From Faith to Fun the Secularisation of Humour

From Faith to Fun The Secularisation of Humour

Russell Heddendorf

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Acknowledgments ix Introduction xi 1 Enter Isaac!  2 The Power of Paradox  3 The Technique of Humor  4 And God Laughed  5 Jewish Joy  6 The Therapeutic Trend  7 The Fun Factor  8 Secular Fun  9 Sacred Fun  10 From Fun to Faith  11 Conclusion  Bibliography  Index  For

David and Ruth Ann, Who know both faith and fun— and the diﬀerence between them. Acknowledgments

ontrary to general opinion, the writing of a book is not the Csingular effort of the author. At various stages in the process, others became involved to provide the resources, stimulation, and technical knowledge needed to complete the project. Thanks, then, to the Board and Administration of Covenant College for a sabbatical to start the project and to the students in Comics and Culture who, over a ten year period, provided the fertile environment which nurtured the book. Thanks, too, to Tad Mindeman and the library staff of Covenant College, especially Ethan Pettit who always found a book or article when it was needed. I am especially grateful to my son, David, who used his editorial ex- pertise to smooth over problems in the text and to Bill Campbell, Frank Lombardy, and Matt Vos who applied their technical knowledge of the computer in helpful and essential ways. A special note of gratitude is reserved for the publisher, Wipf and Stock, and its staff, who saw more potential than problems in the book and guided it to the results presented here. Finally, my thanks to Harriet who patiently accepted and supported her husband’s curiosity in a topic which often required more faith than fun in its exploration. Introduction

Humor is one of the ways employed by the Hebrews (to adjust to life in a foreign culture). They take a word and by changing a letter give it a totally new sense. . . . They play on words in such a manner as to ridicule the text or person or to achieve a very different effect. . . . Thus the Hebrews are set in the midst of cultures: they do not shut themselves off from them, they know and use them but they make them say other things. This is the subversion of culture. —Jacques Ellul The Subversion of Christianity

t the end of the nineteenth century, religion was still a dominant Afactor in our cultural worldviews. The Protestant majority, though uneasy at the wave of immigrants entering the country, was confident enough to refer to the approaching twentieth century as “The Christian Century.” Traditional values still controlled our thinking, and there seemed little reason to believe that would change very quickly. If daily life was experiencing some “dis-ease” in urban centers, for the most part it was not threatening. Rooted in the past, the routines of living needed no explanation. There was a seamless web in social living that was seldom challenged by external circumstances. In general, society enjoyed a rhythm to life, a social harmony reflecting a sense of well-being in the culture. When circumstances did threaten that fabric, they were usually given religious labels and interpreted accordingly. Natural catastrophes and personal losses were still viewed as acts of God and accepted as such. The culture was more than a way of life at this time. It had a past and, more importantly, it had a purpose shaped by that past. People had a sense of continuity and believed the future would be a natural unfolding of the nation’s history. The idea of culture remained faithful to the assumption that people shared a common meaning and were shaped and motivated by it in daily living. Introduction But culture cannot thrive on such a limited, albeit positive view of the world. In addition to an enabling meaning and purpose, culture requires boundaries which limit and channel human initiative. Whether we think of culture expressed as art, religion, politics or even everyday life, we understand there is a certain order there that provides us with a stable, unified view of the world. Restraint is part of that order which must balance freedom if a culture is to maintain the orderliness which is part of its definition. We could say a culture enjoys “good health” when people share that orderliness merging freedom and restraint which shapes the national character. By the mid-twentieth century, a subtle change in thinking reflected a certain dis-ease encroaching on the culture. In one of the most influential books of the century, David Riesman’s “study of the changing American character” pointed to the rise of a new social character in conflict with the old.1 The changes occurring in human relationships were molding the culture in unpredictable ways. People were gripped by a new anxiety that the culture had irrevocably changed. Two decades later, Alvin Toffler picked up this theme in his revolutionary study of the technological revolution.2 Looking to the future rather than to the past, he took the public’s eyes off Vietnam and directed them to the explosive changes straining the cultural foundation. Other cultural critics pointed to a variety of erosive forces in American society. Christopher Lasch saw narcissism as a cultural phenomenon which devalued the past and limited the culture’s capacity to face the future.3 Others noted the changes taking place in America’s religious scene and, explicitly or implicitly, pointed to secularizing trends.4 The celebrated work by Robert Bellah and his associates underscored the cultural conflict between our need for community and the individual- ism promoted by modern life.5 This conflict, symptomatic of the cultural disorder of our time, was no longer questioned at the end of the century. It was with that understanding that James Davison Hunter could confi-

1. Riesman, The Lonely Crowd. 2. Toﬄer, Future Shock. 3. Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism. 4. Carter, The Culture of Disbelief and Eck, A New Religious America. 5. Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart.

xii Introduction dently write about the “culture wars” and the forces shaping them.6 And so the discussion continues. We have now moved beyond our earlier naivete and no longer assume that culture is neatly structured and cohesive. In the last half century or so, it has become apparent that erosive rather than integrative factors are having a greater influence on American culture. The Sixties, especially, highlighted some of those forces subverting culture as we knew it. Since then, more benign forms of radical change have put traditional values at risk. It is for that reason Christopher Lasch could “describe the United States as a ‘cultureless society.’”7 Culture may now refer not to refined tastes and expressions but to the fact that the traditional expectations which defined our culture no longer exist. Worse, nothing has successfully replaced those expectations to provide cultural cohesion and structure. This book is an attempt to come to grips with the problem of a fragmented and often dissolute culture. It suggests that humor has been a subtle but potent force in the changing of American culture in the last century. Initially, it contributed to our sense of national identity and cultural awareness. More recent forms of humor, however, have been subverting that culture, largely by introducing new expectations devoid of moral meaning as we have known it. Precisely because humor is associated with benign, healing qualities, its negative influence has been ignored or not understood. This other, erosive influence of humor is a major concern of the book. Ellul’s description of the use of humor in ancient Israel draws a par- allel for us today. We experience rapid social change as foreign cultures that buffet us with conflicting demands. Like the Hebrews, we are caught in this change and cannot escape it. And like the Hebrews, we use humor as a palliative. Language, which has provided so much of the meaning of our culture, now undergoes new and creative uses. We play with words and images as the Hebrews did and, as a result, alter the meaning of the world we live in. Consequently, much that had a serious meaning is trivialized and rendered insignificant. With Ellul’s work as a foundation, this book proceeds with three basic assumptions:

6. Hunter, Culture Wars. 7. Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy.

xiii Introduction 1. that humor, as we use it today, has gained greater cultural importance while negatively inﬂuencing culture during the last century, 2. that orthodox religion has been changing while losing its traditional meaning in the culture, 3. that there is a connection between these two trends.

Much of orthodox religion, like the Hebrew faith, was based on a “God’s-eye view of the world.” In everyday life, religious faith bound people together and gave them purpose and direction as they tried to interpret life from God’s point of view. When that interpretation was threatened by some personal or cultural crisis, religion and its traditional answers were often challenged. At such times, religion could offer renewed hope by providing a new sense of “good humor” that countered the forces of evil threatening people and their cultural assumptions. But when means other than religion are used to adjust to cultural crises, as was the case with the Hebrews, the culture is gradually sub- verted. One way to deal with crises is to deny their seriousness. Like the Hebrews, we can “ridicule the text or person” to gain the effect we desire. Rather than responding to a foreign culture with faith, the Hebrews made fun of it. Today, we also use humor to question a serious view of the world and use the cultures about us to “make them say other things” about the traditional meanings of our social experiences. At such times, faith may be replaced by other social expressions which ease the adjustment to cultural crises. No doubt humor has always provided a cultural prop to adjust to difficult social changes. But this use of humor has been especially used and often abused in the twentieth century because of three major cultural trends: 1. the increased importance of paradox in culture 2. the increased importance of therapeutic thinking 3. the decreased importance of the traditional meaning of language

The book argues that each of these trends may be countered by religious faith or cultural humor. When the culture is enriched with a godly view of the world, crises may be countered with faith. But when this view is weakened, a more secular response will rely on some cultural form of

xiv Introduction humor to respond to crisis. Humor is not one-dimensional; it has a multitude of meanings which may be used to respond to different forms of crisis. Holocaust humor (more commonly referred to as “ghetto humor”), for example, was used as a survival device in German concentration camps.8 Comedy, however, is “the ultimate civilizer in a dull, insensitive world” and is widely used as a means of adjusting to conditions of modern living.9 “Fun” is the form of humor that flourishes in an increasingly secularized society because it meets many of the needs of such a society. Since the eighteenth century, the meaning of fun has moved from a negative connotation of foolishness to its current positive usage to connote escape or freedom. At first this escape was from the boredom and tediousness of daily living. But the term gradually came to justify any escape from chafing expectations. As this meaning of fun gained popularity, it became part of the tool kit offered by culture to cope with modern life. And in the process, fun became a substitute for faith. This last point is important since it places humor in the debate concerning the place of secularization in modern society. There is a majority of scholars who believe secularization is no longer a force in the modern world. Indeed, they point to emerging forms of religious expression as testimony that religion is still important to people and influences their thinking and behavior. Others who are probably in the minority use more orthodox forms of belief and practice as benchmarks to measure religious change. For them, secularization is an ongoing process that continues to challenge and erode traditional religious meaning in the world. How one interprets these two conflicting points of view largely depends on the meaning of religion that is used. If religion is defined as a response to whatever one considers to be meaningful in life, then the former group is probably correct; new religions form as we respond with hope and enthusiasm to sports, political programs, or even body building regimens. But if religion is defined more narrowly to refer only to a response to a transcendent God, then the latter group has a stronger claim. Religion, then, is more clearly understood as a faith which places its trust outside human and cultural influences and secularization involves the erosion of that faith. While the issues here are important for academic debate, they are less relevant for our interests which are more concerned

