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Have you never heard “Christmas Shoes”? If so, I envy you. I remember a time when that song didn’t exist. Things seemed so simple. People seemed to laugh more back then.

This song was crafted from an aggressively dumb, particularly American take on spirituality. Namely, that other people’s tragedies exist for the sole purpose of making other more fortunate people realize how good they have it. And there is a loving, caring god who steers us toward these moments–even though He doesn’t see fit to steer the victims away from their gruesome fates.

What kind of passive aggressive deity would do that? Seriously, if you take five seconds to think through the true implications of such a God ruling and directing the universe, how on earth could you believe in Him? Unless you prescribe to some weird sort of spiritual masochism. It’s a variation on the Jack T. Chick brand of Christianity, in which God doesn’t do anything to quell the misery and want found on Earth, but can’t wait to throw sinners into Hell the second they die.

There are literally thousands of things wrong with this song, on so many levels: musically, philosophically, and theologically. It would take a novel to run through them all. Luckily, Patton Oswalt has done that in less than eight minutes in the video below, accompanied by some excellent animation. (Thanks to TheWhiteBoomBoom for pointing me toward this.)