Beautiful
Original: Beautiful on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Red-haired woman: It must be so beautiful to be a Christian.
Panel 2:
Red-haired woman: Always loving your enemies. Forgiving everything.
Panel 3:
Red-haired woman: A life of humility and self-sacrifice, feeding the hungry, welcoming strangers.
Panel 4:
Red-haired woman: Never a dishonest word, never a lustful thought, never an attachment to objects, never—
Dark-haired woman (interrupting, raising a hand): Okay, I get it. Jeez.
Panel 5:
The two women stand together, the dark-haired woman now amused/exasperated.
Panel 6 (caption: EARLIER...):
Red-haired woman: Eastern religion is so much more compassionate and peaceful than Western hypocrisy.
Dark-haired woman: Have you only read scripture and never history?
Red-haired woman: Maybe. Why?
Votey:
Dark-haired woman: I never realized how exotic Christianity is.
(A large elephant stands in the panel.)
Red-haired woman: It must be so beautiful to be a Christian.
Panel 2:
Red-haired woman: Always loving your enemies. Forgiving everything.
Panel 3:
Red-haired woman: A life of humility and self-sacrifice, feeding the hungry, welcoming strangers.
Panel 4:
Red-haired woman: Never a dishonest word, never a lustful thought, never an attachment to objects, never—
Dark-haired woman (interrupting, raising a hand): Okay, I get it. Jeez.
Panel 5:
The two women stand together, the dark-haired woman now amused/exasperated.
Panel 6 (caption: EARLIER...):
Red-haired woman: Eastern religion is so much more compassionate and peaceful than Western hypocrisy.
Dark-haired woman: Have you only read scripture and never history?
Red-haired woman: Maybe. Why?
Votey:
Dark-haired woman: I never realized how exotic Christianity is.
(A large elephant stands in the panel.)
Alt text
A six-panel SMBC comic. A red-haired woman gushes to a dark-haired woman: 'It must be so beautiful to be a Christian. Always loving your enemies. Forgiving everything. A life of humility and self-sacrifice, feeding the hungry, welcoming strangers. Never a dishonest word, never a lustful thought, never an attachment to objects, never—' The dark-haired woman cuts her off, raising a hand in mild exasperation: 'Okay, I get it. Jeez.' A caption reads 'EARLIER...' and a flashback shows the red-haired woman saying 'Eastern religion is so much more compassionate and peaceful than Western hypocrisy,' to which the dark-haired woman replies, 'Have you only read scripture and never history?' The red-haired woman answers, 'Maybe. Why?' The joke: praising a religion based purely on its idealized scripture rather than its real-world record makes it sound impossibly perfect—and the same idealization applied to Christianity sounds absurd. Votey (aftercomic): a line drawing of a large elephant, with the dark-haired woman remarking, 'I never realized how exotic Christianity is.'
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.