8. See, for example, Oster, “Holocaust Humor.” 9. Sypher, Comedy, IX.

xv Introduction with humor as a powerful cultural force which should be taken more seriously than it is. The book opens with God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah that they will have a son in their old age. Faced with this paradox, they respond to God’s promise with laughter instead of faith. The importance of paradox in modern life is developed in Chapter Two which emphasizes the roles played by religion and humor in responding to paradox. Chapter Three describes humor as a “technique” that is used to gain something while masking possible negative consequences. We also learn that humor, paradoxically, may support a culture at the same time that it subverts it. Chapters Four and Five turn to the Bible and Jewish life for an understanding of the religious meaning of humor. Since there is a dialectic of the sacred and the comic in religion, there is always a hint of redemption in the comic. Laughter may then become a sign of spiritual victory. Jews, for example, accept laughter as a gift to help them interpret the paradox of their spiritual journey and to experience joy in it. Religion is developed in Chapter Six as part of the shift to therapeutic thinking in the mid-twentieth century. The resulting “therapeutic culture” harbors a transition from restrictive to permissive thinking, from a traditional culture of restraint to a modern culture of freedom. Chapter Seven introduces fun as a critical element in this new way of thinking. Problems may appear more illusory than real when interpreted by fun and deviance, when masked by fun, may lead to social disorder. Chapters Eight and Nine present fun as functional for both society and religion and identify a sacred element in fun which suggests a transcendent quality in life. But transcendence is less apparent in a secularized society and Chapter Ten warns of the greater likelihood that fun will become a new form of faith in the modern world. Chapter Eleven oﬀers a critique of fun as we experience it today. With this critique as a basis, the book concludes on a positive note. The more we understand fun and how it inﬂuences modern thinking, the more likely we are to take it seriously and the more seriously it is taken, the more likely it will be resisted. The more likely, too, that we can separate cultural fun from other forms of humor in our understanding. Then, perhaps, the relation between religion and humor will become clearer and we can appreciate how faith becomes fun or, if you will, how fun becomes faith.

xvi 

Enter Isaac!

Man’s very position in the universe is incongruous. That is the problem of faith, and not of humor . . . Humor is the prelude to faith, and laughter is the beginning of prayer. —Reinhold Niebuhr

Abraham fell face down; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” . . . So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?” The Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord?” . . . Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.” But He said, “Yes, you did laugh.” . . . Sarah said, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” —Genesis 17:17; 18:12–15; 21:6

rom Abraham’s point of view, God had presented him with a Fparadox—indeed, an apparent impossibility. God told Abraham that he and Sarah, in their old age, would have a son, Isaac, to fulﬁll the covenant made earlier. Abraham could do several things in response to that announcement. He could accept God’s statement as true or deny it as an impossibility. Abraham’s laughter suggests he didn’t take God’s promise seriously. New life, he thought, could not be brought from old bodies. Sarah shared Abraham’s disbelief as she listened to the conversation between Abraham and God at the tent ﬂap and laughed to herself. However, her laughter was followed by fear, as though she knew she had made a wrong response. She realized she had inadvertently mocked God’s power and authority. She could have responded with faith and believed

 From Faith to Fun God’s promise would be fulfilled, but she didn’t. Her laughter, joined with Abraham’s, reveals the human response that trivializes God and His promises when faith is missing. People today are not that different from Abraham and Sarah. We need to make sense of our experiences, especially those that seem to make no sense. We need to classify them as desirable or undesirable, as likely or unlikely. Predictability and order are important to us if we are to meet our individual goals and interact well with one another in the process. Our future plans and expectations depend on living in a world that responds to natural laws. Abraham and Sarah shared the same expectations. The idea they could become parents for the first time after a century of living was, undoubtedly, a frightening notion. It seemed so preposterous that they laughed at it. Our human response to everyday experiences focuses on this natural order which most of us take for granted. There is also the social order that we try to control for our benefit. We’re disconcerted by anything indeterminate which cannot be classified within these two orders. Anything from everyday experiences that cannot be explained is perceived as threatening or discomforting. We want to believe such inexplicable incidents, but often we can’t. At other times we would prefer not to believe. One possible response to the inexplicable is to take such experiences seriously. We want to understand before we go on to the next experience. But in the process, we may become bogged down in a laborious search for answers. Since our daily lives cannot tolerate many of those searches, we rarely seek the necessary truth in such matters. And if no search is made or no answer is found, there is no final closure to the experience. We’re left with a void to fill with our daily imaginations. Indeed, many such incomplete experiences clutter our lives.

HUMOR AS RESPONSE Another possible response to the problem of indeterminacy is humor. Instead of taking some hermeneutical problem seriously, we may dismiss it as trivial or fantastic. If some experience falls outside our daily pattern of living, there is no clear reason to believe we should be concerned with it. It might be a problem for someone else, but not for us. It’s also possible that it might not be a problem at all. If we should take the experience seriously, it then becomes a problem we have to deal with.

 Enter Isaac! Laughter offers a quick and convenient response to an uncomfortable experience. Often, without thinking, we dismiss the experience as one that does not need our attention. If there is something about the experience that is foreign or, at best, marginal to our lives, it may be considered inconsequential. Thus, laughter provides some assurance that the incident is not to be taken seriously, and we need not feel guilt or a sense of irresponsibility for not dealing with it. Put more simply, laughter may help us to feel good about a bad situation. Laughter also offers a casual way to gain support for our beliefs about unexplainable or troublesome situations. Since laughter is very contagious, it becomes a means by which a group may define a situation as trivial. Laughter may act as a lubricant in socially difficult and uncomfortable situations. Without arguing or cajoling, we gain some sense that our laughing companions agree that our interpretation of the situation as frivolous is reasonable. Indeed, we may gain a good bit of prestige in our group when others continue the laughter we started. Ultimately, laughter says something about our response to the possibilities of life. It tells us what we can accept as true and what we might reject as implausible. After Sarah laughs, God implies her faith is lacking when He says, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” Her laughter becomes a theological statement when it mocks God’s omnipotence. Indeed, humor may take the place of faith whenever it is directed at the unseen possibilities about us. Think of laughter as a screen or filter that sifts through the meanings of life. It helps to define those elements to be taken seriously and those that are not. As Reinhold Niebuhr states, “Laughter is our reaction to immediate incongruities and those which do not affect us essentially. Faith is the only possible response to the ultimate incongruities of existence which threaten the very meaning of our life.”1 These “immediate incongruities” exist on an elementary level where humor plays for the sake of playing. This type of humor may be trivial, frivolous, or even, on occasion, irresponsible.

Humor and Faith On another level, humor performs a more serious function. It maintains an inner tension as it considers the human scene, self-consciously reﬂect-

1. Quoted in Hyers, The Comic Vision, 31.

 From Faith to Fun ing on the foibles and failures found there. It takes seriously the paradoxes of life and seeks to give them meaning. Rather than resolving the tension, humor stretches it to the fullest. On this level, the comic spirit accepts the struggles and suffering of life and mixes them with hope. A third level of humor transcends these immediate incongruities and shows us what Niebuhr calls “the ultimate incongruities of existence.” There is a sense of victory when understanding on one level pushes us higher to another level. Faith is always present here, energizing the comic spirit with confidence and assurance. When grounded in this faith, laughter resonates with security and assurance.2 But devoid of that faith, laughter may be hollow and empty of meaning. How we laugh, what we laugh at, and when have implications for the way we interpret these immediate and ultimate incongruities. It’s serious business. I suspect we spend too much time on the first level and know very little of the other two. Especially in modern life, the trivialization of culture brings the comic spirit to lower forms of expression. While this spirit may be fitting for a truly comic situation, too often it takes on the mocking, fearful qualities of Sarah’s laughter. Later, though, her laughter is of the third kind. In Genesis 21:6 she says, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” Here, laughter probes the unknown purposes of God and finds a satisfying answer. Isaac has been born and God’s promise has been completed. She laughs with joy because she experiences the faithfulness of God as well as the fulfillment of her deepest desire. It’s laughter that others come to share as they understand the meaning of Isaac’s birth. Sarah speaks quite literally when she says, “God has brought me laughter,” for Isaac means “he laughs.” Now, her laughter suggests the joy she experiences at the miracle of Isaac’s birth. This laughter is more divine than human; it comes as a gift from God. In fact, it is the only time in the Old Testament that such joyous laughter is recorded.3 The birth of Isaac not only fulfills God’s promise to make Abraham the father of the Israelites, but also provides the Jewish people with the gift of laughter. It is a gift that will remind them of God’s past miracles as well as encourage them to have faith in the future.

