Another Year of Choices
By Barbara Dahlgren
Does God laugh? I think so. Creating the duck-billed platypus, penguin, and giraffe should merit some points on the chuckle meter. Long before animated cartoons desensitized us to talking animals, He made Balaam’s donkey speak. The medical profession has come to see what the Bible told us all along: a merry heart is good medicine. (Proverbs 17:22) Studies show that those who laugh live longer, healthier lives. God created laughter and it is good.
Of course God has standards. Regrettably, people can pollute humor to something crass and crude. So when I speak of Christian humor in this article, I am not referring to vulgarity. God doesn’t stoop to such levels and neither should we. However, we as Christians could probably lighten up a bit.
Christians are a rare breed when it comes to laughter. Just the knowledge of Jesus Christ as our Savior should fill us with joy, but actually Christians can be some of the biggest fuddy-duddies around. Sometimes we want to determine what should or should not be funny for everyone else. That’s what happened when I was attending a Christian college.
Each year the music department presented a program. One time they did a parody about opera. A girl sang a comic aria while she answered the phone and talked to her boyfriend. It was pretty funny, but the administration wasn’t laughing. Most of their experience with arias came from Handel’s Messiah and Mendelssohn’s Elijah – religious compositions. They equated this genre of music as spiritual. Their narrow view limited their ability to see the humor. Unfortunately, the music director got in BIG time trouble over this comic aria.
A few years ago, I had an opposite experience at a Women of Faith Conference. Here we had 5,000 women of all sizes, ages, styles, nationalities, and denominations gathered under one roof listening, singing, and praising God together. Christian humorist Chonda Pierce had us all doubled over in laughter at ourselves and our denominational quirks. How refreshing! If we don’t believe God has a sense of humor, just think about all the different denominations and their ideas or foibles.
Thank God our salvation does not depend on whether we sprinkle or immerse, bring casseroles or hot dishes to potlucks, use old hymnals or sing new songs, fund raise with bake sales or bingo, clap our hands or keep them in our pockets, drink alcohol or teetotal, sit in pews or chairs, change too much or not at all, use bread or crackers for Communion, and/or raise our hands to praise God or stay seated when we sing Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus. If it did, we’d all be doomed.
Consider this… Jesus had a bit of a merry outlook on life. He enjoyed himself. He had wit and a keen sense of humor. How else would He come up with examples like a camel going through the eye of a needle and getting a wooden plank out of the eye? (Matthew 19:24; Matthew 7:3) He even jokingly nicknamed James and John the “sons of thunder.” (Mark 3:17) Jesus used humor to get points across, but sometimes we don’t recognize it because it’s not funny today. Just like today we think certain expressions are funny, but the ancients would not. The Bible is full of metaphors, irony, hyperbole, paradoxes, and exaggerations for effect. In many ways, that’s what cartoons are all about – illustrations for effect.
It’s unfortunate when our limited view affects our ability to laugh, especially at ourselves as individuals or even as a denomination. Of course we are not to be deliberately offensive with an “in your face” type attitude. However, true Christians aren’t supposed to get offended over every little thing either.
Maybe it’s better to accept our differences and laugh about them. In other words, sometimes we just need to “get thou over it” and get on with serving God.
Suggestions for practicing this choice…
- Read Proverbs 17:22 often: “A merry heart does good like medicine …”
- Lighten up!
- Smile!
- Laugh!
- Don’t judge and condemn others just because they do things differently than you do.
