Should Christians Ridicule?

Reflections on Making Fun of People & Things (Things That Matter #4)

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post on here titled For Christians, is SNL the Goal or a Clue? Behind the scenes, there’s been some conversation going on about that and related posts from others, which has been cool. Yesterday, someone posted this response:

What too often is missed by joking about God or Christianity is that neither are actually funny. Trying to make the seriousness of our sin and desperate need for forgiveness of it by God culturally acceptable and attractive to more people using comedy is doomed to fail because, while it’s a noble objective, it’s not how God does things. Like a surgeon, He informs us that we have a fatal illness that needs radical treatment and a change of life so severe it’s referred to as being born again. Or, is the purpose of these comedians just to provide entertainment to Christians who are more focused on enjoying their lives rather than saving others? Worldly people aren’t looking for tamer things to amuse them; that’s why SNL and other venues are so popular.

I’m not surprised by this response. And right out of the gate, I’ll be honest (cue sarcasm): I love when someone takes the time to remind me that humor is dangerous and must be stopped immediately. I mean, we wouldn’t want people smiling while thinking, after all, would we? Because that could possibly lead to joy, and joy is one slippery step away from heresy. Sigh! Obviously, I’m being snarky here. Perhaps overly so. But I’m doing so purposefully. But why? Because it raises a question that I think some Christians ask and wrestle with and others need to ask and wrestle with: Is it wrong for Christians to make fun/ridicule?

As I’ve mentioned numerous times on this site, I’ve been in ministry over 20 years. At present, I’m still a Professor of Bible. But I’ve done hospice visits, funerals, Greek lectures, and enough Bible studies to know that Leviticus isn’t just a sleep aid for most people, but more like an industrial-strength sedative. So, let me say this up front: I am a Christian. I believe in the crucified and risen Christ. I affirm the Apostles’ Creed. My faith isn’t a game to me. But also, let me say this as plainly as possible: laughter isn’t the opposite of reverence. Far from it. Sometimes, in fact, it’s precisely how reverence survives without spontaneously combusting from the weight of everything that life throws its way.

So then, let me just cut to the chase here by saying the notion that “God doesn’t use comedy” might sound noble, but biblically speaking, I think it’s off. Satire, like glitter at a middle school craft fair, is actually sprinkled all throughout Scripture. And, in the main, it’s not simply there to entertain the flesh; rather, it’s there to expose obsessions with fleshly things. It’s not there to coddle the sinner, but to cut through all the nonsense and to drag idolatry into the daylight wearing nothing but its own dumb garments. And from where I stand, satire isn’t just a tool for ancient prophets. It’s also the exact remedy modern Christians need when the film God’s Not Dead 5: He’s Still Mad About the Science Teacher doesn’t exactly spark revival.

Just read the prophets. Like seriously, go. Read the prophets. These dudes didn’t pull punches. They pulled out swords of sarcasm. And they were vicious. I mean God used Ezekiel to ridicule the people so they would turn and repent. Ezekiel literally laid on his side for over a year, ate food cooked over poop, and described Israel as chasing after well-hung donkeys. And yet, if a preacher says “Well-hung” or some derivative in church, you know, the kinda words high school boys use in the bus on the way to church camp, it’d be the start of a major scandal.

Come on already: comedy doesn’t take sin seriously? Nah! Quite the opposite. Comedy absolutely takes it seriously. And it does so by drawing attention to it, mocking it, and showing the absurdity of it, all with the hope of change. (Read that last phrase again if you need to!)

And if you think that’s intense, then dear reader, you should probably steer clear of Ezekiel 16. Whew! God doesn’t just call Israel unfaithful. He describes her like a whore so desperate for attention, she flips the whole transaction. Most prostitutes get paid. Not Israel. She’s so sex-addicted she pays her suitors. She sets up shop on street corners, spreads her legs wide for anyone who walks by, and begs them to go at her, to defile her right then and there, in front of everyone, to put on a show for them (Ezek 16:25). Ok, if you’re not gonna go read on your own, let me force you to read it here: “At every street corner you built your lofty shrines and degraded your beauty, spreading your legs with increasing promiscuity to anyone who passed by.” That, of course, is a tamed down version. And there’s plenty more of where that came from, too.

