One Sunday evening, five completely strange men arrived at the front entrance of our house in the town of Treasure River in Northern Japan where my wife and I were working as missionaries. They had come to the evening service, but were quite obviously out of their depth doing so! Yet, there was something very determined about their manner – almost as though they had dared each other to go to the foreigner’s “church” which was our lounge. Wonderingly, I greeted them, hoping to make them feel welcome. Eventually, they settled down, seated cross-legged on the tatami mat floor. After the usual preliminaries, I began to read in Japanese from John 8:1-11 which is the account of the woman caught in adultery, a crime then punishable by stoning to death. When I read that last sentence in verse 7, where Jesus said to the woman’s accusers, “If any of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her”, the men who had been listening with rapt attention suddenly erupted in hoots of laughter! The best joke yet!

This is not the first time someone has laughed so uproariously! It happens all the time and in every ethnic group and country on earth. Every culture and people group has its own brand of humor. What I am trying to say is that humankind seems to be endowed with a “funny bone” – “a mental quality which apprehends and delights in the ludicrous and mirthful.”¹ If this is so then what does it tell us about the Great Endower, our Creator God? In creating man He said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness…” (Gen 1:26). Now I must be careful here! I am not saying that because God created man in His image and seems to have given him, generally, the mental quality to apprehend and delight in the ludicrous and mirthful that God is a humorist, i.e., “one whose conduct and conversation are regulated by humor or caprice.”² The conduct and conversation of our Creator God – the God of the Bible – is holy, loving, joyful, good, merciful, just, and sovereign. So, what I am saying, then, is that in the broad context of who God is and what He is like, we can see His sense of humor.

As well as in humankind, we see something of His humor in the animal kingdom: the monkey and his monkey business, the giraffe with his craning neck, the elephant with his inquisitive trunk, and the Carnival of the Animals as they troop into the ark! And in the plant world, as well, to see a tender, green sapling splitting rock as it reaches for light, is to discern something of the humor of the living God.

But the created order – man, animal, plant – do not tell us the whole story about who God is and what He is like. His ancient, living book, the Bible, does. For example in Psalm 2:4, God is described as the One enthroned in heaven who laughs at the nations and the people with their kings and rulers who conspire and plot to overthrow His Son. Like the tender, green sapling which pitted its strength against the resisting rock and won, so another “tender shoot” (Isa 53:2) grew up like a root out of dry ground pitting His resurrection strength against the resisting rock of the powers of hell and won. For the rock to resist the power of nascent life was ludicrous and God laughed! God has a sense of humor. He sees the funny side, if you will, of men strutting their stuff and defiantly shaking their fist in His face.

There are those who cite Old Testament references like Psalm 2:4 to re-enforce their perception of God as a harsh, brooding killjoy of a judge sitting up there with a stick seeking whom He may bash and laughing all the time. But those references all describe His attitude towards those who oppose Him and His people. We need to get the whole picture of what God is like and read all 150 Psalms, for example, to learn that this God who laughs mockingly at His enemies’ puny efforts to overthrow Him, is as I have said, the God of goodness, mercy, patience, love, and justice.

Not all who fail to appreciate God’s remarkable, telling sense of humor perceive Him as an invisible, capricious, stick-wielding potentate. There are many who believe in Him as a merciful, sovereign Judge, holy and just who stores up His wrath for that final day when He will return to judge us all. I, for one, believe that! But I also firmly believe that that same God is my Savior, my Friend, my Master.

However, when you are not sure He is your Savior and Friend, you tend to put notices in the rooms of your heart-house which remind you that Someone is watching. Well, God is watching. But if you know Him as Friend, your response will be a mixture of deep obedience, honor, respect, and love, all springing from that deep awareness of being loved. It follows then that if you are not sure of such a loving Savior, your response will be one of fear and your whole attitude and life-style characterized by lots of anxious, fruitless do’s and don’ts and you will not likely appreciate the fact that God has a wonderful sense of humor and has given us the gift of laughter!

