The Importance of Being Funny

The Importance of Being Funny May 18, 2016

I’ve had a niggling sense, for some time now, that one of the biggest problems in America today is a deep seated, culturally cultivated humorlessness that is pervading every nook and cranny of our public discourse.

Many evangelicals have been delighted, in recent days, by The Babylon Bee, the humor of which has surpassed easily the fading, flagging, not so funny any more Onion, which has been the go-to place for so much humor for more than a decade. But there are a lot of things that can’t be made fun of any more, and the Onion can only do so much to delight in a world where the most disturbing elements of our common life have been declared Not Funny and if you try to be Funny about any of them, a pox on you. You shall be drummed out of public life.

I’m not really interested in the secular sphere, though. The vast swamp of humorless moral preening that is our common life is depressing, at the least. Fear has overtaken our ability to use language and only God can save us now.

But what of Christians? Shouldn’t Christians be the funniest of all people? The Christian, theoretically, has nothing to lose. We talk a big talk about the battle being won and the strife being o’re and the freedom to die. But more and more the Christian public sphere is just as tsking and preening as the pagan one.

Don’t believe me? Well, first of all, the inventor of the Babylon Bee very early on had to explain, very kindly, that humor is a helpful tool and that it is ok to be funny. I was struck by the existence of this interview at all, not only its substance. This writer shouldn’t really have to be justifying his work. He is doing a necessary and valuable service–cutting through the tribalistic pretenses of evangelical Christians, and doing it gently. The Babylon Bee is not a bastion of unkindness. The writing is funny because it’s true, and it needs to be said, but not in a preachy condemning way.

Second of all, I am appalled to find that some Christians don’t think that all of it is funny. Matt got in an argument (ha ha) on Facebook (ha ha ha ha) last night after posting a gentle Babylon Bee article about a man lumping all charismaticism together under the category of Hand Clapping. So funny. It illuminated the cessationsist’s inability to see gradation on the other side, and it noted some ridiculous, and therefore funny, elements of charismatic practice. But the fact that I’ve had to say that it’s funny is, well, really bad.

Why is it bad? Because the human person is fallen, and sinful, and needs to not take him or her self so seriously. God is a serious matter, and sin, of course, but we humans, we should laugh at ourselves. If you can’t find something ridiculous, and therefore funny, about yourself, it’s possible that you have a far too elevated impression of who you are–your body, your thoughts, your feelings, your beliefs–and too high thoughts about the matters that concern you.

I’m saying you, but of course I mean myself as well. I cling to humor as a defense against my own mediocrity. By poking fun at others, and the world, and even sometimes myself, I hope to diminish my true failings in the eyes of all. If I can make you laugh, I might disarm your judgement before it arrives on my doorstep and into my comment section.

Speaking of which, lighten up pagan and atheist of the Internet. Did I offend you? Laugh it off. Am I so important that you can’t pick up the pieces of my cutting judgment and reassemble them into some kind of order? Laugh me off. File me under Not That Consequential.

For the Christian who finds herself picking up her skirts, and scuttling off to be offended, I would encourage a more robust engagement with this broken world. Things are Really Bad. We are all Going To Die. We will be hated and loathed even more than we are now. We must laugh along the way or we shall not be able to gain necessary emotional and psychological distance from the very real troubles of our time.

Humor, properly employed, sets aright the topsy-turvy nature of human pride. The left cannot accept humor because it sets reality in its proper place. You know what’s funny? Cake makers being the front lines of our cultural dissolution. Two women want to marry each other and they pick a bakery where they know they will cause consternation, and they go in and demand, like petulant children, a cake to be baked. That’s ridiculous. Those two women are behaving unkindly and badly, and they should have some gentle humor directed their way. Cake? Really?

Or consider the foolishness of a grown man, who has won one of the highest athletic prizes in all of history, dressing himself up in a dress, doing his hair, and standing around awkwardly, being called brave. That’s worth a chuckle. At least as much as the man of 50 putting his hair into pigtails and pretending to be a little girl.

You know what else is funny? Christianese. The way Christians talk to each other is funny. Especially when they are being very serious minded. Not only is it impossible for outsiders to understand what they are saying, but when their eyes burn with rage and their nostrils flare, especially over a Non Essential Issue, it’s funny.

God laughs at the wicked. Wickedness isn’t something to moralistically and seriously attach oneself to. It is essentially Unserious. In so far as we are wicked (and we are) we should be laughing at ourselves. And when the world is foolish, we should not be afraid to laugh.

There’s a really funny book, for those who don’t know, called The Importance of Being Earnest. And the point of this book (and I can’t believe I’m spelling this out because it’s going to ruin it) is that being Too Earnest is not a good idea. Holding yourself lightly, questioning yourself and trying to see where you might have fallen into ridiculousness, being the first to laugh–all these lighten and cut through the darkness of evil.


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