2. Hyers develops these levels more fully in The Comic Vision, p. 32–39. 3. Sanders, Sudden Glory, 44.

 Enter Isaac! Humor and Laughter Sarah’s laughter is of the second type; it is meant to suggest the joy one finds when some puzzle or paradox has been exposed. It implies there is a deeper meaning in life that has been found and is to be enjoyed, especially with others. It also exposes the creative potential in laughter, that which reveals the unorthodox or unusual. Barry Sanders put it succinctly: “When laughter’s on the scene, the normal state of affairs can only give way to surprise and wonder.”4 Other references to laughter in the Old Testament are closer to the third type of humor, which deals with ultimate incongruities. These passages show God’s power and authority over His creation. As seen from the human perspective, God’s laughter mocks and scorns human pretensions. What are not found in the Old Testament are examples of the first type of humor. In Jewish culture, laughter is not intended for the trivial or playful. As Rabbi Chanina Bar Papa advised: “When you have an impulse toward frivolity, resist it with the words of the Torah.”5 I doubt the Israelites ever used the gift of laughter in frivolous ways. Certainly there were times to laugh, as noted in Ecclesiastes 3:4, and these were undoubtedly times when all joined together in sharing the laughter. On other occasions, they shared their joy in dancing and singing. But rarely, if ever, did they experience the laughter of Abraham and Sarah after the birth of Isaac. Indeed, it’s quite possible they never understood the gift of laughter as God intended it to be understood and used. I suspect God’s gift of laughter to the Israelites implied much more than the humor it symbolized. Remember, laughter was properly associated with the fulfillment of a promise. It was only after the birth of Isaac that Sarah could laugh with joy. Also, faith was necessary before joy could be realized and completed with laughter. Some paradox or problem that tested human comprehension was enough for God to show a miracle to His people. But if faith was not there, the lesson could not be taught. Abraham apparently learned the lesson of faith well, since he was willing to sacrifice Isaac as commanded by God. Although there is no record in scripture, one can imagine Abraham laughed with great glee when he saw the ram caught in the bush at the sacrifice site.

4. Ibid., 46. 5. Ibid., 49.

 From Faith to Fun Humor and Subversion But the Israelites did not learn so quickly. In fact, throughout their travels they failed to respond to God’s miracles as they could have. After cross- ing the Red Sea there was singing and dancing. But, immediately after that miracle, they complained about the manna and the quail. Repeatedly, they lacked the faith necessary to stimulate the joy that could come after a miraculous act. Focused on their own problems rather than on God’s power, they felt no awe or wonder. God could laugh with scorn, but the Israelites could not laugh with joy. Paradox is the basis for humor and laughter. We need some insuper- able problem, some challenging enigma, before we can laugh with joy. But faith is needed if we are to rejoice as God intended. Without faith, there is no sense of miracle or mystery. Laughter can be our reward for grasp- ing a new revelation if faith is present. Such laughter has a sacred quality because, like Sarah, we see it as a gift from God. Without faith, laughter is like a response to canned laughter, which is shared with another without understanding. The social quality is there, but the sacred is missing. With the account of Isaac’s birth as background, we can turn to the larger question of humor and its relation to religion. In one sense, laughter marks the birth of faith and belief. It can express the deepest religious meaning and lead us to an understanding of the mysteries we encounter. Laughter also marks the birth of doubt and disbelief and is anti-religious when it questions religious meanings. In this sense, humor is subversive and characteristic of secular thought. The idea of subversive humor is not very popular today. Laughter and humor have a market value that gives them a unique place in contemporary culture. It is true that humor makes a distinct and important contribution to personal well-being. However, beneath the contemporary halo effect that humor enjoys are values that laughter expresses. When we laugh with someone or at someone, we make some statement of belief or disbelief. We imply that we agree or disagree, that certain views or actions need not be taken seriously. Used in this way, humor becomes a powerful social force that helps to shape public opinion. I am not suggesting that humor is used, consciously, to shape contemporary culture. It is more likely that humor works like a credit card, dulling our senses to the consequences of its use. It offers a “quick fix” for any situation with the simple suggestion that the problem need not

 Enter Isaac! be taken seriously. The definition of any situation in this way is very appealing, so appealing that one rarely finds opposition to it. Consequently, humor is used to respond to a wide variety of problems ranging from foreign politics to human relationships. The latent effects of humor, used in such ways, contribute much to the subversion of culture as we experience it today. Put more simply, when laughing, we often mock and trivialize important cultural values. Since subversive humor is a major concern of this book, I should give some reasons for this emphasis. First, some cultural values should be protected from subversive humor. Roger Lundin makes a strong case for the important differences between the mystery found in biblical times and the indeterminacy found in contemporary culture.6 Since mystery always speaks of truth but indeterminacy has given up on truth, subversion of one is not the same as undermining the other. Biblical miracles are more likely to be met with awe than laughter. Indeterminacy in the modern world—whether it is paradox, ambiguity, or a simple contradiction— becomes so commonplace that response is from the mass. Humor then becomes a universal response to any form of indeterminacy. Laughing at the mundane often reduces some threat; humor of this type usually goes unchallenged. As part of our cultural tool kit, it is used to handle everyday problems, many of which rest on values which need to be protected, not parodied. We may laugh, for example, when children make embarrassing statements in public. Their innocence, however, is an important part of childhood which helps to define the value of a child and should not be mocked.

CONCLUSION As part of a cultural tool kit, humor is inﬂuenced greatly by technology. Indeed, humor relies on technology for its enhancement, and in the process cultural values can be given new meaning and direction. A Chaplin movie is limited to the situations that can be communicated by simple movie processes, and we laugh at problems that are still possible within the human condition. Technology, as used in animated ﬁlms, however, can create and mix new forms of reality for us to laugh at. The mysterious and the miraculous are brought into everyday life in such fantasies for escape and little

6. Lundin, The Culture of Interpretation, 204 ﬀ.

 From Faith to Fun else. When films rely on outlandish effects to gain laughter, for example, they trivialize the meaning of any extraordinary real life experience. Consequently, we lose any sense of awe generated by the exceptional in everyday life. Technology, with its power to distort reality, creates fantastic new situations to laugh at. Humor gains a new appeal as it moves from a description of the familiar to the unfamiliar and from the possible to the impossible. Then, humor, especiallywhen enhanced by technology, gains qualities often found in religions. Finally, I am concerned about the subversive qualities found in humor when it becomes a commodity. As a commodity, humor becomes socially useful in the culture for a variety of purposes; it may be used to sell or to socialize. Through the use of humor, people are encouraged to join together as a body or to respond with good feeling to some stimulus. Humor becomes a means of social control or manipulation, encouraging togetherness, not thought. It becomes a means to some end as we learn to laugh in response to situations defined as humorous for us, usually for some cultural purpose. Humor, then, is valued not for what it might contribute to our understanding of paradox, but what it might contribute to the culture. As a cultural commodity, humor trivializes without tran- scending; it points us to faults in people but not to faith in God.

