Joy is the most infallible sign of the presence of God. - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“Dentists tell you not to pick your teeth with any sharp metal object. Then you sit in their chair, and the first thing they grab is an iron hook.”

The crowd erupts, as a youthful Bill Cosby straddles a stage chair, writhing beneath a dentist’s invisible hand. “My bottom lip is on the floor,” he mumbles, mimicking the effects of novocain.

It’s the universality of such experiences that leaves us in stitches. Who can’t laugh about the trepidation that comes over everyone in the dentist’s chair … or the less-than-nostalgic recollection of family vacations filled with too many miles and not enough leg room?

But in these moments of economic upheaval, the threat of global terrorism, or the possibility of a natural calamity—such as an asteroid striking the planet—good humor is getting harder to come by.

“Demand for real, rib-tickling humor has never been higher,” writes humor columnist Jackie Papandrew. “Everybody could use a good laugh these days.”

So, let’s take a look at how the culture approaches humor, how God approaches it, and why we, as Christians, should start taking humor more seriously.

CHEAP CHUCKLES
“The supply of high-caliber comic relief is getting hard to come by,” continues humorist Papandrew. “Mirthful material used to practically fall from the trees like leaves in autumn.”

Sadly, instead of cultivating more of this “mirthful material,” we’ve become masters of sarcasm, that often ill-used brand of humor that points a sharp finger at someone else’s absurdity, instead of the absurdity in all of us.

“We use sarcasm as veiled criticism … when we don’t want to be honest with the other person,” says Christian stand-up comic Robert G. Lee.

“Sarcasm just slowly chips away at the other person. . . .”

Good humor—wholesome, self-deprecating, belly-tickling humor—seems to have gone for a stroll through more sinister comic territory. Religulous, Bill Maher’s recent mockumentary on religion, is a perfect example. The film picks on everyone with a religious affiliation—Christians, Muslims, Jews, Mormons alike—and leaves them feeling like idiots, not as fellow participants in the joke.

In one scene, Maher is interviewing a group of truckers about religion. He tells them that guys in prison and on the battlefield tend to cling to religion, then concludes, “But you guys aren’t dumb,” even though it's obvious to the audience that he thinks they are.

This is a perfect example of humor gone wrong.

Lee explains: “They use humor to attack religion, assuming the people listening to them are all on the same page. When the whole audience laughs, those who don't believe in the comic's skewed views feel alone and unintelligent.”

God’s holy sarcasm comes through in the book of Job: “Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? … Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!”

But God’s sarcasm is always productive, never destructive. His wit leaves Job in a state of worship, not despondency. But mere mortals ought to tread lightly.

Along with sarcasm, crass jesting is another form of poor humor. The Apostle Paul, in Ephesians 5:4, warns against “coarse joking,” as well as “obscenity” and “foolish talk.”

Apparently fear of humor turning sour caused many other early church fathers to warn against it. James Martin writes in America magazine:

Some early Christian writers favored a far more serious approach to life, as they were concerned with facing the dangers of the world and the evils of Satan. St. Paul warned in the Letter to the Ephesians to avoid “smartness in talk.” St. Clement of Alexandria inveighed against “humorous and unbecoming words.” And St. Ambrose said, “Joking should be avoided even in small talk.”

A BIBLICAL TEMPLATE FOR HUMOR
While taking precautions not to abuse humor, I believe Scripture offers us many compelling examples that God cares about cheerfulness and wants us to as well.

Embedded in a lengthy proverb about the meaningless of life, Ecclesiastes points out the value of appropriate light-heartedness, as well as solemnity: “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven . . . a time to weep and a time to laugh . . . a time to mourn and a time to dance.”

Despite resounding themes of obedience, judgment, and sacrifice, much of the Old Testament vibrates with mirth. After crossing the Red Sea, the Israelites rejoiced at their liberation. In 2 Samuel 6, David danced before God. And after the children of Israel returned from Israel, Psalm 126 declares that their “mouths were filled with laughter, [their] tongues with songs of joy.”

Moving into the New Testament, the Gospels never explicitly say “Jesus laughed,” but we can be confident that He was a man of joy, and perhaps, even, playfulness.

“Anyone who reads the Synoptic Gospels with a relative freedom from presuppositions might be expected to see that Christ laughed, and that He expected others to laugh, but our capacity to miss this aspect of His life is phenomenal,” writes twentieth-century author and theologian Elton Trueblood in his book The Humor of Christ.

