Reminder and quick thoughts on laughter
I am working on a three part series called: "Christ, the Father's Love to us." This includes a look at John 11 with some Greek insight, Mark 5 with insight from Isaiah 9, and the theme of holiness with insight from Ephesians, Romans, 1Thessalonians, T.S. Eliot, and more. Hopefully I will post it soon. I started writing it while reading Machiavelli, and I have not finished any parts of it yet--it's getting big...I need to limit myself...maybe I should break it into more parts?
I am telling you this so that you keep me accountable to posting. Typing out my musings on Scripture has been helpful for me and hopefully edifying for you, focusing/developing our joy, faith, hope, and love on/in Christ. God willing, it shall be done; help me to strive to get it done.
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Here we come to the second reason for my posting: Under the theme of "reminder," I will leave you with a principle that an elder at my church lives by, which came to mind while discussing Chaucer. When asked about whether or not he believes that Christians ought to enjoy coarse, perverse humor, excessively violent movies, flagrant lechery, and other such forms of "entertainment," this elder said, "I believe that I cannot rightly take pleasure in anything Christ died to rid the world of."
I remembered this saying when Dr. Vincent asked us if it is alright for Christians to laugh while reading The Canterbury Tales. I got to state part of my beliefs about laughter in class (with how Luther thought of laughing as a form of judgment, a belief he got from Psalm 2:4 and 37:13. I am still not sure whether or not we should take this as an indicator of our liberty to laugh in the same way...since we are not God, but it does add to the discussion. Luther would made crude jokes and cartoons in order to shame the wise who oppose God.) but I did not get to state another side of my answer.
Laughter is not all the same--we laugh for different reasons and for different ends (the two of which are not divorced but helpful to distinguish between), so I would ask if laughing at certain parts of The Canterbury Tales is inappropriate, given God's judgment against adultery and other such sins in the text, which is a question stemming from the aforementioned principle by which one of my elder lives.
All the same, I think that laughing at things that are sinful is dangerous, since we can possibly start to laugh in an indulgent way that is akin to our old selves...perhaps I am too severe, and if I am help me out of self-disillusionment--but please don't make an appeal to inferior pleasures at the loss of superior joys in the presence of God, free from the hindrances that improper pleasure might pose.
I am not saying that Chaucer falls in this category because I am still unsure what the difference is between me laughing at it and the common atheist laughing at it.
Laughter is important to me...I believe that what makes you laugh tells God who you are and just as what makes you cry tells God who you are. It is the ability to handle emotions in legitimate expressions, this ability to express ourselves is a great gift. It begs the question, "where is your heart?" Ravi Zacharias once said that we (the Post-Modern generation) have lost the differentiation between laughter and tears. We put adultery on TV and we laugh. We laugh at the lewd and I am convicted by this--though God keep me from being self-righteous, may Christ alone be my righteousness, having no righteousness of my own, save but Thy grace alone.
God be gracious and redeem our laughter. Teach us to cry. Teach us to rejoice. Teach us to take pleasure in that which is in your presence, at your Right Hand forever more.
Glory to God in the highest. Glory to God.
There is much more that can be said, we could define laughter and its role in our lives as human beings, ask why anyone would desire to laugh at such things in the first place and talk about how we take lowly freedoms and cling to them incessantly at the detriment of superior joy, or think about how laughing at such things could foster an inappropriate view of reality by blunting our hatred for evil that in turn impairs our love for good, or we could propose that laughter often is a case of identification (how it could either be a response to similarity or dissimilarity between two things, which could explain irony, absurdity, sarcasm, and other cases of identification that we often laugh at), or we could say something else I am sure, but I will stop right here for now. Thoughts?
I am telling you this so that you keep me accountable to posting. Typing out my musings on Scripture has been helpful for me and hopefully edifying for you, focusing/developing our joy, faith, hope, and love on/in Christ. God willing, it shall be done; help me to strive to get it done.
--
Here we come to the second reason for my posting: Under the theme of "reminder," I will leave you with a principle that an elder at my church lives by, which came to mind while discussing Chaucer. When asked about whether or not he believes that Christians ought to enjoy coarse, perverse humor, excessively violent movies, flagrant lechery, and other such forms of "entertainment," this elder said, "I believe that I cannot rightly take pleasure in anything Christ died to rid the world of."
I remembered this saying when Dr. Vincent asked us if it is alright for Christians to laugh while reading The Canterbury Tales. I got to state part of my beliefs about laughter in class (with how Luther thought of laughing as a form of judgment, a belief he got from Psalm 2:4 and 37:13. I am still not sure whether or not we should take this as an indicator of our liberty to laugh in the same way...since we are not God, but it does add to the discussion. Luther would made crude jokes and cartoons in order to shame the wise who oppose God.) but I did not get to state another side of my answer.
