Once upon a time many churchgoers suspected anything funny was subversive. Yesterday’s pilgrim didn’t dare to clown and Plymouth squeezed itself into a poker face. We’re always photographed saying “cheese,” but a Winthrop wouldn’t unlace a smile even for his heirloom portrait. Those old sobersides really scrambled goodness with solemnity. They weren’t as dreadful as we are determined to make them for they knew where frivolity leads. But the Calvinist was so afraid of fun’s consequences that he tried, at his fanatic worst, to wipe off every smile, put a stop to dancing, and turn off the organ music. He wouldn’t let artists play with color on canvas or in stained glass any more, so that the apostles looked as dead pan as Cigarstore Indians.
Critics unjustly trace to Jesus the depressing graveyard atmosphere that sometimes haunts the Church. The men who really killed joy wore pointed three-cornered hats and buckled shoes. “The parsonical voice, the thin damp smell of stone,” as British architect Hugh Casson calls it, were flung like a pall over the faith by some of Cromwell’s men. Frankly, this grinning generation doesn’t respect its forefathers enough, but those grim graybeards do deserve the blame for taking the fun out of religion.
Christ was simply not cut from black cloth no matter how the Pharisees dressed him down. The Gospels give us a warm friend, full of life, laughter, and such good news it showered radiance on the heads of saints and sinners alike.
It was the Pharisees—long-faced, fasting, frowning—who always appeared to be in perpetual mourning. Christ’s men behaved like a feasting bridal party. “How,” he asked those who scorned his merrymaking, “how can men fast when the bridegroom is still with them?” There is much more to Christianity than skipping along blithely, but neither can it keep always in marked military step. Men may only stand up for the Hallelujah Chorus, but it makes hearts skip with excitement. Christ was born in a burst of angelic “Joy to the World.” And when he came back triumphant from the fight with death there was such heavenly light, such overwhelming evidence of his resurrection life shining about him, men trembled in ecstasy.
Certainly life was not too sweet to Christ. She Hew at him in a tantrum, flung suffering in his face, and hung him up to die. We do not keep back the tears. But he took life and taught it a thing or two. Nothing could destroy Christ’s good humor, for life tried everything. Past master death at last had lost a man—that called for a celebration! The last meal of the condemned man was not taken smiling bravely through his tears, but as a victory banquet. In fact, there is so much Christmas cheer in his achievement, we have never stopped celebrating and never will stop “as long as ye eat this bread and drink this cup.”
Everyone knows that death did something terrible to Christ, but not everyone knows he did something wonderful to death. Men keep missing the whole point of the old, old story. No one knows how he did it. But the deed was mighty enough to dry Mary Magdalene’s tears, transport desolate disciples into an upper room of unspeakable joy, and send them out stammering with faith in jail and out, living or dying. After five terrible beatings and two horrible stonings, Christianity’s most jubilant apostle got up and dusted off the opposition with a shout, “Rejoice, and again I say unto you, rejoice!” After wading through inquisition, torture, blood, and hell, the Book ends with a great host no man could number singing “Hallelujah!” As Dr. Fosdick has said, “There is … enough tragedy in the New Testament to make it the saddest book in the world and instead it is the joyfullest.”
There was something to laugh about before Christ’s time, of course, but doomed men did not, do not, feel much like laughing. However high we rate the world’s other religions, none scores very high in joy. Buddhism recommends the equivalent of slow suicide for life. Hinduism is too shy and Islam too fierce and militant to find anything amusing. But even Calvin’s catechism claims “the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Humor happens in the happiness that grows out of the “good news.” The insecure, the rejected child cannot smile much. To produce laughter in gales and peals takes more than bread enough to go around, it takes trust in a loving father. If we believe we will feel like singing something. And we will feel and be free enough from the curse of guilt and grief to see the humorous side of life.
