Humor

Humor is the ability to perceive and enjoy the absurdities and incongruities of life. Someone with a good sense of humor has a keen awareness of disproportion, which takes many forms, including parody and impersonation, satire, understatement, hyperbole, irony, wit, slapstick and practical jokes. Not all humor, however, is edifying. Good humor pokes fun at things people can change, such as prejudice, pickiness or cliquishness. Satirist Jonathan Swift was a master at this form of humor. Bad humor lampoons things people cannot change, such as gender, race or physical handicaps, and, as such, is not edifying but is tasteless, inappropriate and humiliating. Comedians Andrew Dice Clay and the late Sam Kinison became famous for their misogyny and use of four-letter words, but the laughter they provoked from their audiences was at the expense of others.

How Does Humor Work?

Actor Rowan Atkinson (Black Adder, Mr. Bean) claims that humor depends on giving sudden shocks that undermine the basic principles of our everyday existence. He maintains that comedy is based on fear—the momentary fright that occurs when we think these basic principles have been undermined—followed by our immense relief that they have not but only appear to have been through trickery. It is this quick tension-and-release that triggers our laughter. Consider the musician-comedian Victor Borge, seated at the Bosendorfer grand piano, about to accompany a buxom soprano standing near him. He begins to play; she opens her mouth with a high A and bowls him over. Borge stops playing, gets up and raises the lid of the piano bench. The audience holds its breath. Does he have a gag in there? Or worse, a gun? No! He retrieves a seat belt with which to fasten himself securely to the bench to prevent further injury during the aria! The audience roars with laughter and relief.

The Power of Humor

Clever humor can be subversive when it aims to bring down the high and mighty. Humor reminds us of our fragility and is threatening to the proud and those who take themselves too seriously. Consider Monty Python’s parody of British governmental profligacy in their “Ministry of Silly Walks” sketch, which supposes that people can receive grants to fund research on crazy ways to walk down the street. In some countries comedians would be imprisoned for this kind of impudence! The Marx Brothers understood the power of humor joined to anarchy: each of their best films sets up a rigid social structure and then smashes it.

As complex social structures staffed by fallible human beings, churches and parachurch organizations often deserve to be the targets of humor, for when the “sacred veil” of religion hides pompous behavior, corruption and needless bureaucracy, humor is necessary to pull back the veil and reveal the truth. Individual Christians also need to be reminded of the necessity to be humble: “The common mistake of `born again’ Christians rises out of their conscious efforts to look redeemed. . . . When the `born again’ act like they have got it as nobody else does, . . . the Truth stands ready to spotlight that incongruity, trigger the humor, close the gap and set them straight with their experience” (Parrott, p. 45).

The power of humor is disarming and threatening. Allowing someone to disarm you with humor implies trust and a willingness to let down your guard. But the power of humor can be used for the wrong reasons. Actor-director Penny Marshall notes that humor can be used as a defense mechanism by the paranoid, self-deprecating person, who quickly makes fun of herself before anyone else can. Actor Gene Wilder remarks that humor can be a manipulative tool to get attention and love. Author Eugene Peterson observes that our society is so bereft of joy that instead of exploring the reasons for our unhappiness, we pay entertainers to make us laugh so that we can forget our troubles (p. 92). Perhaps this is why sitcoms are among the most popular and enduring forms of television entertainment.

Humor as Catharsis

Humor can help us understand pain and suffering. In Woody Allen’s film Crimes and Misdemeanors a character states, “Humor equals tragedy plus time.” Actor W. C. Fields once noted, “I never saw anything funny that wasn’t terrible” (Parrott, p. 17). The union of tragic events and parody usually results in so-called black humor, which is not appreciated by everyone. War is a popular theme, as in the musical number “Springtime for Hitler” from Mel Brooks’s film The Producers. The highly acclaimed television series M*A*S*H, set during the Korean War, was based on black humor. In these instances it is not the tragic event that is being lampooned, but irrational human behavior.

Humor also allows us to cope with the dullness of daily routine. This is the domain of standup comics, who provoke laughter with their treatment of such topics as dating and going to the dentist. Comedian George Carlin asks his audience if they have ever noticed how the handrail on an escalator moves just a little bit faster than the stairs. Comic Steve Wright announces straight-facedly that since his doctor told him he needs contact lenses only for reading, he got “flip-ups.” Humor is democratic—it has the power to unite a roomful of people who can share a laugh over a common experience.

Humor and Creation

“God must have a sense of humor. After all, he created you, didn’t he?” goes the wisecrack. God does have a sense of humor, which can be discerned by examining how he uses his power in seemingly irrational and whimsical ways. For example, he chose Moses, an ineloquent speaker, to lead his chosen people (Exodus 4:10-11). He asked Gideon to go up against ten thousand armed warriors with three hundred soldiers carrying clay pots, torches and horns (Judges 7). He arranged for old Sarah to give birth to baby Isaac (Genesis 21:1-7). He ordained that the Savior of the world should be born in a stable to a poor woman who was not married (Luke 1:26-38; Luke 2:1-7). And he created humans, who are unique among the animals in that they have a sense of humor. Humorist Strickland Gilliland puts it this way: “We have a very adroit God who, having put the element of adversity into his creation of man, balanced it with humor in his nature so that he might endure it” (Parrott, p. viii).