Laughter is not all the same--we laugh for different reasons and for different ends (the two of which are not divorced but helpful to distinguish between), so I would ask if laughing at certain parts of The Canterbury Tales is inappropriate, given God's judgment against adultery and other such sins in the text, which is a question stemming from the aforementioned principle by which one of my elder lives.
All the same, I think that laughing at things that are sinful is dangerous, since we can possibly start to laugh in an indulgent way that is akin to our old selves...perhaps I am too severe, and if I am help me out of self-disillusionment--but please don't make an appeal to inferior pleasures at the loss of superior joys in the presence of God, free from the hindrances that improper pleasure might pose.
I am not saying that Chaucer falls in this category because I am still unsure what the difference is between me laughing at it and the common atheist laughing at it.
Laughter is important to me...I believe that what makes you laugh tells God who you are and just as what makes you cry tells God who you are. It is the ability to handle emotions in legitimate expressions, this ability to express ourselves is a great gift. It begs the question, "where is your heart?" Ravi Zacharias once said that we (the Post-Modern generation) have lost the differentiation between laughter and tears. We put adultery on TV and we laugh. We laugh at the lewd and I am convicted by this--though God keep me from being self-righteous, may Christ alone be my righteousness, having no righteousness of my own, save but Thy grace alone.
God be gracious and redeem our laughter. Teach us to cry. Teach us to rejoice. Teach us to take pleasure in that which is in your presence, at your Right Hand forever more.
Glory to God in the highest. Glory to God.
There is much more that can be said, we could define laughter and its role in our lives as human beings, ask why anyone would desire to laugh at such things in the first place and talk about how we take lowly freedoms and cling to them incessantly at the detriment of superior joy, or think about how laughing at such things could foster an inappropriate view of reality by blunting our hatred for evil that in turn impairs our love for good, or we could propose that laughter often is a case of identification (how it could either be a response to similarity or dissimilarity between two things, which could explain irony, absurdity, sarcasm, and other cases of identification that we often laugh at), or we could say something else I am sure, but I will stop right here for now. Thoughts?
1 Comments:
'I believe that what makes you laugh tells God who you are and just as what makes you cry tells God who you are. It is the ability to handle emotions in legitimate expressions, this ability to express ourselves is a great gift. It begs the question, "where is your heart?"'
I agree wholeheartedly. Thank you for your thoughtful trek through this subject. There is something wrong with a world that mistakes pain for pleasure - especially a world that mistakes the pain of others for their own pleasure. Mostly my concern lies in the disunity of it. I think we are given laughter for two reasons: to express deep joy and enjoyment, and to discern, as you mentioned, incongruities and inconsistencies (think Paul's sarcasm in the epistles; think any sort of satirical work). See Genesis 15-21 and trace the laughter of Sarah and Abraham - the same physical act denotes multiple emotional expressions, revealing different reactions to and therefore views of God. It's Titus 1:15 (like anything we experience) - it is a question of whether or not we are using the way we are naturally created to the ends of holiness or corruption. Do we laugh in disbelief in the face of God, or do we laugh in disbelief at how wonderful His blessing in our life is?
As far as Chaucer: a read for personal enjoyment, however the level of laughter, is only so useful if it improves the virtue of the reader. I do think that sometimes a surplus of laughter seems compensation for what someone is NOT getting out of a thing - sometimes he who sits quietly with a small grin is really working the tale into their hearts, versus someone who guffaws and never thinks twice about the implications of Nicholas and Alison's relationship. What is worth our tears is a world in which the majority of men have the character of the latter - and yet, what turns our tears into laughter once again is hope in and from Christ Jesus. It would be a sin to never wear the joy of this hope on one's countenance, and yet it would be ignorant never to mourn the souls whose laughter is a sign that they do not experience this hope.
We walk fine lines; this is simply another tightrope in the Christian life. I recently watched the movie "Man on Wire," about a French guy who tightrope walked between the World Trade Center Towers. He trained himself to walk these lines, and, despite his concern, trial, and sacrifice, experienced a more supernatural bliss by his feat that any man with two feet on solid ground did. I felt the film very metaphorical to what we, as God's people, can experience when we give recognition to both pain and pleasure - when we read a tale and see both it's virtue and it's vice, and we still manage not to fall.
GK Chesterton was quoted in Konrad Lorenz's book On Aggression as saying that future religion will be based on a "highly developed, differentiated, subtle for of humor." Lorenz, an evolutionary biologist, agreed, commenting that "we do not as yet take humor seriously enough."
Those, to me, speak for themselves. Thanks again for your thoughts.
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