I don’t know if any of you have noticed in the past, but I am a bit of a fan of humor. To me, laughter really is the best medicine (tied with penicillin), and I try to keep a sense of humor about almost everything. I am always ready to throw out a joke, or a terrible pun, or some other wry comment, especially when they seem a bit inappropriate, and the only people in this world that I really don’t get along with are the ones who don’t seem to have a sense of humor.
As a general rule, this has served me well in life, but sometimes I worry about using humor in a respectful way. I am currently involved in writing a 10-12 minute presentation for the Christmas Eve service at my church. It is full of jokes. But how far can you really go when you are going to be presenting at an actual church service? Some people like to take religion pretty seriously, or so I have heard.
I know that people are often saying that God has a sense of humor, but I wonder if that in and of itself is blasphemous. Take this popular Christian joke for instance: “You can tell God has a sense of humor, just look at the platypus.” Ha ha ha. Very funny. Except, are you saying that you know what God’s intention was? You know for a fact that God made the platypus as a joke? What if God did not make the platypus as a joke? And would it be just as acceptable to say “You can tell God has a sense of humor, just look at Leroy over there.” If I were God, I would not want people to be making fun of stuff that I made. Or would I? I don’t know, I am not God.
So it seems to me that God is pretty serious stuff. It’s not just life or death, it’s eternal life or death! People do not want to take chances with that sort of thing. And yet we have Christian comedians, Christian writings with a humorous bent, and 10-12 minute skits that are performed during church services that contain actual jokes. Where is the line? I don’t want to offend anyone.
Perhaps the difference is this: we will have to poke fun at things, instead of make fun of them. To “make” something into fun is to take away the seriousness of it, and I would never want to do that to people’s strongly held beliefs. But I could certainly “poke” some fun in their direction without making the objects of the jest less serious themselves, right? So maybe some gentle poking is called for. But how do I tell where that line is?
Either way, I always feel some sort of guilt or uncertainty whenever I try to insert humor into an inherently religious situation. Any one out there have opinions on this? I was going through the same problem when trying to think of good names for a Christian a cappella group. How far can you really go when you are trying to lighten up something that is so heavy?
I thought you did great with the a capella group names. I didn’t find any of them offensive at all, but I’m not really the audience you’re worrying about. 🙂
I think you’re safe as long as you’re not actually insulting anything. There’s no way you’ll be able to avoid offending EVERYone.
Humor doesn’t have to be offensive. I would be disappointed if I didn’t hear something funny from you! Being appropriate is not selling out, it’s showing respect for your colleagues, friends and members of your church. My guide would be to be certain that no one is made to feel bad about what they believe. Save that for the political arena!
You don’t know how hard I laughed at “Hey, where’s Sir-Fluffs-A-Lot?” Religious humor can really be funny when coming from you.
I feel like this is kind of like worrying about what certain audition-hearers are going to want. There’s no way to please everyone. I’m sure that whatever you have in mind is appropriate, and if there are certain people who don’t like it, that’s really more their problem.