{"id":896,"date":"2004-10-05T07:42:00","date_gmt":"2004-10-05T07:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=896"},"modified":"2017-09-06T23:46:06","modified_gmt":"2017-09-06T17:46:06","slug":"laughter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2004\/10\/laughter\/","title":{"rendered":"Laughter"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\">\n<\/head><body><p><\/p><p> A guest on Ken Myers\u2019 Mars Hill audio magazine discusses the humor of  <i> The Ladykillers <\/i> .  What, he asks, are we laughing at when we see the plots of criminals return on their own heads?  He suggests that we are laughing at the folly of humanity, and at the way human weakness foils the \u201cbest-laid\u201d plans.  (He points to the character who has irritable bowel syndrome as an example; it\u2019s an almost Augustinian example of how we are, as Myers\u2019 guest says, \u201cvictims of our own body.\u201d) <\/p>\n<p> This is true, but I think there\u2019s something else going on too.  We are not merely laughing at human weakness; we are laughing at justice.  This is the way the humor works in Scripture: Yahweh causes the wickedness of the wicked to return on their own heads, and that retribution brings joy to those afflicted by the wicked.  Laughter is especially provoked by surprising acts of justice ?Ethe justice that the Lord deals to Pharaoh at the Red Sea, for instance.   <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A guest on Ken Myers\u2019 Mars Hill audio magazine discusses the humor of The Ladykillers . What, he asks, are we laughing at when we see the plots of criminals return on their own heads? He suggests that we are laughing at the folly of humanity, and at the way human weakness foils the \u201cbest-laid\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Laughter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A guest on Ken Myers&#8217; Mars Hill audio magazine discusses the humor of The Ladykillers . What, he asks, are we laughing at when we see the plots of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2004\/10\/laughter\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Laughter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A guest on Ken Myers&#8217; Mars Hill audio magazine discusses the humor of The Ladykillers . 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