 

The Power of Paradox

A paradox is a truth standing on its head and wriggling its legs, trying to get our attention. —G. K. Chesterton

e are creatures of habit. We like to organize our lives about Wuniform patterns that provide stability. Many find a day with nothing on their calendars to be somewhat threatening as well as inviting. We need the kind of predictability that comes from knowing friends will keep luncheon dates or that urgent mail will arrive on time. Friends who share our views on the world are usually our best friends and we’re uncomfortable when they change their views. Quite simply, because we are social creatures we like stability and predictability in our lives. However, uniformity and predictability are not inherent characteristics of the social world. In fact, we find that world seems to be increasingly open to new interpretations of life and how it is to be lived. Gender gaps, generation gaps, and knowledge gaps are merely the more obvious social discontinuities we find about us. Rapid social changes produce more complex meanings that compete for our attention. How should we respond to new technology? What new types of insurance do we really need? At the same time, we change our jobs and social circles. What had been desirable is often no longer acceptable in a new group. Life, it seems, is full of contradictions and uncertainties. The obvious approach to the problem is to resist such change, to wrap oneself in the familiar and avoid potentially contaminating interests. However, we know that is not a realistic view. We cannot escape progress in the real world. Even if we could, other apparent contradictions would challenge our understanding: the first shall be last and the meek shall

 From Faith to Fun inherit the earth. Such ideas fall outside our daily experiences so they seem unreal, and everyday life becomes the only reality for us. We want to experience the real as singular, unified, and comprehensible, while the unreal comes to us as complex, fragmented, and incomprehensible. We seem chained to what seems real and challenged by what seems to be unreal. Think of two drawn circles, overlapping and interlocking. One circle is shaded horizontally and the other vertically so the overlapping area becomes a complex, shaded grid. Assume, also, that the circle refers to what we have referred to as “real,” and the grid refers to the “unreal.” Since the circles and the grid represent our daily lives, it is necessary for us to move, daily, among those circles and the grid. Moving in the circles, either we may think vertically or horizontally to make sense of what we experience there. But in the grid, such thinking will not do. We must develop a new way of thought that makes sense of the grid patterns found there. We may take life in the circles seriously because it seems predictable and comprehensible; there are few surprises. Life flows as we’ve experienced it and as we expect it to, either horizontally or vertically, but our experiences in the grid are less certain. They may seem implausible, and even contradictory, as we often experience the opposite of what life would be like in the circles. We need some way of thinking that is not serious and yet explains the inconsistency consistently. Humor offers such a way of thinking that relies on a new interpretation of the unreal we experience; for some reason, we are told, it need not be taken seriously. We may also rely on faith as a new way of taking the unreal seriously if we look beyond the mundane world in which it is found. In either case, we must come to deal with what is often the exact opposite of what we have come to define as serious. Of course, there is never a clear distinction between the serious and the not serious or between the consistent and the inconsistent. Another way of saying this is to suggest there are not clear boundaries between the circles and the grid areas. How does one respond, for example, to the in- fant who does something unexpected and unwelcome while potty training? Is the action to be taken seriously and the child spanked, or does one laugh at the behavior? Clearly, much unspoken social etiquette is involved in making a distinction between the serious and the not serious and then in developing a proper response to the not serious.

 The Power of Paradox THE PROBLEM OF PARADOX Our main concern is with those areas of life which seem problematic because they appear to be inconsistent or unpredictable. Of course, we have strong motivation to move them into a serious mode when we have some personal interest in their solution or they seem particularly threatening. These inconsistencies may come in a variety of forms. They may be ambiguities, ambivalences, paradoxes, contradictions, or some other form of indeterminate behavior, thought, or feeling. For reasons that should become clearer later on, paradoxes and the problems they cause are our primary concern. To simplify the question, we will limit ourselves to three major problems associated with paradoxes. The ﬁrst problem is to decide whether the paradox should be taken seriously or not. Does it fall within the frame of reference of our daily living or does it come from outside of that? Abraham and Sarah faced God’s promise as a paradox that, they believed, was not to be taken seriously. Ludwig Wittgenstein describes the problem this way: What is it like for people not to have the same sense of humor? They do not react properly to each other. It’s as though there were a custom among certain people for one person to throw another a ball that he is supposed to catch and throw back; but some people instead of throwing it back, put it in their pocket.1 Taking something seriously implies responding in a predictable way. In this case, for example, throwing the ball to the other person. Putting the ball in our pocket means we don’t take the action seriously; we don’t play the game according to the rules. Wittgenstein suggests this is no trivial decision when he states “Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world.”2 In German, the phrase looking at the world means “Weltanschauung” or “worldview.” Simply put, whether we take something seriously or not is a cultural question as well as a personal one. If we decide not to take an experience seriously, there is a second problem: do we respond with faith or humor? Here, the question of worldview is more apparent because a response from faith implies acceptance of some form of reality outside of everyday life. There’s another set of rules that we must take seriously and which we trust will “work” in

1. Wittgenstein, Culture and Values, 83. 2. Ibid., 78.

 From Faith to Fun response to faith on our part. A response from humor, however, suggests all of our interpretations of life are limited to reality as we experience it daily. There is no other form of reality we accept. In addition, if we cannot take that reality seriously, we have no choice but to laugh at it. However, that laughter appears as a rejection of another worldview as well as a reflection of mine. This two-fold effect of laughter occurs when a paradox merges two different levels of reality, as it often does. Giving birth to a baby is part of the natural order, but doing it when a woman is past 90 years of age would make the birth a supernatural one. Abraham and Sarah’s laughter not only reflected their view of the natural world and its boundaries, it mocked a supernatural view of the world. A final problem concerning paradox should be raised here because it will return later on. That is the question of whether a paradox should be resolved. Should we be able to explain every paradox or should we learn to live with some? We could suggest that a paradox is like a hangnail; we try to deal with those that bother us. Another approach is to suggest the problem is not the paradox, but the worldviews surrounding it. I doubt that Abraham and Sarah understood how Sarah was able to conceive and give birth at her age. That really wasn’t important. What was vital was that they share God’s point of view that birth was possible, that they play ball according to God’s rules. It was more important that they accept the paradox, and live with it according to the rules, rather than try to explain it.

THE NATURE OF PARADOX Chesterton’s statement points to an important fact about paradoxes: we can’t ignore them. In the context of that statement, Richard Neuhaus explains why: “More pedestrian deﬁnitions of paradox refer to statements that violate received opinion, or an apparent contradiction that contains an important fact . . . [or] is closely related to promise.”3 To ignore a paradox is to cheat ourselves of some opinion, fact, or promise. There is truth in paradox, often profound truth. If we see only the wriggling legs, we miss the truth to be understood. Neuhaus goes on to suggest there is nothing irrational about a paradox. We come to realize there must be some important link between the frivolity of the wriggling legs and the sublimity of the truth to which it points. There must be some reason why it is there, and good sense tells us

3. Neuhaus, The Catholic Moment, 8–9.

 The Power of Paradox we should try to understand that reason. Neuhaus refers to such a paradox as an inescapable paradox, “[which] is the result of the incompleteness of the world in which we reason . . . [and] is directed toward promise.”4 Presumably, this is the kind of paradox Niebuhr referred to as an ultimate incongruity, which required faith. Escapable paradox “is the product of faulty reasoning.”5 We look at the wriggling legs and head and see nothing more; we miss the apparent truth and the wider implications of it. This escapable paradox would be the immediate incongruity Niebuhr referred to that is often met with laughter.

Escapable Paradox Social life is filled with examples of escapable paradoxes. Consider such private vices as drunkenness or drug addiction. Why do people continue behavior that is clearly bad for them? There is something paradoxical when behavior doesn’t agree with understanding. The truth that drunkenness or drug addiction point to is that there is a “public benefit” that results from such behavior; huge sums of money are circulated to encourage people to use drugs and alcohol because the economy benefits from their addictions. Until we get beyond the definition of a private vice and also see it as a public benefit, we don’t understand the nature of the problem or how to approach it. Still, we resist the idea of a private vice as a public benefit. As with most paradoxes, the implicit explanation is threatening. As T. S. Eliot has said: “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.”6 And, yet, the media continue to expand our sense of what is real and unreal. We’re drawn into the worlds of hospitals and police departments and given the impression that events depicted are true to life. Photographic techniques distort reality as we understand it in daily living. Some people accept the depictions in the media as true and believe they reflect reality. Others, however, understand such representations as embellished reality and perceive the differences between Bill Cosby’s living room and our own. While our sense of reality is distorted, we are also often anesthetized to reality itself. Because we “cannot bear very much reality,” we no longer take it as seriously as we might have.

4. Ibid., 23. 5. Ibid. 6. Quoted in Time, October 5, 1992, 35.

 From Faith to Fun However, we should not be too critical of the media, for the problem of unrealistic expectations has always existed. I refer to the fact that certain standards for living are needed in a society. Yet, we know we can’t abide by them. How could we live together if there were not some bed- rock assumption that we could trust one another? The paradox centers on the fact we know that such complete trust is not possible. Consequently, we cannot take the principle too seriously. It needs to be reinterpreted, perhaps even re-invented, every time society offers new ways to sidestep the principle. We don’t always resolve the paradox; we merely move it down to another level where it makes sense again. If such a claim suggests a certain cynicism, so be it. The point is that because the air of faith is too rarefied for most of us to breathe, we prefer to reduce those ultimate incongruities to immediate incongruities that need not be taken seriously. The picture isn’t complete unless we remember that society helps us in the process. It stands to lose something if we take the public benefits of private vices too seriously; public morals themselves could not be taken seriously. To protect itself, society would prefer that paradoxes be eliminated or, at least, that they not be taken seriously. In other words, that is to suggest we want to eliminate the sense of mystery and wonder from daily life. Susan Sontag put it this way: “Whatever is wholly mysterious is at once both psychically relieving and anxiety-provoking.”7 There is a paradox here that is discomforting. With faith and a good dose of patience, we might find the mystery unveiled in the future. However, our immediate concern is our self and the anxiety, even the terror, it finds in the mysterious. In our impatience, along with our disbelief, we mock the mystery with laughter. The point here is too important to miss. I mean to suggest our modern society does not encourage faith as a means to deal with paradox. One must look to other times and places for faith-supporting worldviews. Instead, society provides a worldview of immediacy, one that gives pri- ority to the self and its apparent needs. Such a worldview is somewhat mischievous; it puts the ball in the pocket rather than returning it. It is also a worldview that denigrates responsibility and guilt feelings. Humor is the means by which we tell ourselves the awe is not to be taken seriously. Moreover, if there isn’t enough mystery in our world, the media are

