“A joyful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit dries up the bones.” (CSB – Read the chapter)‬‬

When Jerry Seinfeld is complaining about the modern state of comedy, you know there’s a problem. His recent complaint was linked to the fact that because of the scourge of wokeness and microaggressions and fears of offending someone, somewhere, resulting in being cancelled, many comedians are afraid to let loose and be funny. As the Joker once asked Batman, “Why so serious?” I was reminded recently just how good it is to be able to laugh. Even in the midst of a divided and partisan culture, when we can learn to not take ourselves so seriously and laugh together, then even when we disagree, we can still be friends and neighbors.

One of the real problems with the modern, woke worldview is that nothing is able to be funny. There are so many different ways to offend people that to laugh at one thing is likely to land you in trouble with someone else. The result is a culture that just isn’t very happy. It takes the rare comedian these days to be able to point out the absurdities on both sides of the cultural aisle. Usually these are only long established members of the craft who have already established their audiences, made their millions, and couldn’t care less anymore about being cancelled.

One of the real secrets to being able to laugh, though, is learning to not take yourself so seriously. The truth is that, if we’re willing to be really honest about it, most of us believe things that from the outside looking in seem ridiculous. If we don’t learn to laugh with our critics, we’re frightfully likely to get offended all the time, and it’s miserable to go through like feeling offended. The same principle applies in all kinds of other areas of our lives too.

For instance, have you read Genesis 3 lately? That’s one of the funniest scenes in the whole Bible and not just because it includes an apparently talking snake. After Adam and Eve eat the fruit, cover up with fig leaves, and hide from God in the garden (which is all hilarious in its own right), God finally corners them and asks Adam what happened.

As an aside, it is instructive that God went to Adam first here. As much as we like to blame Eve for eating the fruit first, when God came to deal with the situation, He went first to Adam because he was the one who had been given the command, and thus it was his job to pass it on effectively to Eve. His was the first failure. We can explore that more another time.

In any event, God asks Adam what happened, and the fingers start flying. He first points at the woman, but then he also points at God as if to say, “You know, God, this whole thing is really your fault.” I don’t know about you, but I find the whole thing hilarious. It’s almost as funny as when Moses confronts Aaron after the golden calf incident (stayed tuned…we’ll get to that one in our Exodus journey eventually), and Aaron’s excuse is that the people gave him their gold, he put it into the fire, and out popped this golden calf. Hysterical.

If you’re the kind of person who scrolls all the way down to the comment section of an article, you have probably noticed that I have been in an ongoing and lively debate with a gentleman named Ark. Ark and I don’t agree on much when it comes to religion. In fact, I’m not sure that we’ve yet found any points of common ground in that fertile soil. We haven’t really talked politics much yet (I pretty much only do devotional writing on the Scriptures so that’s probably my fault), so I’m not too sure what kind of overlap we might have there. Political issues in his neck of the woods tend to be somewhat different from mine, so maybe we’re more similar than different there. Who knows.

What I do know, though, is that a debate the likes of which we have been having often results in one person or the other winds up angry. The two going back and forth think less and less of each other to the point that they gradually become bitter enemies. The standard roles are the angry atheist who hates Christians and delights in offending them, and the easily offended Christian whose very sensitivity is the result of convictions that aren’t nearly as strong as they would like everyone to believe. Neither party is typically willing laugh at themselves. The result is an often digital shouting match that accomplishes nothing and just leaves them both angry.

Where’s the fun in that?

I’d like to think that my ongoing back and forth with Ark is different. We still don’t agree on much of anything when it comes to religion. He thinks I’m right on the edge of tumbling off my rocker (or, more likely, I’ve already landed on the floor and bounced away). I can’t believe he can’t see why the arguments in favor of the existence of God are vastly more reasonable than those against the notion. But he loves his family and is immensely proud of them like I feel about mine, and works hard to support and care for them. And we’re both fans of Monty Python. And we both cheer for Arsenal. Or Is it the other way around and we both hate them? I can’t ever remember. Go Chiefs!

Mostly, we can both laugh with each other. We can laugh at things like this.

And because we can both laugh together, even though we disagree on much, we just keep coming back to the table. I’d even go so far as to count him a friend…although you probably want to keep that to yourself, because if word gets out that a crazy pastor counts him a friend, he could lose some serious street cred at the next atheist convention. If you’ve been reading our back and forth and are a believer, I hope you’ve been able to see that any kind of a caricatured view of an online atheist needs to be rejected. It’s never fair to caricature other people. And while, yes, some people will fit a mold, you can’t ever assume that. Take everyone as they come and look to find points of commonality.

On the other side, I hope I’ve demonstrated on my end that believers online aren’t all hypersensitive wimps who will call you “the spawn of Satan” after being poked a few times (although it’s probably a good idea to hang on to “the nephew of Satan” just in case you need a good epithet to shut down a debate that is getting out of hand for you).

In the end, we could all stand to learn to laugh a little more quickly and at a few more things than we did before. Lighten up and don’t take yourself so seriously. Believer, you serve a God who has a sense of humor. At the very least, sin is often absurd and is good for a chuckle or two.

That’s about it for a Friday. Go find something up laugh at today. Then find someone to laugh with. You’ll be glad that you did. Also, I saw a couple of large black birds outside in my backyard this morning. They were stuck together. Turns out they were Velcrows. Who knew?