A Laughing God (Part II)
Photo by Motoki Tonn on Unsplash
In a previous post, I wrote about some of the implications of an overbearing seriousness on the Christian life. I argued that while there are right reasons to be serious at the right times, turning seriousness into a setting in the Christian life has implications in both the moral and spiritual life.
I did close off that post, however, with the claim that there is a theological reality that underpins the otherwise natural tendency towards this overbearing seriousness.
In his book on preaching entitled Giving Blood, Leonard Sweet plainly spelled this supernatural underpinning to an insistence for a lack of humour with these words – “the Devil never laughs”.
In a similar vein, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, wrote in his Principles of Catholic Theology:
[W]here joylessness reigns, where humour dies, the spirit of Jesus Christ is assuredly absent. But the reverse is also true: joy is a sign of grace. One who is cheerful from the heart … cannot be far from the God of the evangelium, whose first word on the threshold of the New Testament is ‘Rejoice’.
Sweet also reminds us of a theological reality that far outweighs the absence of mirth inherent in Satan. He draws our attention to the medieval Dominican mystic, Meister Eckhart. In speaking of the Trinity (in whose image all reality is made), Eckhart said:
“The Father laughs at the Son and the Son at the Father, and the laughing brings forth pleasure, and the pleasure brings forth joy, and the joy brings forth love.”
The Christian life, then, the taking up of one’s cross, is not merely having to buckle under the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. To be faithful to the event of Divine Revelation (encapsulated in the laughing Trinity) whilst living in a sin-stained world ruled by the powers and principalities of this world (under the influence of a humourless Satan) is to live with both lament and laughter.
Christians should not downplay our having to honestly face disappointment or misfortune. Christ saw the depths of this sin-stained reality many times in scripture, and was on record as having lamented in the face of these realities.
Having said that, Christ also points out to us that sadness is not at the heart of Divine Revelation, and thus is not the heart of our ultimate reality. The heart of Revelation is a reality of two persons whose laughing at each other produces a third. If Eckhart is right, reality is actually brimming with laughter, a laughter that echoes faintly in every age and behind every moment of sorrow; awaiting the day that it will finally boom forth from between the cracks of sorrow, breaking the awkward silence of the cosmos that groans inward for its redemption.
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