7. Quoted in Owens, The Total Image, 55.

 The Power of Paradox always prepared to supply more amazement for our amusement. Humor is simply part of a total worldview offered by society to cope with the mysteries of life. If we think about it, our laughter is more of a generalized response we have learned rather than a specific response to a situation we experience. Faced with an embarrassing situation with another person, we’re inclined to laugh; this is not because the situation is necessarily funny, but because we hope our laughter will define the embarrassment as not serious. Remember, we prefer to interact with others on a principle of predictability; we believe our laughter will cause the other to laugh as well and the threat of embarrassment will be dissipated. Our humor comes from the worldview we have learned from our culture, not from the situation itself. In other words, humor is socially useful. Assuming that is the case, what is the problem? In one sense, there isn’t any. Humor keeps us from taking seriously those things that should not be taken seriously. As Wallace Chafe has noted, “humor is the safety valve that saves us from the consequences of our natural reason when it would get us into trouble.”8 There is a therapeutic quality to humor that anesthetizes us to the trivialities of everyday life. Having said that, it should also be noted that humor is a diversion; “while you are laughing, you cannot do anything else.”9 Furthermore, we enjoy that diversion and prefer to remain with it. “While in the humor state you can’t act effectively, and you like it.”10 In this sense, humor could be referred to as a “disabling mechanism.”11 A paradoxical quality of humor, then, is that it enables as it disables. Humor disables by keeping us from taking seriously those things that should be taken seriously. In addition, if there is to be personal growth and understanding, if faith is to challenge and mature, then paradox should be taken seriously. Unlike humor, which disengages from paradox to serve social and therapeutic functions, faith engages paradox and is thereby confirmed. Society may favor a worldview of humor for responding to paradox, but religion offers faith as an alternative.

8. Chafe, “Humor as a Disabling Mechanism,” 18. 9. Ibid., 20. 10. Ibid., 21. 11. Ibid.

 From Faith to Fun Inescapable Paradox Henri de Lubac describes paradox in this way: Paradox is the reverse of what would, properly perceived, be synthesis. Nevertheless, the proper view always eludes us. Each of us contributes by his existence to the weaving of a wonderful tapestry but it cannot yet be comprised entirely within our range of vision. In the ﬁeld of facts as of spirit, synthesis can only be sought . . . Paradox is the search or wait for synthesis. It is the provisional expression of a view which remains incomplete, but whose orien- tation is ever towards fullness.12 Lubac claims, “paradoxical truth is not limited to one plane”; it stretches beyond the visibility of space and the bounds of time.13 For that reason, there is no proper view or proper time for paradox. What is important is the faith stimulated by it. The truth of paradox is found in the waiting for the Messiah or for his return. We discover paradox when searching where we would not ordinarily go or by asking questions we would not ordinarily ask. In the incompleteness of the paradox, faith provides the best closure and brings the only synthesis. Society cannot tolerate too much faith. It relies on empirical knowledge and consensus to get its work done. In social situations, it is expected that there will be some closure to problems, some sense of completeness. When paradox presents incomplete information, humor is used to trivialize those problems deemed inconsequential. Only paradoxes considered important are treated with serious intent. The problem in daily life is to resolve a paradox and gain corporate belief and action. But religion is not immune to this problem. It, too, must be able to translate individual faith into action that is consistent with the belief. Commenting on the problems of paradox in religion, Robert Wuthnow refers to the work of Northrop Frye and the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann.14 Frye, especially, notes how biblical discourse has a double responsibility; it is to give an accurate historic story while also presenting some speciﬁc sacred truths about society. There is a certain paradoxical quality, then, to biblical discourse as it functions on these two planes. Another way of stating this is to suggest “religious discourse revolves

12. de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith, 9. 13. Ibid., 11. 14. Wuthnow, Rediscovering the Sacred, 64 ﬀ.

 The Power of Paradox around itself.”15 There is a centripetal quality that refers back to the literal meaning of a text as well as a centrifugal quality suggesting the various religious interpretations the text might have for us. Students of scripture tend to favor one extreme of the continuum while others favor the other extreme. Some stress the more limited, literal interpretation of scripture while others favor the more open, creative interpretations that are possible. Frye believes something is lost with such polar thinking. There is an inherent paradoxical quality in religious discourse that “invariably draws the practitioner toward additional levels of meaning.”16 For that reason, faith cannot be reduced to simple systems of belief. Doing that prevents the waters of paradox from trickling down to nourish faith. Wuthnow refers to the work of Luhmann to expand on Frye’s con- clusions. Since paradox is inherent in any religious system, paradox cannot be resolved by reducing it to a lower plane of meaning; our doctrines do not solve the paradoxes encountered by our faith. Although there is a need to resolve the paradox so we “believe,” there must always be the recognition of those ambiguities that cause us to “doubt” so that our faith will continue to be challenged. Wuthnow states it this way: Any concrete religious symbol system or organization is thus in- evitably precarious. It exists as a form that resolves ambiguity, and yet this form must always grant the reality of ambiguity. Religious systems therefore undergo nearly continuous transformations, both altering their social contexts and being altered by them. They are endangered by their own successes, resolving paradox to their long-term detriment and necessitating new conceptions of paradox itself.17 There is an underlying and critical point here that must not be over- looked. Our desire to resolve paradox is based on the assumption that such resolution is necessary if paradox is to teach us anything about life. We believe the ultimate to be paradoxical but life as we live it isn’t. If we are to learn anything from faith that we can use, we believe it must be sim- pliﬁed for our consumption. Luhmann would claim that nothing could be farther from the truth. Paradoxes are self-referential; “a paradoxical

15. Ibid., 66. 16. Ibid., 68. 17. Ibid., 94.

 From Faith to Fun quality in religious discourse . . . imitates the paradoxical character of life in general.”18 To put it another way, “social life . . . has a religious quality.”19

RELIGION AND PARADOX We cannot easily remove ourselves from ensnaring paradoxes. Luhmann believes we deparadoxize paradoxes when we try to make them readily accessible and comprehensible. We reduce them to social forms, which we believe describe the reality of the paradox. Doctrinal statements, for example, attempt to deparadoxize the paradoxes inherent in faith. In fact, they don’t. Doctrines do keep us from looking for other explanations for faith. But those doctrinal statements carry their own implicit paradoxes that remain hidden if not questioned. As doctrine is taken for granted, much of the faith it referred to is distorted or lost. Another way of stating the problem is that faith loses much of its meaning as it is deparadoxized by doctrine. But if life has a religious quality, there must be some place for faith in everyday life. Faith must be able to be applied to immediate incongruities as well as ultimate incongruities. Religious forms may explain how the ultimate may become immediate or how God may become man, but the question remains, “How can this be?” With language, we interpret the paradox as we understand it. We try to deparadoxize the paradox that exists outside opinion by giving our opinion on it.20 Employing the religious forms of doctrine and biblical hermeneutics, we try to gain some consensus on the meaning of the Word. Nonetheless, we know that some will always disagree with our interpretation. In this case, deparadoxiﬁca- tion has the potential for heresy and dissension. It is also possible that others will never understand our interpretation; they may be illiterate. In the Middle Ages, statues and stained glass images were used to interpret the Bible for peasants. However, images are never mysterious and lack the capacity to capture ultimate meanings. As Jacques Ellul puts it: “The image is nonparadoxical, since it is always in conformity with the doxa [opinion].”21 Stated diﬀerently, images may gain agreement but they do not provide truth. Images, like humor, cannot de-

18. Ibid., 68. 19. Luhmann, “Society, Meaning, Religion—Based on Self-Reference,” 8. 20. See, for example, Ellul, The Humiliation of the Word, 22 ﬀ. 21. Ibid., p. 26.

