“Humor lost”

Since this is the month of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (the month of humility, not pride), let’s talk about humor.

We are all attracted to people with a good sense of humor–those who are good-natured and have the ability to make us laugh.

Surely out of everyone, Jesus’ sense of humor was the greatest. So often we see Him portrayed in art as a serious and exacting man, but He had to laugh at times. No one would follow a sourpuss as dull as dust.

Jesus’ capacity to see humor in situations must have been second-to-none. So much the apostles probably missed! Or consider the humorous things He knew would go over their heads and held back, out of consideration for them.

Like John Milton’s Paradise Lost, one thing we can all agree on is that our society has lost its sense of humor.

Why? When we lose our humility, we lose our ability to laugh.

The spirit of comradery and lightheartedness in our culture has slowly wilted like a sick plant, and finally, has died.

What we do see today, are poor substitutes for humor.

Sarcasm: the mockery of humor

Humor takes on many forms but, like any other good thing, it has pretenders. It’s most common ugly stepsister is sarcasm. A form of mockery, sarcasm is best defined as veiled hostility because it always involves insulting a person or situation in a back-handed way.

And–you guessed it–it is always rooted in pride.

You could say that authentic humor is the “good fruit” and sarcasm is the “bad fruit” of our own dispositions.

True humor produces laughter; sarcasm diminishes and belittles.

Victimhood and feeling insulted

Another thing that kills humor is an egotistical attitude of victimhood that easily takes offense.

This comes with the territory in our society, as Karl Marx’s (1818-1883) “class conflict” ideology, a parasitical philosophy, has been systematically foisted on our younger generations for decades.

How do we know this? Look around at the individualism and, frankly, selfishness in our young, giving rise to a new generation of pampered young adults.

Most schools don’t educate kids about the dangers of Communism in their social studies or history classes–proving again, that the consequences of the sins of omission are just as dangerous as creating activists by teaching lies.

Perhaps the absence of teaching the truth is the greatest sin of our time.

Finally, let’s look at a more sinister pretender of humor which manifests itself in the universal characteristic facial expression we all recognize: the sneer.

The sneer

When we live in a worldly mindset that does not consider God, it is impossible to engage in real laughter–and it has every possibility of becoming a sneer of derision.

This is when we have gone a step further than sarcasm and entered into full contempt for others.

A sneer has the look of a smile but is in fact, the perversion of humor because it comes from Satan–who seeks to not only mock God’s goodness, but desecrate it.

Laughter lifts others up; the sneer puts them down.

G.K. Chesterton paints a striking picture of “the sneer” in his celebrated poem, Lepanto. He expertly compares the lips of Sultan Selim II as “a curling blood-red crescent” as he approached the shores of Greece during his infamous naval attack at the Gulf of Lepanto in 1571.

This is also a clever play on words, as the crescent moon is the symbol the Muslims adopted after they sacked Constantinople in 1453.

Chesterton points out that true laughter is the fruit of a smile, not a sneer.

So how do we bring back laughter in a culture full of sarcasm and sneers?

The resurrection of comedy

The resurrection of Jesus Christ brought about eternal life and goodness, and with it, the resurrection of comedy.

How?, you might ask. Christ’s triumph over death brings us the possibility of mirth because it frees us from the chains of this world.

This begets true joy, and gives us the ability to see beyond ourselves and our circumstances; we can know that both the good and the bad won’t last.

That is why those who live in deep poverty, lose loved ones, or are dealing with some other great challenge, can still laugh.

Christians know this life is not the end, and when they share in the sufferings of Jesus Christ, He gives them paradoxical joy.

Archbishop Fulton Sheen (1895-1979) aptly describes how these opposing worldviews affect our sense of humor (or a lack thereof) in his autobiography, Treasure in Clay:

“Materialists, humanists and atheists all take this world very seriously because it is the only world they are ever going to have. He who possesses faith knows that this world is not the only one, and therefore can be regarded rather lightly…. To an atheist gold is gold, water is water and money is money. To a believer everything in this world is a telltale sign of something else.”

Love, joy and laughter

We were made for love, joy and laughter.

Humor unites us because God designed every person with the capacity to laugh.

Perhaps that’s why laughter is infectious; though just as with Christ, we have the power to either choose to accept things with humor, or reject them with scorn.

In the end, laughter is the result of joy.

Laughter is one way Christians know there’s a place after leaving this world–one where there’s no longer anger, scorn or sadness but perpetual love, joy and laughter….

And they would be right.