A satirical adaptation of an outdated video on the life of Christ (produced by a church and meant to challenge wrong perceptions about Christ) shows Jesus as a spoil sport who—in a nasally, almost effeminate, dubbed-over voice—tells each of His disciples what they’ve done wrong:

Thomas, you were slow-dancing a little too close to that girlfriend of yours . . . Philip, I saw you smoking a cigarette behind that big rock the other day. Thaddaeus, I hate to say I saw you stick up your middle finger when someone cut you off while you were riding your camel. Benjamin, you aren’t wearing your WWJD bracelet . . . Frank, you know what you did. I just can’t repeat it ’cause I’m Jesus.

While some might consider this sacrilegious and others might chuckle, we breathe a sigh of relief that the Jesus the Gospels give us is nothing like this party pooper. Ours is not a dour Savior. In fact, more often Christ was accused of having too much fun. Falsely accused by the Pharisees for being a “glutton and a drunkard,” Christ’s earliest recorded miracle was turning water into wine at a party.

In Matthew 6:16, Christ warns against false gloominess: "When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show men they are fasting. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.”

And many of Jesus’ parables were brimming with subtle humor—paradox, hyperbole, and irony. We would do ourselves a favor to see many of His parables through a humorous lens. For example, in Matthew 23:24, Jesus tells the Pharisees that they, ironically, “strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.”

At least to the modern reader, Jesus’ humor wasn’t slapstick, more likely evoking chuckles than guffaws, but it always had a goal—to point out the truth, to reveal mankind’s true nature, and to show the way to redemption.

THE JOKE’S ON US
Perhaps the best kind of humor—at least for those of us contending with the remnants of sin—is that genius known as “self-deprecating” humor, which, like a good boomerang, diverts the joke back to oneself. Those who can laugh at themselves humbly make themselves the fool, at once pointing out their status as flawed creatures and protecting the feelings of the other. It’s the perfect antidote to sarcasm.

Humor like this is what the Christian community needs more of, Lee says.

“Christians have heard so much bad humor that they throw out the baby with the bathwater.”

As a result, many Christians have garnered for themselves a reputation as an “irrelevant, serious, sanctimonious” group who would rather sit around debating the style of worship music than tell a good joke.

“Christians need a good PR agent,” Lee asserts.

Perhaps Lee sees himself as one of these agents. His goal behind with BADD is to develop humorous video sketches that show that Christians can laugh at themselves. One of their sketches, “The Small Group”—which parodies the NBC television show “The Office”—pokes fun at stereotypical personalities in Bible studies. There’s the “rule keeper,” the “know-it-all,” and the guy who comes just to meet good-looking girls.

“Being funny covers a multitude of sins,” Lee says.

After one of his comic routines, a non-Christian member of the audience approached Lee and gave him what he considersthe greatest compliment he’s ever received: “You talked about Jesus the whole time, but I didn’t care, because you made me laugh.”

Similarly, Jon Acuff on his blog, Stuff Christians Like, enjoys good-naturedly mocking anything cliché or quirky in the Christian community, like Christian tattoos, falling in love on mission trips, “unspoken” prayer requests, praise songs with never-ending choruses, and people who wear Bluetooth earpieces at church.

Infusing Acuff’s blog is a keen awareness that these idiosyncrasies either apply to him or could. In a recent post, he makes fun of himself for pretending to like C.S. Lewis to make himself appear more astute.

Like Lee, Acuff sees a strong need for healthy self-deprecating humor in the Christian community. He writes in the introduction to his blog: “I want to be honest and upfront and hopefully a little funny about the issues the church and Christians struggle with sometimes. I want to say, ‘Whoa, whoa, please don't judge me or God by Christian radio.’ I want to admit the times we've dropped the ball on issues or ideas that people called to love their neighbor should have knocked out of the park. I want to blow up misconceptions and preconceptions about what it means to be a Christian.’”

A WELL-TEMPERED HUMOR
Humor helps preserve our sanity. It provides a medium for gentle reprimand. And it teaches us to take ourselves less seriously. But we must never forget that good humor never diminishes the reality of suffering.

“It is not possible to have genuine humor or true wit without an extremely sound mind, which is always a mind capable of high seriousness and a sense of the tragic,” Trueblood says.

In this world, tragedy temporarily has the upper hand. We cannot pretend that humor can solve our tragic position, but we can learn to laugh even within the pain, if we follow Christ’s example. Christ was joyful, not because He had nothing over which to sorrow, but rather because He knew that He would one day conquer the powers of darkness and make all things right.

Trueblood concludes: “The Christian is gay, not because he is blind to injustice and suffering, but because he is convinced that these, in the light of the divine sovereignty, are never ultimate.”

Zoe Sandvig is a staff writer with PFM, featured regularly in Inside Out and Jubilee magazines, as well as The Point blog. She has also been published in the Washington Times and WORLD Magazine.