And that’s not me being edgy or trying to be edgy. That’s the Bible. That’s Scripture. Word for word. It’s graphic. It’s brutal. And it’s satire in its most confrontational form. God doesn’t use soft metaphors here. He goes full roast mode because he’s trying to wake his people up. Holy mocking isn’t cruelty. It’s clarity. And that’s where we get our answer to the question I asked at the start: Is it wrong for Christians to make fun/ridicule? Answer: No. God does it. God uses his prophets to do it. Let’s continue down that path a moment.

The prophet Isaiah mocked idol-makers by pointing out that they used one half of a log to cook dinner and the other half to bow down and pray to. Honestly, it’s a pretty brilliant point and hilarious to boot. What about the Psalmist? Psalm 2 anyone? Wait for it…God…laughs. Psalm 59? God scoffs. That’s not cute chuckling. That’s holy ridicule. That’s divine mockery. That’s satire with smoke coming off of it. That’s like the verbal equivalent of Sodom going up in flames and Lot’s wife turning to salt.

But what about Jesus? My advice: don’t let the robe fool you. Jesus didn’t merely or just teach in parables. Don’t sanitize him that way. Jesus dropped holy zingers and might as well have been doing a tight five at the Temple Comedy Club. He calls people “Whitewashed tombs,” “Blind guides,” and “Sons of Hell.” Umm, last I checked, that’s not encouragement. But it is hilarious. That, my friends, is what you call a spiritual roast. It happens again in Rev 2:21-22 where Jesus calls the church in Thyatira a ho. He says he has given her time to repent of her sexual immorality but since she refuses, it’s not going to be another man who takes her to bed, but he “will throw her on the couch where those who commit adultery with her will endure a great shaking….” I’ve never, not a single time, heard anyone use that as their “life verse.” Wonder why?

Are such roasts not taking sin seriously? As Paul would say, “Μη γενοιτο!” Just be honest! If you think table-flipping was bold, imagine calling your religious leaders vipers then walking off with a mic drop. In the original post of mine about Christians and SNL, I wasn’t suggesting we turn the gospel into a sketch show. But if Jesus can roast religious leaders with punchlines, maybe Christians don’t need to faint or break out in a rash every time someone mentions the word “comedy” in the same sentence as “theology.” The two go together.

Maybe Christians on the conservative side of things, which is where I am, need to actually read Scripture and realize that humor is all over its pages (sometimes in very dark ways!), and is, in fact, one of God’s most effective tools. Likewise, maybe those who call themselves Christians and are on the liberal side of things need to, as Terry Lindvall notes, put away their “hermeneutic of suspicion” and replace it with a hermeneutic of humor. As Lindvall notes in his book God Mocks, prophets tear down so something better can rise. Put differently: Satire is holy demolition. It’s Jeremiah crying while swinging a wrecking ball. It’s Elijah mocking Baal’s prophets with, “Hey you guys (say it in your best Sloth-from-The-Goonies voice), maybe your dumb god is on the toilet.” That’s not flippant. That’s faith with a huge smirk and deep purpose.

It actually reminds me of how Steve Rosenfield, one of the most respected comedy coaches out there, opens his book Mastering Stand-Up with a dedication that would make most Sunday School teachers lapse into a coma right there on their felt-board: “To the snake in the Garden of Eden. Without this snake, humankind would lack the two absolute essentials of comedy: problems and knowledge.” OMG! As a Bible scholar and former pastor, I’ve literally read thousands of Christian books. Not a single one of them was ever dedicated to the serpent. My jaw dropped before getting to the Introduction. Wow! What an opener!

That is a wild opening line, to be sure, but think about it beyond the knee-jerk response and it’s rather profound. Without tension, there’s no punchline. Without conflict, there’s no setup. Without something messed-up, there’s nothing to fix or mock. And while I’m not about to start a devotional series called Quiet Time with the Serpent (or should I? Hmm!), I get what he’s saying. Comedy is born in the gap between what is and what should be or what is and what shouldn’t be. Comedy doesn’t come from paradise. It comes from the painful hilarity of being stuck somewhere between Eden and New Creation, between the two trees in Genesis and the two trees in Revelation, between me trying to figure out how to be a good, Christian father and trying not to go ballistic when I step on my kids’ Legos.

