A Laughing God (Part I)

Photo by Mark Daynes on Unsplash

A problem many Christians face is being too serious. One can almost measure the the level of public contributions by Christians on newspapers, network television and social media by the amount of negativity and even bile staining the page or the screen.

At one level, this is understandable. Battling the powers and principalities of this world is not exactly a light-hearted affair. Furthermore, a time of waiting in a time of lockdown is not exactly the idea context for generating mirth. Be that as it may, the burden of both has made a good proportion of Christians into a dour race, and people are noticing.

The mirthlessness that has become synonymous with many public expressions of Christianity is very often a ridiculous stereotype. However, it is a stereotype that is not completely undeserved. Intended or otherwise, there is a noticeable layer of gloom and even nihilism sprinkled quite liberally on the lived lives of even the most faithful Christians.

The fact that there is a kernel of truth to the absurd stereotype is serious on a number of levels. It has evangelical implications for those both within and outside the Church. If Aristotle is right, and we are constantly drawn towards a state of happiness, then no one would, on a natural level, be moved to enter the house of a sour people.

There is however, a more profound problem with equating the sour orientation with faithfulness to the Christian tradition: it flies in the face of the Christian tradition itself; particularly in the writings of some crucial figures within that tradition.

Take for instance, St Teresa of Avila, the Doctor of the Church who, with all her profundity in reaching the depths of the spiritual life, was also renowned for her one-liners, the most famous of which was “from silly devotions and sour-faced saints, Oh Lord, deliver us”. Thomas Aquinas, not exactly a lightweight on the Christian life, once remarked that a person who is unable to say or laugh at anything funny was morally unsound. Much, much later, GK Chesterton wrote that the test of a good religion depends on whether one could joke about it.

The moral implications highlighted above, important as they might be, pale in comparison to the theological reality in which a properly-exercised humour participates. This will be the subject of next week’s post.

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