Those of you who have just started reading my blog in the last two weeks may be surprised to find out that I am supposed to be rather amusing. No really! I am! I write loony poetry. I love puns. I make my friends laugh, and I laugh a lot at myself and my friends! (I don’t think they mind) If you don’t believe me, read this, or this, or this. Laughter is really important to me. As I mentioned in a previous post, one of the hardest things about foregoing mainstream television (and most movies) was giving up all the laughs. I thought Friends was funny. I thought Ally McBeal was funny. I thought Wayne’s World was really funny and used to own a copy. I can recite entire passages of Monty Python… Yup. I stand convicted. To laughter, I’m addicted.
I know I’m not alone.
And I know that for a lot of people, the main argument that forms in their minds at the thought of not watching television and movies is some permutation of “But I need to laugh sometimes! God wants us to have fun, doesn’t He?” Am I wrong about that? Am I the only one who put television in the category of rest and relaxation and called it a blessing?
Of course, there are some problems with that. First of all, I’ve already written here that television isn’t actually all that restful. If you really need rest, you’re better off sleeping. If you need relaxation… how about reading Psalms? 
Doesn’t sound like fun, though, does it? I’ll deal with the concept of fun more later… But for now, I just want to look at laughter.
To prepare for this post, I first checked my concordance for all the verses on laughter. There are about forty. Forty is a teeny, tiny percentage of the Bible. Of those forty, only nine were remotely positive. By positive, I mean referring to laughter in a positive way. Verses like Sarah naming her child of the promise “Laughter” and exulting,
God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me. Genesis 21:6
The other thirty-one verses about laughter were more along the lines of “Turn your laughter into mourning”, “I will laugh when your calamity comes upon you”, and words from Christ like this:
Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh. Luke 6:21
Woe to you who are well-fed now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep Luke 6:25
Yikes! Doesn’t exactly sound like we’re supposed to be spending our days at the comedy club, does it? Now stay with me, because this is a hard post to write. But I’ve been thinking a lot about laughter, and as much as I love it, and as much as it is an integral part of my character, I think perhaps we place too much stock in it. Scripture has much to say about our being filled with joy, but it really doesn’t say much about our being amused. I’ve heard people speculate before about whether or not Jesus laughed. The Bible tells us He wept, but it never says He laughed. I want to believe that He did, perhaps when talking with small children… But we really don’t know, do we? There is one assertion, however, that I can make with one hundred percent confidence: Jesus never laughed at sin. I just can’t believe that He ever would find sin humorous, can you? The Bible shows God (in all forms of the Trinity) being grieved at sin,and angered by sin, but never shows us God amused by sin. It’s inconceivable.
Sin is too serious a subject for laughter. Sin brings death and destruction. Sin brings pain and suffering. Sin broke fellowship between God and His created people. Sin was paid for by Jesus’s suffering on the cross. Sin is ugly and corrosive and enslaving and repulsive and vile… Or at least it ought to be. But on television, sin is just so fun, isn’t it? The pain and destruction of sinful behavior is rarely shown, and if it is, somehow it’s still comical - as long as it’s written well.
Laughter has a peculiar power to break down barriers. In his classic, The Screwtape Letters (correspondence from a senior demon to a junior about strategies for tempting and misdirecting humans) C.S. Lewis wrote about a young Christian man who had started spending time with non-Christian friends. Uncle Screwtape asks,
Did he commit himself deeply? I don’t mean in words. There is a subtle play of looks and tones and laughs by which a mortal can imply that he is of the same party as those to whom he is speaking. That is the kind of betrayal you should specially encourage, because the man does not fully realize it himself; and by the time he does you will have made withdrawal difficult.
A betrayal. Think about that. We are betraying God when we laugh at immorality. Why? Because laughter in some way, constitutes approval. I’ve always loved that line from Rich Mullins’ song We Are Not As Strong As We Think We Are:
And if you make me laugh
I know I could make you like me
‘Cause when I laugh I can be a lot of fun
When people don’t find me funny, I get really nervous because, to me, that means they don’t like me. When someone says, “You’re hysterical!” or “You’re crazy!” with a chuckle, I breathe an inner sigh of relief. And it’s not just being funny that makes us likable, it’s laughing with others. Have you ever experienced the awful pressure of knowing you shouldn’t laugh, knowing you should even perhaps call someone on their tasteless jokes, and hating the thought of being called a kill-joy, or a prude, or a stick-in-the-mud? I have. To be thought to have a deficient sense of humor… Oh! It’s a horrible thought! (it’s actually made this series very hard for me to write- because it’s NOT funny)
In another letter to Wormwood, Screwtape delves more fully into the different types of laughter and their uses…
The real use of Jokes or Humour is in quite a different direction, and it is specially promising among the English who take their “sense of humour” so seriously that a deficiency in this sense is almost the only deficiency at which they feel shame. Humour is for them the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. […] Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humourous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful - unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. […] But flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny.
I find much in this passage about which to hang my head. I am one of those people to whom humor is one of the highest attainable virtues. And I am also one of those people who has learned to make my flaws funny. One of my dear friends has a quote from me written down, she thought it was hysterical. In the midst of a conversation, I said, “I don’t mean to sound snobby - but I am!” She laughed, I laughed, and I went on with whatever I was yammering about. We have been well-trained that to be funny is to be well-liked and that to be virtuous and content is not funny. I find this one phrase, it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame, particularly telling. As my favorite pastor says, we have become a nation of unblushables. Why would we blush at sin anymore? We see it and laugh at it all the time. Laughter doesn’t just constitute approval… it diminishes importance. What do we mean when we say something is “no laughing matter”? We mean it’s important, of course!
I’m not saying we should be dull and humorless, far from it! But if our hearts are broken by the things which break the heart of God, we will not laugh at sin and we won’t find it entertaining. But what kind of laughter will we have? The laughter which comes from rejoicing in the good gifts we’ve been given. The kind of laughter which carries no sour aftertaste of dirtiness or guilt. The laughter which bubbles up from a heart full of joy!
Screwtape had this to say about the laughter of joy…
You will see the first among friends and lovers reunited on the eve of a holiday. Among adults some pretext in the way of Jokes is usually provided, but the facility with which the smallest witticisms produce laughter at such a time shows that they are not the real cause.[…] Laughter of this kind does us no good and should always be discouraged.
I don’t know about you, but the best laughs I’ve ever had were never at a television screen. The best laughs I’ve ever had were in the company of my family and friends. I can laugh myself sick when talking with my brother. My husband and I routinely crack each other up with goofy stuff that no one understands but us. And if you can’t find something to laugh about with your kids (or someone else’s), you’ve got a real problem. Kids are really funny!
We do get to laugh while we’re here on this Earth. But there aren’t nearly as many things to laugh at as we think there are. We’re in the middle of a war here. We’re surrounded by suffering people in a world which groans from sin. There are a lot of things to be heart-broken about. Instead of diffusing the pain by laughing at things which are not funny to a holy God, we need to allow our brokenness to drive us to Him in prayer -and to the world in service. It doesn’t sound like much fun, I’ll grant you. But this world is not our home, we’re just passing through. We will have an eternity with Christ to be filled with joy unimaginable… or as we are promised in Job 8:20-22:
Lo, God will not reject a man of integrity,
Nor will He support the evildoers.
He will yet fill your mouth with laughter
And your lips with shouting.
Those who hate you will be clothed with shame,
And the tent of the wicked will be no longer.