 The Power of Paradox paradoxize the paradoxes found in religion. They gain consensus among the peasants that the images agree with the point of view presented by the priests. In the same way, laughter gains consensus among those who share the point of view that a particular joke is, indeed, funny. Illiteracy, in this case, is not so much a matter of ignorance of the language, as much as it is ignorance of the meaning of the language—a meaning that is best interpreted by faith. There is another question of paradox discussed by Luhmann that should be noted here before it is developed later. Commenting on the efforts of the church to explain the faith, Luhmann suggests that churches “cultivate counter-mores,” which allow them to be successful. “Religion may have become counter-adaptive, and this may be the very reason for its survival and for its recurrent revival as well. The Church itself, by now, may have become a carnival; i.e., the reversal of normal order.”22 This notion of the church as a carnival suggests that humor competes with religion for the interpretation of paradox. When the church is unsuccessful with faith, it turns to the “reversal of normal order.” The church turns to another point of view for deparadoxification—a point of view that doesn’t take the paradox seriously but, rather, mocks it and makes fun of it. The church may then be successful but its message is compromised as a result. It becomes a carnival, a place where the unbelievable may become believ- able and the mysterious become mundane; a place for fun without faith. The idea of a church as a carnival could be threatening for those who take their religion seriously and amusing for those who don’t. Much depends on one’s worldview. In either case, there appears to be a discontinuity; church and carnival don’t seem to fit together. And yet, there is some continuity when one thinks of Mardi Gras and the religious significance it has. Carnival does come from a mixing of pagan and Christian celebration. “Carne vale” means “farewell to flesh.” It is a time for breaking conventions, a time when unusual and unruly behavior is allowed. Since it provides a final opportunity “to live it up” before Lent, carnival would have no meaning without the Easter season. Roy Eckhardt would refer to this paradox as a “divine incongruity,” a “juxtaposition of opposites—a condition that makes possible human laughter . . . [as well as] human faith.”23 Laughter is a response to the

22. Luhmann, 17. 23. Eckhardt, “Divine Incongruity,” 399.

 From Faith to Fun immediate incongruities of carnival, the costumes and the antics of the performers. But carnival should also provoke a response to the ultimate incongruity of Easter, and the Resurrection, which leads to faith. This dialectic of faith and humor produces a “comic distance” from which we may view religious beliefs with greater objectivity. This is quite different from “comic rejection,” which elevates humor to a place that denies access to faith or profanes it with laughter.24 Carnival is one example of a synthesis of the sacred and the secular, the divine and the profane. In that sense alone, carnival produces a paradox that defies our understanding. Like all paradoxes, there are two different levels of meaning, two realities that merge in an unpredictable and incomprehensible fashion. Indeed, unless we have some context for locating its meaning, some comparable experience or situation, we are not inclined to recognize either the problems or the potential to be found in the paradox. How we approach the paradox will largely depend on the cultural resources or worldview we bring to it.

CULTURE AND PARADOX I think it’s safe to say that modern culture oﬀers very little insight into paradox simply because paradox is too inconsistent with the logical, rational thought system we traditionally rely on. It was not always so. The Greeks used the word “paradoxon” to refer to some experience “beyond or apart from opinion or belief or supposition.”25 That was one of those great “hinge times” in history when the Greeks attempted to organize much of the new understanding of the world they were gathering.26 Another such time was the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when the major shift in thought from religion to science led to an increasing awareness of the complexity of the world. The last period was during the late nineteenth century, when high interest in paradox extended into music and literature, as exempliﬁed by the works of Gilbert and Sullivan and Lewis Carroll. While paradoxes might be ubiquitous, it is the cultural context with its accompanying worldview that makes them apparent and important.

24. See Hyers, Holy Laughter, Ch. 1. 25. Fry, “Humor and Paradox,” 42–71. Fry oﬀers in this brief article one of the most reliable and comprehensive statements on the subject. 26. Ibid., 44. Hinge times refer to a period of transition in history from one way of thinking to another. Paradoxes are of less interest in static times when accepted paradigms dominate intellectual inquiry.

 The Power of Paradox William Fry shares the opinion that we live in a culture that does not place much emphasis on paradox, even though paradox is all about us.27 We tend to be one-dimensional in viewpoint, seeing what we refer to as progress without noting the negative side effects. Fry quotes Pope John Paul II: “It seems a paradox. The closer one gets to the summit of technical progress, the more damage is done to the roots of life.”28 Indeed, paradox is ubiquitous in everyday life but unnoticed. Paradox is no longer found only in the discontinuities between the sacred and the secular. Increasingly, we find contradictions in the routine gaps of life, in those mundane moments when we realize things no longer work as they did. Social etiquette decays when technology provides the lubricants for social interaction. Family life is in disarray when traditional continuities in life are strained. Honest evaluation of such incongruities is often threatening and best left undone. Fry claims that the paradoxes being found in contemporary science are rightly described under “chaos theory.”29 As these paradoxes are studied, it is found that new contradictions continue to unfold, suggesting that final answers are not to be found. Consequently, few of these paradoxes are being resolved and most remain unstudied. Indeed, one wonders whether such paradoxes could be taken seriously. In another time, at another place, these serious problems in science could be laughed at; they were the object of humor. But we don’t. Chaos in the natural world remains a problem unless we accept it as a part of reality, a paradox of the unreal becoming real. With considerable insight, Fry suggests the relationships among things and people will increasingly give rise to paradoxes in the future. In the past, physical dimensions such as space and time overlapped to produce paradoxes. Now we are more concerned how things and people are or are not related to each other. In human experience, social changes influence, if not determine, changes in relationships. Fry’s words have proven to be prophetic. The simple division of marital status into single, married, divorced, and widowed has been subdivided into a variety of new dimensions that overlap and add to the complexity of relationships.

27. Ibid., 51–55. 28. Ibid., 52. 29. Ibid., 55.

 From Faith to Fun If these complications were not so diﬃcult, even painful or tragic, they could be humorous.

HUMOR AND PARADOX Consider some of the types of traditionally marginal, aberrant relations among people in a normal day: a child teaching a father math, young children at home alone, or women working on road crews. Latent paradox—if we care to see it—exists in all such situations. Multiply those by the actual personal encounters we have during a day and one can see the truth of Fry’s claim that “paradox slips into our daily lives repeatedly.”30 Such paradoxes have become routine in daily life. If friends are involved, we might discuss a paradox in simple terms, trying to interpret the meaning it has for us. But there is little likelihood that we will explain them.31 More likely, we will not take them seriously and even make them the object of our laughter. The humor surrounding such paradoxes does not usually take the form of belly laughs. As friends, we’re more inclined to stimulate new paradoxes and make them the object of our time together. We put paradoxes into a “playful context of humor,” which tells all concerned that they need not be taken seriously. When a “play frame” is placed about such a paradox, we understand it is outside the bounds of daily life and should not be judged by mundane norms. In eﬀect, any interpretation of the paradox is acceptable as long as the abnormal replaces the normal.32 Another way of referring to the paradox is to claim it is unreal. This reference allows for the replacement of mundane reality with another form of reality, one which is playful as well as escapist and, perhaps, irresponsible. This new reality could be anything stimulated by a fertile imagination—a caricature, a prank, or even a change in language. It becomes acceptable as long as it is seen as part of the play frame surrounding the activity. It is important to note, nevertheless, that reality replacement is

30. Ibid., 56. 31. Ibid., Fry speaks here of self-referent paradoxes as Luhmann does and adds that they are central to the nature of humor. They are paradoxes thought to have been solved until we realize they aren’t. Instead, the paradox is moved to another plane where, once again, it becomes paradoxical. 32. Ibid., 58. Referring to this unreal quality found in the response of humor to paradox, Fry suggests that humor shares in certain ways with drama, dreaming, ecstasy, and hypnosis, all forms of diversionary, escapist behavior.

 The Power of Paradox not merely a response to a play frame—it might create a new frame that is more hilarious and escapist than the first. The rhythm of self-referential humor continues to generate new forms of reality in a cyclical fashion, forms that are always more humorous than the previous ones. It’s important to make two observations here. The first recognizes the importance of humor as a positive way of dealing with paradox in everyday life. Fry refers to the work of George Vaillant who “identified humor as one of the ‘mature coping mechanisms’ available to humans in dealing with challenges of life.”33 Fry goes on to refer to the work of E. T. Eberhart, who recognized the limits and even the dangers of using humor as a coping mechanism. “Coping [by] humor is a valid and essential use of the sense of humor . . . By itself, [however,] it cannot sustain the human spirit. If our humor is limited to laughing at the hopeless, in time, it will become sarcastic, cynical, and destructive.”34 In this context, using a play frame to cope with paradox by replacing one form of reality with another has a self-defeating quality to it. Eberhart’s phrase “in time,” suggests that the benefits of humor and a play frame for activities are temporary. The self-referential quality in humor will move the humor to another, lower form of humor for validation. Eberhart’s phrase “by itself,” suggests that humor and play are not suffi- cient for coping with mundane reality. Other forms of reality replacement are available and could be used. The other observation relates to these other forms of reality replacement, for if the paradox is unreal we might take it seriously as well as not seriously. We could replace it with another form of reality that comes from a “faith frame” rather than a play frame. Fry would seem to agree when he quotes Eberhart: “The sense of humor can also respond to the human condition in ways that celebrate the hope of living. The laughter liberates us from the hopeless, and in some mysterious way gives energy to values essential to our humanity. The sense of humor can laugh at the hopeless, and it can celebrate the hope.”35 Such humor responds to the mystery in paradox rather than to the mundane found there. A response to paradox implies a starting point, some point of view as to how the paradox is to be reconciled. Abraham and Sarah considered

33. Ibid., 57. 34. Ibid., 61. (emphasis added) 35. Ibid.

 From Faith to Fun the mystery in the paradox and laughed; their point of view was from the mundane. The belief in the natural order overruled the supernatural, and they laughed. But with another point of view, it would be just as possible for the supernatural to dominate the natural. Conrad Hyers makes the point well as he writes of the comic spirit in “Easter Hilarity.”36 There is a paradox when God’s eternal plans clash with human sin at the cruciﬁxion. The result is not tragedy but victory in the Resurrection, a victory that could provoke laughter in the believer. This is the humor of hoping, not of coping. Paradox is not necessarily disorderly or contradictory. We laugh when we see the latent order that is there and understand the purpose in the paradox. Humor, then, provides a solution, not a problem. For that reason, paradox, rightly perceived, may be aﬃrming; it allows us to hope or to cope. Culturally, as well as individually, we want to know what has not been known or comprehended. We want to move on in our understanding, to progress in our knowledge of the world and our place in it. There is the possibility that we are wrong, though, that we think we know, but we don’t. In that possibility, there is another paradox.

