seeming victory.10 “The Devil exulted when Christ died, but by this very death of Christ, the Devil is vanquished, as if he had swallowed the bait in the mousetrap,” expounds Augustine. “He rejoiced in Christ’s death, like a bailiff of death. What he rejoiced in was then his own undoing.”11 Death couldn’t finish off the sinless Christ, for he subsequently triumphed over the forces of darkness by rising from the grave.
Historically, comedy and satire have been categorized into a milder form (following Horace) designed to reform via shame and embarrassment, and a harsher type (following Juvenal) intended to awaken indignation via shock and ridicule.12 Via comedy we poke fun at self-righteousness and hypocrisy, counteract dogmatism and intolerance, and revel in the playfulness of everyday give-and-take.13 Among the best agents I know for deflating exalted egos are children. They have such an ingenious way of imitating our signature mannerisms and gestures until we too start to feel that our actions are ludicrous.
As a fallen and fallible Christian, I’m most comfortable with humor directed first at ourselves before it is turned on others, since we all, to a greater or lesser extent, belong to Hypocrites Anonymous. Take that crack by Groucho Marx: “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.” As French philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville comments, “Directed toward his hostess after an unsuccessful dinner party, the remark is ironic; delivered to his audience at the close of a performance, it is humorous.”14
A satirist may disguise himself as a foreigner, reflects literary critic Gilbert Highet, then visit his own country, describing “its customs with humorous amazement tempered by disgust,”15 or paint a picture of another, far-off world to which his own is unfavorably compared.16 Indeed, a master of satire, Highet decides, “needs a huge vocabulary, a lively flow of humor combined with a strong serious point of view, an imagination so brisk that it will always be several jumps ahead of his readers, and taste good enough to allow him to say shocking things without making the reader turn away in disdain.”17
Old Testament prophets, usually thought of as stern moralists who rail against Israelite sins, at times can appear more like buffoons. Isaiah goes around Jerusalem barefoot for three years, wearing only a loincloth (like some captive slave), in order to warn of the impending doom of Egypt and Ethiopia, on whom Judah was relying for aid (Isa. 20: 1–6).18 Ezekiel draws a picture on a clay tablet and constructs toy siege-devices to serve notice of an upcoming military offensive. He lies on his left side behind a model wall for three-hundred and ninety days to represent God’s judgment upon Israel and then lies on his right side for forty more days to represent God’s judgment upon Judah. He even bakes barley-cakes on cow’s dung to symbolize how dire the famine would become. Not only that, he cuts off his hair with a sword, dividing it into thirds to indicate how the inhabitants would suffer: one-third by fire; one-third by the sword; and one-third by a scattering to the wind (Ezek. 4:1—5:4). Such bizarre behavior graphically depicts God’s pent-up indignation and the dire consequences.
In 1 Corinthians chapter 1, Paul objects that the sages of this world never came to a genuine knowledge of God, so God revealed himself to humanity by suffering on a cross; such “foolishness” trumps all human presumption. From passages like this, Christians devised a role for the holy fool. “I have offered myself, for some time now, to the Child Jesus, as his little plaything,” announced nineteenth-century Carmelite nun Therese of Lisieux. “I told him not to use me as a valuable toy children are content to look at but dare not touch, but to use me like a little ball of no value which he could throw on the ground, push with his foot, pierce, leave in a corner, or press to his heart if it pleased him.”19 Willing to be pliable, even break the rules of social decorum, we become transparent conduits of his will.
Indeed, humor, satire, and comedy have proven strong weapons in the arsenal of spiritual warfare. After all, what plausible excuse can there be for a life littered by flaws and failure, but that complaint by knight errant Don Quixote: a “malignant enchanter persecutes me, and has put clouds and cataracts into my eyes.”20 To paraphrase Martin Luther, “The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.”21 The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis’s imaginary exchange of letters between an apprentice demon and his seasoned mentor on how to seduce souls, is a supreme example.
In like manner the great Renaissance humorist Rabelais derides that morality more given to homilies than concrete aid. During the fictional cake-peddlers’ war, a monk cries out: “Is this any time for talk? You’re like the decretalist preachers, who say that whoever sees his neighbor in danger of death ought first, under pain of three-pronged excommunication, to admonish the other to confess and to put himself in a state of grace—all this before giving him any help. And so, after this, when I see them in the river and about to drown, in place of running up to lend them a hand, I intend giving them a good long sermon de contemptu mundi et fuga saeculi, on contempt of the world and flight from worldly things, and when they’re stiff and dead, that will be time enough to go fish them out.”22
Is it any wonder then that Richard Milnes, in his memoir of the British satirical poet Thomas Hood, concludes: “[T]he sense of humour is the just balance of all the faculties of man, the best security against the pride of knowledge and the conceits of the imagination, the strongest inducement to submit with a wise and pious patience to the vicissitudes of human existence.”23 Thus, I urge you, my brothers and sisters, laugh your way to heaven.
1. Cooper, “Humour,” 63.
2. Aristotle, “Parts of Animals,” 1049.
3. Martin, “Humor,” 540
4. Hobbes, Leviathan, 38.
5. Bergson, “Laughter,” 105.
6. Ryken et al., “Humor,” 409.
7. Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 153.
8. Trueblood, Humor of Christ, 47, 127.
9. Aulen, Christus Victor, 47–55.
10. Lewis, Lion, Witch and Wardrobe, 145–66.
11. Sanders, Sudden Glory, 140.
12. Kiley and Shuttleworth, Satire, 23, 28.
13. Hyers, “Comedy,” 104–5.
