Overestimating Humor

People do it in a lot of ways. These are just some examples among others that could be mentioned:

"Our affairs, both our business and our politeness, are turned into laughing; there is nothing steady, nothing grave. I say not these things to men of the world only; but I know those whom I am hinting at. For the Church has been filled with laughter. Whatever clever thing one may say, immediately there is laughter among those present: and the marvelous thing is that many do not leave off laughing even during the very time of the prayer. Everywhere the devil leads the dance, he has entered into all, is master of all….But perchance there are some persons so dissolute and silly as even during this very rebuke to laugh, because forsooth we thus discourse about laughter. For indeed such is their derangement, such their madness, that it does not feel the rebuke….But (one says) what harm is there in laughter? There is no harm in laughter; the harm is when it is beyond measure, and out of season. Laughter has been implanted in us, that when we see our friends after a long time, we may laugh; that when we see any persons downcast and fearful, we may relieve them by our smile; not that we should burst out violently and be always laughing. Laughter has been implanted in our soul, that the soul may sometimes be refreshed, not that it may be quite relaxed. For carnal desire also is implanted in us, and yet it is not by any means necessary that because it is implanted in us, therefore we should use it, or use it immoderately: but we should hold it in subjection, and not say, Because it is implanted in us, let us use it." (John Chrysostom, Homilies On Hebrews, 15:8-9)

"One of the curses of our culture - and it has permeated the church and most Christian communication - is banality, triviality, silliness, superficiality, and an eerie addiction to flippancy and levity. This is accompanied by what to me seems like a baffling allergic reaction to seriousness, dignity, and articulate precision in public speech. Carelessness in speech and casualness in demeanor turn up in times and places where you would expect carefulness, clarity, earnestness, and even gravity. My impression is that at the root of this culture of inarticulate, casual trifling is a loss of the weight of the greatness and awe-fulness of God. Everything is light and funny because God is lightweight….This is a tragedy not only because it is the fruit of trivializing God, but because it hinders us from seeing him and experiencing him as he really is in the majesty of his providence." (John Piper, Providence [Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2020], approximate Kindle location 11001)

Some of the factors involved are peer pressure and bad cultural traditions. People are frequently told that being humorous is one of the most important qualities to have (typically while little or nothing is said about how people view God and other qualities that are more important than being humorous). I've heard of polling over the years showing people placing being humorous at or near the top of the list of qualities they look for in a potential spouse or in the context of some other relationship. There's often competition - in schools, in workplaces, and in other settings - to be the most humorous person around, to be better at pranking than anybody else, and so on. One of the bad cultural traditions that's developed over time among pastors is the inclusion of one or more jokes or other forms of humor in sermons, as if it's important to set out to do that in most sermons or every one of them. Then there's the ridiculous practice of the media running stories on what late-night comedians have said about the topics that are currently the most prominent in the news. Political liberals and conservatives compete with each other about who has a better sense of humor, what standing they have with the latest popular comedians (Dave Chappelle or whoever), and so on. Conservative political web sites have become increasingly similar to liberal web sites and the culture in general, often in the name of providing allegedly conservative coverage of cultural issues. Of course, they give a lot of coverage to things like humor. But not religion. That's the way their audience wants it. I've done a lot of work on the Enfield Poltergeist in recent years. Since it's such a famous paranormal case, it gets a steady stream of podcasts covering it. I've been astonished by how many of those (whether in support of the case's authenticity or against it) are heavily geared toward humor. You can easily get some double-digit number of attempts at humor in a podcast that's only half an hour or an hour long. They're often difficult to listen to, because the humor is so overdone. Or think of how popular humor is on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other such places, in contrast to how other things are so much less popular than they should be. Often, a joke will get a far more positive reaction than something that's much more valuable.

Emotionalism is another factor. We live in a culture that's overly emotional. There's too much focus on making people feel good in the short term, to the neglect of other aspects of life, including how people will feel over the long term (especially in the afterlife). Humor is going to tend to be overestimated in a context like that. It's often treated like a drug that we abuse, to numb us to the most important aspects of life.

The same Evangelical who professes a high view of God often hasn't thought much about the implications of that high view. There's a disconnect between his professed view of God and how he's living his life.

Every culture has a typical lifestyle. There's a mainstream that most people want to be a part of. In modern America (and wherever else), that mainstream lifestyle involves a lot of poor time management. Instead of having the sort of mindset Jesus calls for in his parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), in which we're trying to gain a profit for our master, most Evangelicals are overly concerned about pleasing their relatives, impressing their friends and coworkers, and doing other things the culture tells them to do. Evangelicals are different than the culture (in terms of attending church, reading the Bible, voting differently, and so forth), but not as different as they should be. In terms of how they spend their time (including how they spend their free time and how they multitask), they're mostly living the same way the culture does. And when that much time is given to such insignificant television shows, movies, sports, housework, and such, there's going to be a more frivolous mindset accordingly. The less you're trying to accomplish things of a more significant nature, the less seriously you're going to take life. Evangelicals will claim to believe that there's a lot at stake in life, but why don't they live like it?

One of the cumulative effects of these things is that the trivial nature of the culture makes efforts like apologetics, evangelism, and reasoning with people about moral issues more difficult. The waters have been muddied by frivolity. One of the saddest aspects of the situation, and one that convinced me to put up this post, is seeing people you've been agonizing over, praying and fasting for and trying to help in other ways, continuing to waste their lives on trivialities and worse. Your influence in their lives will be countered by the influence of a much larger number of people who aren't taking life as seriously as they should.

I remember hearing about a pivotal event in the life of a Christian of a past generation, maybe two or three centuries ago. He was in some kind of public setting. Like so many other young people, he was trying to impress his peers by joking around. But he got a response he wasn't expecting. Somebody asked him something to the effect of "Did Christ die for you so that you could be a clown?"

A common response to that sort of question in our day would be to accuse the person asking the question of being unloving, opposing all humor, or some such thing. Or not feeling the rebuke, as John Chrysostom put it, they'll start joking about the person rebuking them or dismiss him with vulgarity or some other form of abuse. He'll be told that he needs to "lighten up", "get a life", and so on. But how much of a danger is there, in our current environment, of somebody doing something like opposing all humor or erring in that direction in some other way? Whatever danger there is along those lines, it's far less than the danger in the other direction. If somebody is drowning in an ocean, it doesn't take much discernment to realize that too much water is more of a danger than having too little of it. He needs pulled out of the water. If a situation arises later in which he's in danger of having too little water (too little to drink or whatever), then we can handle that situation when it comes up. But that isn't what's currently going on. Problems at opposite ends of a spectrum can coexist, but we have to discern which problem is bigger and proportion our efforts accordingly.

One way to think about these issues is to compare our culture's interest in humor to the interest in it that we find in scripture and among the most mature believers of past generations. Whatever exceptions you may find, my sense is that the general trend among the best sources of past generations is for there to be some humor and appreciation of it, but far less than we find in contexts like modern America.