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Comedian Jeffrey Jena is Jeff’s first victim as they reminisce about their hazy early days in stand up comedy – which leads directly to memory loss due to getting older and frying brain cells when they were younger.
But how does this affect people who tell jokes for a living?
What happens to the jokes that no one gets?
It’s all very scientific, really. The joke continues its motion without anything impeding its progress until it gets dissolved into the ions of the atmosphere. It thin reaches the ears and mind of someone who does get the joke.
Which explai8ns the homeless guy on the corner who randomly breaks out in uncontrollable laughter.
See? Science. Even in a faith-based podcast!
Jeffrey chalks up his approach to things to his Jesuit education where he was taught to doubt everything: Buddhism, Hinduism, Marxism, Islam…everything. Sadly, this often leads to the top students doubting their own faith and the Jesuit teachers end up creating agnostic or atheist students.
It was this process of doubting everything that kept Jeffrey from attending any church whatsoever for many years until he met his wife who was attending a Methodist church in California. At the time, he simply found it easier to go along in order to get along, so he dutifully sat in the pews from week to week.
That was until the pastor cornered and confronted him after a Sunday service.
“You’re not buying any of this are you?” the pastor asked.
It was then that Jeffrey honestly faced his doubts.
The pastor then replied, “Do you think that God wants you to leave your brain outside when you come into church? Bring your doubts in. If I’m preaching and something I say doesn’t make sense, stand up and ask right then and there and I’ll answer your questions to the best of my ability.”
It was his pastor’s openness and teaching and Jeffrey’s wife’s patience and encouragement that helped guide him back into the Good Shepherd’s flock.
But it was a different set of circumstances that paved Jeffrey’s road toward sobriety. Long before he had even met his wife, he found himself at death’s doorstep after a three-day binge on booze and coke that got his attention. But that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t until he spent an evening in the Raleigh drunk tank that he realized he didn’t want to be like his cellmates anymore.
While in a recovery program, Jeffrey realized that his own major personal fault was lying. Even to the point of being able to lie to himself. In fact, when he stopped drinking and drugs, he had simply moved his compulsive addiction to gambling and continued to lie to himself that he was clean.
But it was his relationship with Christ that finally helped him thoroughly examine his life and understand who he was behaving like compared to who God had created him to be.
Once clean and after fighting alongside his wife in her long battle against breast cancer, they were told that they could never have children of their own. But, sometimes God knows better than doctors and adoption agencies.
For more about Jeffrey’s story, his comedy or just to drop him a line, check out www.JeffreyJena.com or you can connect with him on Facebook or Twitter @JeffreyJena
For more clean comedy from Jeff, you’ll love his stuff at JeffAllenComedy.com or on Twitter @JeffAllenComedy