FROM PARADOX TO CHAOS Much of our modern culture has followed what has been called a “flight from ambiguity.”37 We have tried to avoid the vague and uncertain and search for the clear and certain. But times have changed as we’ve learned things don’t work as they used to. Not only in science, but also in society as a whole, we have had to accept a complexity that, earlier, would have been unacceptable. As Marshall Berman phrases it: To be modern . . . is to experience personal and social life as a mael- strom, to find one’s world and oneself in perpetual disintegration and renewal, trouble and anguish, ambiguity and contradiction: to be part of a universe in which all that is solid melts into air.38 To put it differently, the abnormal in life has now become normal. We’re speaking of a new kind of discontinuity, one that differs from what we experienced in the past. Layers of complexity have been multi-

36. Hyers, And God Created Laughter, Ch. 2. 37. Levine, The Flight from Ambiguity. 38. Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, 345.

 The Power of Paradox plied and juxtaposed in ways that defy our understanding and control. We have found that one paradox leads to another until our traditional conceptions of reality itself are inadequate or faulty. Chaos is the term now given to this puzzling phenomenon. Some see chaos as the breakdown of our human capacity to understand the world unfolding before us. Others see it as a new form of reality that has only been revealed with computers. For them, “chaos is order without predictability.”39 The implication of this statement is that chaos is part of another reality, one that transcends human understanding but is also true. Margaret Wheatley refers to one scientist who has apparently come to this conclusion: “Whenever you can hear laughter and somebody saying, ‘But that’s preposterous!’—you can tell that things are going well and that something probably worth looking at has begun to happen in the lab.”40 Science has always recognized the benefits of serendipity in experimentation. However, good science was more often seen as thorough experimentation with good control of variables and a clear statement of hypotheses to be tested. If these traditional notions of science have not been discarded, for many, at least, they no longer claim the authority they once had. Rather than organizing things to find order, there is some reason to believe that we should disorganize to find another kind of order. There is, of course, a profound paradox in this new theory of chaos. The idea that order may be found in disorder is challenging. Indeed, we must decide how we are to look at this paradox. We could remain with the traditional position that orderliness is the standard for science and life. Notions of chaos and the value of disorderliness may have merit but they need not be taken seriously unless they lead to orderliness. We could also take the radical position and eschew orderliness as an incomplete, perhaps even inaccurate, basis for understanding. Accepting the chaos paradigm, we could accept only the kind of “orderliness” found in disorder as valid. Indeed, it could be that “a life of swirling chaos can be fun.”41 There is some merit to this view that we should enjoy what baffles us. It produces an escapist mentality that denies the serious implications of chaos and focuses on the bafflement itself. Consequently, we come to accept the orderly as disorderly and the disorderly as orderly. How else

39. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science, 23. 40. Ibid., 142. 41. A claim made in Utne Reader, (January/February, 1994), 68–69.

 From Faith to Fun can we explain a manufacturer of paper towels who produces a TV ad in which a mother and son laughingly engage in a water fight inside a kitchen that, of course, must be cleaned up with paper towels? There is no humor here if traditional values of parental authority are accepted. Laughter comes only when those values are reversed in meaning and parent and child are seen as equals. We escape the seriousness of those traditional values and accept new values that are intended to sell paper towels; it’s good for mother and son to have a water fight in the kitchen. At the very least, traditional views of what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior in a kitchen are questioned and we’re left with a sense of uncertainty about reversed meanings and values. Indeed, we’re left with a sense of chaos. Another approach to chaos is to take it seriously and to understand it as part of a larger order. This view accepts transcendence instead of trivialization, seeing reality as something that transcends our familiar perspective on life. Some say we contribute to these new forms of reality as we participate in them, shifting physical and social components in new and creative ways. Others suggest there is something more fundamental in chaos, something having to do with our conception of reality itself. The British astronomer James Jeans reflected this thinking when he said: “The universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a machine.”42 This view by an esteemed scientist cannot be lightly dismissed. It suggests that apparent chaos is more of a spiritual question than a scientific one. Nor is it the result of human failure or invention. Walter Hobbs suggests “chaos was part of the created order ‘in the beginning’ and did not derive from the Fall.”43 In fact, chaos theory shows consistency between scripture and physical science’s interpretation of creation. Hobbs believes that there is “a large cache of data which seems increasingly to insist that the universe comprises order and disorder in connected, though not predictable, processes.”

CONCLUSION Certainly, paradox is a complex and increasingly abstruse topic, but paradoxes can’t be ignored. Largely depending on our worldview, we take them seriously and try to understand them or we trivialize them. Our decision

42. Quoted in Wheatley, 32. 43. Hobbs, “Biblical Faith, Chaos Theory, Social Science and Postmodernism,” 1.

 The Power of Paradox suggests something of our experience of everyday life. If we take paradox seriously, we imply it is important for us, and we see it, most likely, as part of some larger, encompassing reality as well. It could have spiritual or scientiﬁc meaning for us. But if we trivialize paradox and try to escape it in everyday life, we deny the reality to be found there. Indeed, we’re likely to construct a new reality, one that ﬁts our escapist mode of thinking. As we shall see in the next chapter, humor feeds on paradox and delights in it. As paradox increases, so does our interest in the humor accompanying it. Unlike those times when there was high interest in paradox, however, we have become more interested in the humor accompanying it. We’re more likely to laugh with someone than at a paradox. Humor has a social value; it is something to be shared with others. We consume it and measure it like any other product. Paradoxically, humor has become a serious business.

 

The Technique of Humor

Laughter is, above all, a corrective. —Henri Bergson

Humor . . . is often the best guide to changing perceptions. —Marshall McLuhan

houghts of humor bring a quick association with laughter, with Tguﬀaws and general merriment. We think of humor as a spontaneous response to some amusing stimulus, some prank, story, or experience. To be in a “good humor” implies, in addition, a sense of enjoyment or general good feelings. For these reasons, humor is generally seen as a good quality for people and societies to have. Indeed, in our culture, social acceptability often means that one has a good sense of humor that will contribute to the group’s welfare.

GOOD HUMOR But what is a good sense of humor? Originally, it would have meant having a frame of mind which saw everything in balance. There was a harmony in the world and it was good; people had a sense of well-being about themselves and everything surrounding them. Unfortunately, these good feelings don’t last. Something disrupts them and produces disharmony as everything falls into disarray. Ideally, things should be brought back to some sense of good humor. Bergson’s use of the word “corrective” suggests that laughter returns this disharmony to a state of healthy balance.1 But that sense of harmony cannot be maintained, and again, the cycle repeats itself. In this process, we often ﬁnd amusement as we meditate or muse on

1. Quoted in Raskin, Semantic Mechanisms of Humor, 17.

 The Technique of Humor the changing pattern of stability and instability. There is some diversion from the routines of life as we try to maintain the healthy social conditions we need. Used as a verb, “to humor” means “to adjust to” or “to fit in” with something. We “humor” a person when we allow him or her to have his or her own way to keep a good relationship. We try to keep them in a good frame of mind. In many situations, there is little difficulty in gaining and maintaining a good humor. Circumstances are calm and everyone is congenial. Good humor becomes problematic when the right conditions do not exist. Maintaining a good humor under such circumstances seems inconsistent or contradictory. Indeed, there is something paradoxical when a sense of happiness and good morale prevails in a team that has just lost a crucial game. It is also difficult to explain a person’s joy after the experience of some great loss. In short, it is not always easy to explain good humor in the conditions in which it occurs. In a religious context, one explanation for a paradox is faith. What seems paradoxical in a situation does not seem paradoxical when faith is used to understand it. In the case of Abraham and Sarah, good humor also implies a willingness to fit into God’s plan. Their faith allows them to let God have his way with them. In a more social context, fellowship or friendship may mitigate paradox by encouraging good humor in spite of social contradictions or ambiguities. Our desire for sociability moti- vates us to resolve the paradox in some fashion acceptable to the group or person. Finally, a good humor may be gained with frivolity. When all else fails—when faith, fellowship, or friendship seem inappropriate or impossible to achieve—we may dismiss the paradox with laughter, much as Sarah did. With merriment, we apply a light touch to puzzling situations and negate the apparent inconsistency in them. In such situations, laughter becomes the means by which we correct the problem. There is nothing in a situation or condition that necessarily makes it laughable. Someone falling off a horse may seem funny to others but not to the fallen rider. Behind every laugh is some attitude or set of values brought to a situation that makes it humorous. Wittgenstein, remember, referred to this as a worldvew. It is this cultural element, this point of view, that is so important in understanding humor. Indeed, what we laugh at could be far less important than why we laugh at it. We may laugh at something because we gain some greater insight into it as Sarah did. This insight comes when a paradox which was in-

