Humor is something relatively unique to us as image-bearers of God in creation. Animals tend not to have a sense of humor. As Terry Lindvall writes, “Animals lack that sense of incongruous. Woodpeckers don’t do knock-knock jokes. Monkeys don’t human around. No chicken laughs when another asks him why the human crossed the road. And other chickens don’t crack up when one chicken steps in chicken … stuff.”[3] Our sense of humor comes from being made in the image of God who laughs.
We are not born with a sense of humor. Infants don’t laugh. No matter what kind of crazy faces or speech parents use, the infant either stares at you like you are nuts or is frightened by what you are doing. Only after a few months of life does a child begin to smile. Then, a little while later, he begins to laugh. The older he grows, the greater his sense of humor. A sense of humor is developed.
Humor requires maturity. As a person grows in knowledge and wisdom, when he knows how things are supposed to fit together, he has a greater capacity for humor. A certain level of familiarity with a subject or situation lends itself to expectations that set up the surprise of incongruity that makes something funny. When things don’t quite fit the expected, we laugh.
I was in a chiropractor’s office once and saw a cartoon of a man and woman sitting on bar stools. The man was looking at the woman’s hand. The caption read, “What’s a nice joint like you doing in a girl like this.” To get that joke, one has to have knowledge of cultural idioms, what a chiropractor is, and the dynamics of relationships between men and women in bars. (Sorry if that killed the joke.) When you learn all of these things in a certain cultural setting, you are set up to get the joke. Lack of knowledge will make you wonder why everyone is laughing.
Watching children grow into this is fun and informative. I remember when one of my children really “got” a joke that my wife and I shared around the table one evening. His face lit up and he said, “I got it!” He then burst into uproarious laughter. He had matured to the point that he was understanding how words and situations were expected to work. When there was the slightest twist, it was funny. A sense of humor requires maturity.
Unfortunately, maturity is generally associated with austerity, a contemplative seriousness bordering on Stoicism. As we mature, we certainly ought to have a gravity about us. We ought to know how to act in different situations. We ought to have learned how to handle relationships with others better than we did in our immaturity. But grave maturity shouldn’t kill a sense of humor. It ought to bring it to a richer and fuller life. When we understand more and more how things ought to be, our capacity to laugh ought to increase.
If I am correct about the fact that greater maturity leads to a greater sense of humor, then it would stand to reason that God himself–the mature One–has the greatest sense of humor of all. God laughs. God not only knows how to laugh, but he is also the great joke teller. When God told barren Sarah and impotent Abraham[4] that they would have a son, Sarah laughed. But the joke was on her. God twisted, not only the expected course of a normal life that ends child-bearing possibilities at an old age but the entire life situation of Abraham and Sarah. He made them fertile when they were twice dead. God’s punch-line was a son named “Laughter,” Isaac.
God is infinite in knowledge and wisdom. He knows how all things ought to be and how all things will be. Because of this, his capacity for humor is also infinite. When God “twists” the expectations of his creatures in a way that they didn’t expect, he laughs. When he executes justice in the face of his self-confident, obstinately rebellious, puny enemies, turning their expectations of victory to shameful defeat, God laughs. We hear God’s laughter in several places in Scripture concerning the wicked and their demise. The nations rage, the people plot in vain; the kings of the earth set themselves, and rulers take counsel together, against Yahweh and against his Messiah, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.” He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. (Ps 2.1-4). “The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes his teeth at him, but the Lord laughs at the wicked, for he sees that his day is coming.” (Ps 37.13) When those who refuse to follow Wisdom fall into calamity and terror, Wisdom will laugh and mock them (Prov 1.25-26). Those who are godly laugh with him.
Before we think this is sadistic of God or any who would join him, just think about what you do when you are reading or watching a story and the arrogant villain gets his comeuppance. He is so smug in his confidence that his dastardly deeds will end in the demise of the good guys, but his plans fail. You cheer. Things have been put right. This is the way things out to be. It didn’t look as if the situation was headed that way, but there was an unexpected twist. Now there is a sense of justice that gives relief, and relief gives way to laughter. We righteously laugh when justice is served because we are made in the image of God who delights in making things right.
God’s greatest joke was Jesus Christ, the true “Laughter,” Abraham’s seed. The world of the Jews and the Gentiles plotted against Yahweh and his Messiah. They would establish their own justice. God laughed, and he is still laughing. We laugh with him, and we will laugh at the judgment when we see the full and final justice of God against all of our enemies.
One of the marks of our maturity as believers is the ability to laugh; to have a sense of humor that images God’s own sense of humor. The inability to laugh is not a sign of spirituality. Always being somber is not the mark of someone who is mature. These are signs that we haven’t matured enough to get God’s jokes. We are infants who are staring into the face of our heavenly Father with no ability to comprehend that he is telling a joke. When we wise up, we will laugh.
[1] Originally published on November 8, 2016, at https://theopolisinstitute.com/learning-to-laugh/
[2] Terry Lindvall, FREUD AND LEWIS ON JOKES, HUMOR AND LAUGHTER: A Preliminary Study. The Bulletin of The New York C. S. Lewis Society. Sept/Oct 2011, Vol 42, No. 5 (http://www.nycslsociety.com/uploads/CSL_Sept_Oct_2011.pdf accessed 7/25/16)
[3] Ibid.
[4] Paul implies Abraham’s impotence in Romans 4.19 when he speaks of Abraham’s one-hundred-year-old body being “as good as dead.” When God revived him, he did the job well. Abraham went on to father many more children through Keturah.