Those five men who laughed with such abandon and delight at Jesus’ words to the woman’s accusers could in a sense represent those who were “outside” the religious establishment of Jesus’ day. The New Testament called them publicans (tax collectors) and sinners. Society ostracized them because they failed to keep the Laws of Moses, as interpreted by the religious leaders. Jesus often ate and drank with them (Mt 9:11). In fact his enemies described him derisively as “a friend of tax collectors and ‘sinners’ ” (Mt 11:19). I like to think that Jesus was in the same way a friend of those five who visited us that Sunday night. They had no clue who Jesus was but they certainly had a sense of humor and they just loved the way He tore into the hypocrisy and self-righteousness of the rule-keepers. They saw the funny side of what the Savior was saying – the cool irony of His command to the woman’s judges on the one hand; but on the other His wonderful words of forgiveness which swept away the condemnation and challenged her to go and sin no more.

Our five would doubtlessly have been delighted to join the tax collectors, Matthew, and Zacchaeus, for a meal with Jesus. What does this tell us about Jesus of Nazareth, God’s only Son, the God-Man? Well, perhaps the most important thing it tells us here is that He loved sinners and wanted to save them. But it also tells us that He was good company – the tax collectors and sinners seemed to delight having Him around. He obviously did not put them down, but accepted them for who they were. His presence was comfortable, affirming, genuine and transparent, challenging and refreshing or they would not have had anything to do with Him. He was the Light of the World and Love Incarnate. I do not want to push this too far, but to be good company, you need to have a sense of humor. And Jesus, God in the flesh, did. I would like to suggest that He had a delightful sense of humor. Sometimes it was terrifying, yes, but so often it was warm and relevant. It would have been wonderful to recline there at Matthew’s table with Jesus and hear the laughter and to see the Son of God reaching out in love to draw men from their darkness into His glorious light. The next best thing to being there is to ponder some of the things He said which reflects His sense of humor. For example, commenting on hypocrisy, He warns against trying to take a speck of sawdust from your brother’s eye when you have a plank (or telephone pole, as one version puts it!) in your own (Mt 7:3). Again, He compares the impossibility of a rich man has getting into the kingdom of heaven with the impossibility of a camel trying to get through the eye of a needle (Mt 19:24). And then another – in teaching about being ready for His second coming, He tells about the ten virgins: five were ready with extra oil and their lamps trimmed and got into the banquet; the other five were not and did not get in and were left shouting outside (Mt 25:1).

So, if God has a sense of humor, and I am saying He does, how does a believer respond? By cultivating a sense of humor? Like remembering lots of jokes and getting the punchline, right? Not exactly! But we are commanded to add goodness to faith, and knowledge to goodness, and self-control to knowledge and perseverance to self-control, godliness to perseverance and brotherly kindness to godliness and love to brotherly kindness (2 Pet 1:5). While we are doing that there must surely be scope for developing this mental capacity to see how ludicrous it is to doubt our loving God and learn with Him to laugh at ourselves, our doubts and worries and our sleep-stealing situations. If we are secure in Him and His Calvary love, we are more likely to be able to see His point of view, ourselves for what we are, and laugh. But get others to laugh as well, which is what Jesus did. He used humor in His teaching. I am sure we all had the wonderful experience of having a preacher, a teacher of the Word, tell a very funny anecdote about himself or someone else to make a point. As the laughter fades, quite often the Holy Spirit uses that opportunity to break down barriers, warm cold hearts, and send the spoken truth home to weary souls.

There is nothing like wholesome God-given humor to refresh jaded minds and relax tired bodies. Or to quote that idea exactly as it is written in the NIV: “A cheerful heart is good medicine…” (Prov 17:22). But cheerful hearts draw their cheer, their joy, and peace – and so their humor from the God of all hope (Rom 15:13).

References:
1. Kirkpatrick, E.M., editor. Chambers 20th Century Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers, 1983.
2. Ibid.

Barton Buell, a retired OMF missionary and Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) minister, lives in Inverness, Scotland where he does pulpit supply and is involved with his home church. Barton was in Singapore in the 1970s and is a great friend and mentor to many in Eagles Communications.

The New International Version of the Bible has been referenced.