September 25, 2007
I Don't Get It
I hate coming across a cartoon or comic strip where I don’t get the punch line. Sometimes I can get the gist of the illustration, but still not find the humor. For the most part, it seems to me that Scripture has a serious and somewhat humorless tone. I keep thinking surely there is some levity, or a comedian of record, somewhere in the Bible. I suppose a camel going through the eye of a needle, or straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel might have been considered a knee slapper in NT times. Maybe modern commentators have so dissected and analyzed every word of the Word, that they’ve lost the seasoning salt of humor.
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Gail;
-----I know what you mean about bad punch lines. I look at a lot of political cartoons and totally fail to see the humor because the cartoonist has let the ulterior motive of his message run away with his creation. Then there are those liberal cartoonists who so impugn what is right that even their great punch lines totally fail to bear humor.
-----Of course, Jesus’ one liners were definitely not the impugn-what’s-right garbage of the modern liberal. But neither do I think He meant them to be knee-slappers. His message in those sayings is strong and to the fore, while the humor is lite and to the rear - maybe a matter of amusement more than anything. I remember a little preacher who always liked to make big of the hilarity of Jesus’ sayings. He also always tried to make big laughter in his sermons. I could see the ulterior motive in his efforts to show Jesus as a jokester, for if Jesus were, it would support his efforts to be the same.
-----There is a place for message in humor. In fact, humor that is genuinely funny, really the knee-slapper, is humor that does carry an element of message. But that element must remain small. The larger the import of the message and the more the motive is toward delivering message rather than jolly making, then the more the humor moves to the rear and shifts into amusement rather than entertainment.
-----I believe the humor of the Bible is this condition of amusing backdrop. And I see a lot of humor in it. Some is so subtly in the background behind a very pungent message that it’s humorous element is hardly distinguishable. Such is the case with Malachi 2:3 where the Lord prophecies to the priests who have shown partiality in their instruction, “Behold, I will rebuke your offspring, and spread dung upon your faces, the dung of your offerings, and I will put you out of my presence.” To the Corinthians, who were so caught up in argument concerning who was the better leader that they did not even recognize the evil of one of their own living with his father’s wife, Paul wrote with a sarcasm stretched to the extent of humor, “Already you are filled! Already you have become rich! Without us you have become kings! And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you!” (I Cor 4:8)
-----But Jesus did do the most subtle and interesting humor. I never could understand why He did such things as make mud out of spit and dirt, rub it on the eyes a rag-tag old blind man, and tell him to go wash it off in the Pool of Siloam. But then one day I saw a picture of the Pool of Siloam as discovered by archeologists near Jerusalem. Looking at artists reconstructions of how that place appeared in Jesus’ day, now I understand. It was a very ritzy pool, more like a public bath or swimming pool than a little fishing hole. At the same time this blind man’s obedience to and faith in Jesus were being tested, I am sure the patience and forbearance of those hoity-toity bathers were being tested by this rag-tag, old blind man washing off spit-mud into their uppity bath water! And that’s not a bad punch line.
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