Good humor engages us in playful creativity, often by combining two things that ordinarily would not occur together. Consider Monty Python’s sketch in which mountain climbers scaling Mount Everest are concerned not so much with safely reaching each station of the climb but with the hair salons that are supposedly located there and how they will have their hair done once they reach them! Some playful humor is simply silly, as in the Peter Cook and Dudley Moore sketch about the restaurant called The Frog and Peach, so named because its menu boasts two items: Frog à la Pêche and Pêche a la Frog.

Humor and Redemption

A good laugh reestablishes a sense of perspective about ourselves and our inability to justify ourselves. As Bob Parrott puts it, “Some of a person’s most comic incongruities arise from one’s efforts to justify one’s actions. . . . This humor helps us see the futility of all efforts of self-justification and urges us to look to another source for justification. That source is God’s grace” (p. 25). Effective humor can be redemptive when we laugh at our efforts to determine what is (our estranged sinful selves) and what ought to be (the image of Christ). It is for this reason that comedian John Cleese (Monty Python, Fawlty Towers) states in an interview with Melvin Bragg that the seven deadly sins provide some of the funniest comic material. Consider Monsieur Creosote from the Monty Python movie The Meaning of Life. He weighs at least four hundred pounds, and when the waiter brings him the menu, he curtly says, “I’ll have the lot!” He proceeds to gorge to his satisfaction. But when the waiter brings him an after-dinner mint, he turns it down. The waiter then convinces him to eat it by telling him that “it’s wafer thin,” whereupon Creosote gobbles it up and then proceeds to regurgitate all his food. The scene concludes with Creosote exploding all over the restaurant. Hyperbole? Yes! A critique of gluttony? Absolutely!

Jesus Had a Sense of Humor

It stands to reason that if God created humans with a sense of humor and if Jesus was fully human in addition to being divine, then Jesus must have had a sense of humor. While the Gospel writers recorded instances when Jesus wept (Luke 19:41, John 11:35), they did not feel it important to chronicle his laughter. But it is impossible to think that Jesus did not love to laugh—after all, he loved children, who laugh easily. Also, Jesus must have had a personality that people found attractive. Joseph Soria states, “Christians confess Jesus Christ to be `true God and true Man’ at one and the same time. That is why I maintain that he was not only habitually in good spirits, but had a marvelous sense of humor. To deny this would imply either rejecting his human nature, or placing his divinity in doubt” (p. 55).

Jesus was what we would call today a lateral thinker, meaning that his creativity would allow him to respond to people in unorthodox, and therefore unsettling, ways. He had a fine sense of hyperbole, claiming that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24). He accused the Pharisees of being blind guides who “strain out a gnat but swallow a camel” (Matthew 23:24). He was also adept at using biting irony, as when he rebuked the Pharisees for inventing their own petty laws and placing them above God’s teachings, saying, “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!” (Mark 7:9). Jesus was a master of witty repartee, as in the case when a man in the crowd shouted, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” Without skipping a beat, Jesus retorted, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” (Luke 12:13-14). Jesus had an attractive personality and a powerful charisma that people found either so hard to resist that they had to follow him around or so threatening that they clamored for his death. Parrott notes that “Jesus used humor freely, thus permitting in his own humanity the greatness to prevail over the potentially tragic” (p. 17).

It is no accident that Jesus was Jewish, inheriting a folklore tradition filled with wit and irony. Nathan Ausubel states, “Jews have received their tempering from an unflinching realism learned for a high fee in the school of life; they have always felt the need of fortifying their spirits with the armor of laughter against the barbs of the world” (Ausubel, p. ix). The tradition continues to this day: among famous comedians of the twentieth century, Jews are represented in numbers disproportionate to their population. Consider Jack Benny, Danny Kaye, Charlie Chaplin, Gilda Radner, Marty Feldman, Mel Brooks, Shelley Berman, Allan Sherman, Billy Crystal, Rodney Dangerfield, Stan Frieberg, Robert Klein and many others.

Humor Provides a Glimpse of Heaven

At its best a good belly laugh can give us a tiny taste of the joys awaiting us in heaven. Parrott states, “That step beyond humor that leads to joy comes when one realizes what one has going for one, when one accepts that the Truth that exposes the incongruity also accepts one who remains a mixture of ambiguities” (p. 48). When humor reveals the frailties of humanity, it makes us marvel that God can love us as much as he does—so much so that he allowed his precious Son to live as one of us. As Soria puts it, “Good humor can be a physiological condition. And it can be achieved even though one is not feeling very well, perhaps through human maturity. But, when this happens in an habitual and heroic way, it is assuredly a sign of Christian sanctity. For then it is a surrendered and joyful acceptance of the will of God” (p. 56).

» See also: Entertainment

» See also: Laughter

» See also: Leisure

References and Resources

R. Atkinson, “Visual Comedy,” Funny Business (a Showtime and Tiger Television coproduction in association with the BBC and Devillier Donegan Enterprises, 1992); N. Ausubel, ed., A Treasury of Jewish Folklore (New York: Crown, 1948); J. Cleese, interview by M. Bragg, shown on the Arts & Entertainment television channel; B. W. Parrott, Ontology of Humor (New York: Philosophical Library, 1982); E. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1980); J. L. Soria, “The Good Humor of Saints,” The Idler, no. 37 (September-October 1992) 55-56.

—Kathryn Lockhart