We’ll see, too, that humor is built right into the whole Creation. Mother Nature can be a scream. Jungle life can act up like an ape, sass us like a parrot. Disney didn’t create the heavens and the earth. That was done by the same One who did Disney’s sense of humor. The model skunk was not drawn without a smile. “No somber God could ever have made a bullfrog or a giraffe.” Dr. Buttrick believes “a row of penguins looks for all the world like a speaker’s table.” Who can keep a straight face, watching little lambs scampering about stiff-legged; or baboons itching? Hearts are breaking all around us. God knows, for he gets blamed. But sides are splitting, too. Someone has been up to something even on the deathbed. Phyllis McGinley quotes Oscar Wilde as saying, “I am dying as I lived, beyond my means.” Remember Sir Thomas More’s parting remark to his hangman? “Assist me up, if you please. Coming down I can shift for myself.” Even when we are at the bottom of our morale someone spoils the misery. Some ramrod usher spills the offering on the marble chancel floor or some pious cleric solemnly folds his hands and intones “Let us play, er—pray.” Life doubles us up in laughter as in pain, and in pain Christians remember how the Lord said: “Blessed are ye who weep now, for ye shall laugh.”
Our faith makes a man laugh at something more—at himself. We are all tempted to take ourselves too seriously. If taken in the right way Christianity brings relief from this wearisome self-inflation. Someone who feels safe and sure in the hands of God and likes to see his neighbor have a good time will come down from his pedestal and enjoy the joke he is. A Christian is not afraid to have a little fun at his own expense. Robert Frost said: “Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee and I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.”
Christian joy is not complete, however, until men surrender unconditionally to God. Christian joy is not passed out with the Sunday bulletins; it blooms from the dedicated life. The sweets of the faith, God’s friendship and forgiveness, the only fun that’s any good and clean, lie around lifeless and dormant until we are sworn in. It was not until St. Francis gave himself up to God, silver and soul, that he started singing and dancing in the streets. Why don’t we have strength to carry a tune? Could it be that nothing ever broke our ego’s ice to make us burst with music? A new birth, Christ said. And until that old native stone of self is pried up, laughter will be but the leftover residue from swapping old jokes, the slimy scum that congeals on dirty stories. It is the decision to do the will of God that gives us wings to meet and embrace the joy coming down from heaven. That’s what unclenches the Zacchean fist; that’s what makes us cut and serve our little piece of property with irrepressible generosity. The report of our change will go up like a cheer from all the King’s men.
But what really brings down the Christian house is not the arrival of the righteous but the homecoming of the damned. The greatest happiness comes for a Christian not when he himself enters the Kingdom, but when it happens to someone unexpected. A man who is alive can laugh, but laughter is a love story that dotes on another’s rescue best of all. The Good Shepherd gets more excited over finding one stray lamb than bringing in the ninety-nine. The father did not celebrate the boy who stayed behind. The thing that made him shout for joy was to see the lad he’d given up for lost coming toward him over the horizon.
Nothing makes heaven half so happy as these surprise come-backs. This life’s mortal storm is frightening. But could the thunder perhaps be the crashing of God’s cymbals to herald a man come out from the mouth of hell? The world is full of “sound and fury” signifying something—deafening applause by the numberless multitude for some one who made it in the midst of temptation. And when the sun seems blotted out, could it be covered with caps tossed high in triumph by “the great host of witness” who herald someone’s victory against great adds below? “I tell you there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents.”
Christianity In Free Europe
Within the past two years, CHRISTIANITY TODAY has devoted complete issues to the question of the world missionary situation and, more particularly, to a survey of the spiritual state of Great Britain. Facts and figures were charted and analyzed, and their significance competently assessed. The response has been so remarkable that our next issue (July 20) will feature a parallel survey—Christianity in Free Europe, with special reference to the period 1912–1962. These 50 years have seen the growth of a materialism which, it has been suggested by a former President of the United Nations General Assembly, is doubtfully worth more than the dialectical materialism of Communism. At our invitation, residents of various European countries will tell how God is nonetheless working through faithful servants, how the Gospel is still being preached, and how men and women are still being won for the Saviour in every land and in every walk of life.
