now About Norm MacDonald

Terry Fleming wrote this and graciously gave me his expressed permission to share it with you. Treat yourself to all of this—-

The moth joke. The time he gave Courtney Thorne Smith the business on Conan. The time SNL bumped him from Weekend Update because he refused to avoid jokes about O.J. The time he played Burt Reynolds on Celebrity Jeopardy with that goofy hat. Norm passed away last week, and like many of you I have seen these skits and more remembering him.

But I also read other things, podcasts and interviews about how he became a seeker for God and truth. In one podcast, he said:
“I have a Rabbi who I talk to a lot… he’s a real scholar. My pastor doesn’t know anything-I mean anything…. he’s just a pleasant guy. If you ask him a direct question, he’ll go: ‘What? Didn’t you hear my sermon?’ But his sermon’s always like ‘How to be a nice fella’ or some nonsense.”

Yep, that sounds like a lot of the post-modernist pablum we dole out from our pulpits. Warmed over humanist nonsense, as Norm understood. In another interview, he said;

“Some people believe that man is divine, like kind of a hippie idea. I can’t believe that because I know my own heart, and I know that’s not true. Other people believe that we’re wretched like the cynics or the atheists would believe we’re all just wretched nothingness, just animals, just creatures. I can’t believe that. It doesn’t make any sense, that we’re just beasts. I will say that Christianity has this interesting compromise where we’re both divine and wretched, and there’s this Middle Man that’s the Savior, that through Him we can become divine, but we’re born wretched. I kind of like that one, because it sort of makes sense.”

Once, on Reformation Day, Norm tweeted what are called the five facets of the Protestant faith: “Scripture. Faith. Grace. Christ, Glory of God. Smart man says nothing is a miracle. I say everything is.”

In “The Final Chapter” of his memoir, “Based on a True Story,” he wrote this:

“The only thing an old man can tell a young man is that it goes fast, real fast, and if you’re not careful it’s too late. Of course, the young man will never know this truth.”

Norm was from my generation, and I can add a hearty “Amen” to that. Live urgently, seek God while He may be found. Because it does go by fast.

—- “I kind of like that one, because it does sort of makes sense,” he is quoted here as saying of Christianity.

Like so many other comedians, there was way more to him than anything remotely resembling slapstick.

You and I have people around us today who are like that. Some are actively searching…by the grace of God, let’s do all we can to help them find.

And to be found.