Christians Should Neither Laugh Nor Sneeze

(Credit: Shan Sheehan, Flickr Creative Commons)

Growing up in the Church of the Nazarene, my friends and I used to make jokes about some the outdated legalism that used to feature prominently in our denomination’s Manual.

Among other things, Nazarenes were (at one point in our history) not allowed to go to the movies, dance, or play cards. And if you were a woman, pants and fancy jewelry were also off limits.

Thankfully, my fellow Nazarenes eventually saw the errors of their legalism (mostly) and removed or revised the majority of these archaic rules.

Though, you would still be hard pressed to find a Nazarene dancing.

Not because we still think it’s sinful, but because we’re generally pretty terrible at it. I mean, we’ve only been trying to dance for a generation or two. Give us a break These things take time. Hopefully by the time my daughters are old enough, they won’t be quite the embarrassment on the dance floor that their father is.

Anyway, as we all know too well, legalism is pervasive in the Church regardless of denomination.

And, unfortunately, it seems it always has been.

Most of us put the early Church up on a pretty high pedestal. Conservative and liberal, one of the few things we can agree on is that the early Church is worthy of our admiration. And, generally speaking, that is true. For them, Christianity wasn’t an ancient tradition that had long enjoyed a place of privilege and power in society. For the early Church, being a Christian was a weird and radical thing that cost them much, including their lives.

But as deserving of our admiration as the early Church is, they were not above making their own mistakes.

As they tried to be faithful stewards of the good news and worked to figure out what it meant to be a follower of Jesus now that Jesus was no longer physically with them, the early Church sometimes….went a little nuts in the legalism department.

Sadly, within just a generation or two (or if we read between the lines in Paul’s letters, immediately), the pharisaical legalism Jesus so vehemently denounced had unfortunately found its way into his Church.

Case in point: Clement of Alexandria’s Paedagogus.

You may have never heard of Clement’s Paedagogues, but you know what? Neither had I until recently and I have a degree in Church History from Yale. So, no judgment here.

Not to be confused with Clement of Rome, Clement of Alexandria was another important figure in the early Church who could count among his students my personal favorite early church father: Origen.

Written in the late 2nd century, Clement’s Paedagogus was intended to be a sort of tutorial for Christian living, instructing Christians on how they should behave in all sorts of situations from mealtime and parties, to shopping and life at home.

While there is some certainly some good stuff in there, some of it makes my beloved Church of the Nazarene’s rules about playing cards and going to the movies look…well…reasonable.

For example, here are Clement’s instructions regarding that most notorious of human vices: laughter.

People who are imitators of ludicrous sensations, or rather of such as deserve derision, are to be driven from our polity. For since all forms of speech flow from mind and manners, ludicrous expressions could not be uttered, did they not proceed from ludicrous practices…Pleasantry is allowable, not waggery. Besides, even laughter must be kept in check; for when given vent to in the right manner it indicates orderliness, but when it issues differently it shows a want of restraint…We are not to laugh perpetually, for that is going beyond bounds; nor in the presence of elderly persons, or others worthy of respect, unless they indulge in pleasantry for our amusement. Nor are we to laugh before all and sundry, nor in every place, nor to every one, nor about everything. For to children and women especially laughter is the cause of slipping into scandal. And even to appear stern serves to keep those about us at their distance. For gravity can ward off the approaches of licentiousness by a mere look.

Like laughing, sneezing too presents a challenge for the true Christian, according to Clement.

If any one is attacked with sneezing, just as in the case of hiccup, he must not startle those near him with the explosion, and so give proof of his bad breeding; but the hiccup is to be quietly transmitted with the expiration of the breath, the mouth being composed becomingly, and not gaping and yawning like the tragic masks. So the disturbance of hiccup may be avoided by making the respirations gently; for thus the threatening symptoms of the ball of wind will be dissipated in the most seemly way, by managing its egress so as also to conceal anything which the air forcibly expelled may bring up with it. To wish to add to the noises, instead of diminishing them, is the sign of arrogance and disorderliness…Scratching the ears and the irritation of sneezing are swinish itchings, and attend unbridled fornication. Both shameful sights and shameful conversation about them are to be shunned. Let the look be steady, and the turning and movement of the neck, and the motions of the hands in conversation, be decorous. In a word, the Christian is characterized by composure, tranquillity, calmness, and peace.

To be fair to Clement, he does make certain allowances for both laughter and sneezing, but it is clear that faithful Christians should avoid both as much as possible, lest we cause women and small children to fall into scandal and find ourselves guilty of unbridled fornication.

Now, I don’t share this simply to poke fun at Clement of Alexandria. After all, to do so could lead to laughter which would, in turn, lead us both down the path of licentiousness.

Yeah, it’s deserves a bit of a chuckle, but more than the amusement of it all, I share Clement’s archaic warning for two reasons.

First, it’s a great reminder of the fact that even the best and brightest among us are not immune to absurd levels of legalism. In our quest to live a distinctly Christian life, it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that anything and everything that sets us apart and makes us “weird” in the eyes of “the world” is a good thing as long as we can spin it as some form of Christian discipline. To be the Church is, after all, to be the “called out ones.” So, it’s not hard to see where this path begins.

But while often weird and peculiar in the eyes of “the world,” what sets us apart as Christians is not our legalism. It’s the way in which we daily incarnate the radical love, inclusivity, self-sacrifice, and peace that defined the life of Jesus.

Secondly, Clement’s ridiculous views on laughter and sneezing should serve as a good (and ironic) reminder that’s it’s really, really, really important for the Church to always maintain the capacity to laugh at itself. For while we may never be able to completely eradicate legalism in the Church this side of eternity, there are few better preemptive measures we can take to avoid the trap of legalism than learning to laugh at ourselves.

We don’t want to admit it, but we have become a deeply insecure and paranoid people who worry constantly about “the world” seeing our imperfections, our missteps, and our internal disagreements. Somehow we’ve come to believe that without a public persona of perfection, the Church has no hope of fulling her mission in the world. And if anyone were to ever hear us admit that we screwed up, that we said something dumb, or worse that so much of our music and art have become full-frontal assaults on good taste, then the rest of the world would go running straight into the arms of Satan.

So we try to silence and shame anyone who would dare to expose our flaws or question our actions, forgetting that in the Internet Age, that’s a battle we’re destined to lose.

We have to forge a different path.

That doesn’t mean we should stop taking the gospel and our calling seriously.

We should take those things seriously.

But those things are preached and practiced by us and we are flawed people, prone to mistakes at every time, no matter how virtuous how original intent might be.

Which is exactly why we should never take ourselves too seriously.

For while the path to legalism may not begin there, without a sense of humor and a healthy dose of self-deprecation, we doom ourselves to a life of pointless absurdity and sanctified nitpicking where even laughter and sneezing are seen as one step away from sinfulness.