So, let me say this in a more pointed way: comedy isn’t a replacement for the gospel. But neither is music. Neither is visual art. Neither is anything else we use to embody and tell truth. Comedy, when it’s done right, punches at the appropriate subjects/objects. It clears the fog. It tells the truth. But, and hear me on this, comedy, when done right, hits you sideways with truth that’s too raw to say straight. (Read that last sentence again, if needed.) If you’ve ever laughed at or gotten a joke, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

No joke, of course, has ever saved a soul. I know that. Only God can do that. But then again, neither has any sermon ever saved a soul. And neither has any Southern Gospel song or praise and worship tune. As it is, humor kinda just tills the soil. It disarms people. It makes them think before they have a chance to throw up their walls and defenses and ignore everything you’re saying. I’m not giving comedy more credit than it’s due.

I’m also not suggesting that doing comedy as a Christian is about converting people through punchlines. It’s not. But it is about telling the truth laughingly. The ancient poet Horace called it just that. (I wish I would’ve thought of that first but, alas, Horace preceded me by thousands of years.) God just called it prophecy. (By the way, prophecy, at least from a scriptural perspective, isn’t predominantly about or obsessed with predicting things way off in the future. No, it’s about God using one of his people to tell the rest of his people in specific ancient times and places, “Get your act together right now, or else. Repent! Because, if you don’t, X is gonna happen. But if you do, Y will happen.)

The Apostle Paul used ridicule, too. He mocked death. “O death, where is your sting?” That’s the Bible’s version of “Nah, you can’t sit here today.” And my favorite of his is in Galatians 5 where he tells people obsessed with circumcision, that he wishes they’d just go ahead and cut the whole thing off (Gal 5:11). That’s pretty ballsy! Then, just a few verses later, he says, “Brothers and sisters, if someone is caught in a sin, you who live by the Spirit should restore that person gently” (Gal 6:1). So, Paul can tell someone you want them to emasculate themselves and, in the same breath, talk about restoring them gently? Either that, or mockingly telling them to chop it all off, ridiculing them in that way, sees comedy a form of grace. That’s my view. I mean, just a few lines after that he says, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked.” Paul would rather mock us so we repent and our behavior changes, than us remain in ignorance and go on living in ways that seemingly mock God. How profound?! We should follow suit.

And what about the fact that the Early Church even had a name for Easter laughter, drawing heavily on Paul’s writing in 1 Cor 15. This is captured in the wonderful Latin phrase: risus paschalis. Easter Laughter. Paschal/Passion/Suffering Laughter. I LOVE that! The first Christians believed the resurrection was so good, we ought to laugh the devil out of town. We ought to laugh in death’s face. Christians get the first and last laugh, in other words.

So no, I’m not making light of God as a Christian when I’m doing comedy, even if I’m poking fun at church or Christians or sin. Instead, I’m shining light on what’s messed-up, fake, absurd, hypocritical, or self-important. You know, all the things wrong with me and every other person I know who calls themselves “Christian” and those who do not. I’m not mocking salvation in any sense either. I’m mocking the people and things that pretend they don’t need saving. And if that bothers someone, it probably means the joke is working.

You don’t have to like satire. But you should recognize that it’s biblical, it’s ancient, and when done rightly, it’s quite holy. It’s not comedy that threatens the gospel. It’s self-righteousness pretending to be too sacred to laugh. Similarly, it’s not satire or ridicule that weakens the church, it’s spiritual hypochondria. It’s Christians who treat every joke like it might lead to a heresy outbreak on aisle 9. That gets so old. For real! And that’s precisely why, at the end of the day, sometimes the deepest truth isn’t shouted from the rooftops, it’s just smuggled into a conversation as a punchline. And if God can use a donkey to speak truth through comedy, maybe, just maybe, he can use a 44-year-old dad like me with a mic and some jokes, too. Because that, in fact, is precisely how God does things.