 From Faith to Fun comprehensible suddenly makes sense. We’re amused by ignorance which suddenly becomes knowledge or by the unknown which becomes known. Such revelations contribute to the balance in life that gives us a good feeling. We might also laugh at something that seems silly or inconsistent with our experiences, as Abraham did. And since we’re more likely to be amused at an unbalanced situation rather than one that is balanced, we seek laughter by creating situations that are unusual, extraordinary, or what we would call “funny.” Humor in life comes when we consciously, or unconsciously, experience the unexpected instead of the expected. Of these two points of view, I suppose the latter is more popular in our culture. We do enjoy times of joyful revelation, and we delight in those harmonious experiences which we traditionally described as good humor. But the meaning of such experiences is not always able to be shared with others, often because we don’t understand it ourselves. Also, much appeal is lost as experiences are routinized and predictable. Having seen one Fourth of July parade, we know the same music will be played next year and cheerleaders will wear the same costumes. What we want now are those new “Ah-ha” experiences which defy our use of language or explanation. Increasingly, we are more likely to be amused at situations which unbalance the routines of everyday life, those conditions which arouse us by being odd or different. Generally, we want new conditions that provide novelty and distraction. The music should have a modern beat to it and the cheerleaders should be more provocative. And because these conditions might be somewhat deviant as well as different, we want to share them with others to gain their approval. Knowing what people want and will buy, the culture readily provides that which will stimulate an atmosphere in which good humor will flourish.

Humor as Technique Once we accept the idea that humor relies on a point of view for its success, we can consider the notion that humor may be a technique—“any complex of standardized means for attaining a predetermined result.”2 Consciously, or more likely unconsciously, humor may be used to attain some objective sought by those sharing that worldview. For some, this may mean sharing insights gained from some joyful experience. For oth-

2. This deﬁnition is given by Robert Merton in his Foreword to Ellul,The Technological Society, VI.

 The Technique of Humor ers, it could mean using humor as a means of escape and diversion from the mundane. It could also mean using laughter to deprecate one group in order to elevate another. Like any technique, humor works to accomplish a variety of social purposes. We have all been at parties which seem to become dull. Someone suggests playing a game or singing a song to liven things up. The person is in a good humor and wants that feeling to be shared by the others. For a while, there is a new light-hearted spirit until that, too, becomes old. Someone else then suggests a different activity, perhaps something a bit more loud or active, but always out of balance and humorous. In this way, humor becomes a technique or means for everyone having a good time at the party. In a broader sense, they are exploring the meaning of good humor and attempting to capture the essence of enjoyment and pleasure. Shifting the pattern for gaining that humor becomes the means toward the end. Rarely, however, does the group ask the question: “Are we having a good time?” The assumption is simply made. However, as Wittgenstein reminds us, there may be someone who has a different point of view, someone who would rather do puzzles than play charades. It would be assumed, of course, that that person doesn’t have a good sense of humor or doesn’t fit into the group well. He or she might even be considered anti- social. One must share the point of view of the group if one is to share in the good humor to be found there. As a technique, humor does more than create a sense of well-being and light-heartedness. Paradoxically, humor may create a spirit of ill-will as well as a spirit of good-will. These negative consequences of humor are generally unrecognized as well as unintended. Used intentionally, humor may become a technique to define group boundaries. In his work on ethnic humor, Christie Davies suggests that all ethnic groups have both social and moral boundaries that define the members of the group and the behaviors acceptable for them.3 Humor is used to explore these boundaries, to include persons whom are acceptable to the groups, and to exclude those whom are not. Ethnic jokes are useful when they mock groups that are ambiguous or marginal to the dominant group, thus clarifying and sharpening that group’s sense of moral esteem. Humor may become the means by which we assure ourselves that we will avoid those qualities laughed at by others.

3. Davies, “Ethnic Jokes, Moral Values and Social Boundaries,” 383–401.

 From Faith to Fun Humor tends to flow toward contradictory social situations that need clarification. It is especially useful for analyzing, in a covert manner, those situations not generally discussed in polite conversation. The “in” joke is reserved for a group which has established a clear consensus on the topic. Members of the Ku Klux Klan, for instance, could openly joke and speak in racist tones about a black community. In a mixed setting, more care would be taken to use jokes with punch lines left open for interpretation. There could always be some question about the intent of the joke, whether it is to be taken seriously or not. It is in mixed groups, then, that we are more likely to find humor that is paradoxical, while we are more likely to find consensus building humor in homogeneous groups.

Humor as Consensus In his analysis of technology, Neil Postman refers to “technologies in repose,” a phrase used by Rudyard Kipling to describe technologies that come in disguise.4 Humor is such a technology as it effectively accomplishes its purpose without being questioned or criticized. Like other less visible technologies Postman refers to, humor questions life as we understand it, shaping it and often redirecting it to new purposes. It critiques old ideas and encourages new values, often in harmless ways, and always with amusement. That’s a tough combination of benefits to beat. However, as Postman suggests, in a technological culture, people “are largely un- aware of both the origins and the effects of their technologies.”5 In the case of humor, we too often see only the positive benefits and not the negative consequences. It is this lack of awareness that is so typical of a culture characterized by “the submission of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology.”6 Postman makes the point that people, as well as their culture, are demeaned as they serve technology. In such a culture there is a “thought-world of Technopoly” that dominates the thought of persons, or even the culture itself. Elsewhere we have referred to such a thought-world as a worldview. As part of this thought-world, humor, like any technology, decides what information or opinions are meaningful and accepts or rejects them. It redefines the moral climate as it experiments—

4. Postman, Technopoly, 138. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., 52.

 The Technique of Humor always in a setting of amusement and entertainment—with new standards of behavior and thought. As with all techniques, there is a final goal. In this case, it is to get a laugh which becomes the final standard of approval. Is this critique of humor too harsh? Perhaps, but the case on the merit of humor is not closed; detractors, as well as supporters, abound. Victor Raskin can say: “For laughter is born out of hatred and hostility . . . at the same time some types of laughter are full of charm and friendliness.”7 If this sounds paradoxical, we must remember that humor, like any technique, is approved of when it works for the purpose intended. Guns, for example, are approved of when they are used to kill animals but not people. Even though autos might be the means by which thousands of people are killed in a year, we certainly favor the benefits they provide. In the same way, humor, as a technique, is viewed in positive rather than negative terms because its effects seem more beneficial than harmful. Humor, as a technique, promotes both physical and psychological well-being. Even in group situations, humor acts as a lubricant for easing social relationships. In her analysis of staff workers in a mental hospital, for example, Rose Laub Coser describes humor as “a means of social- ization—of reconciliation, of affirmation of common values, of teaching and learning, of asking for and giving support, of bridging differences.”8 She also describes the humorist as a disguised aggressor and moralist. Without humor, the tensions among staff members working in a mental hospital would probably be disruptive and counter-productive. For these reasons, I don’t want to remove humor’s halo; it does make a unique and positive contribution to society and individuals. But it is important to remember that humor, as technique, also belongs to the larger cultural whole which Postman refers to as a Technopoly. It is in this larger context that humor influences our thinking the most because it leads to “the idea that technique of any kind can do our thinking for us, which is among the basic principles of Technopoly.”9 The effects of this way of thinking are essentially anti-religion. “Technology deprives us of the social, political, historical, metaphysical, logical, or spiritual bases for knowing what is beyond belief.”10 Putting it more simply, “in a Technopoly

7. Raskin, 11. 8. Coser, “Laughter Among Colleagues,” 83. 9. Postman, Technopoly, 52. 10. Ibid., 58.

 From Faith to Fun there can be no transcendent sense of purpose or meaning, no cultural coherence.”11

Humor as Commodity As a technique, humor does not stand alone. In a Technopoly, techniques work together, reinforcing each other as they come to dominate the cultural scene. Certainly humor has been enhanced by the introduction of motion pictures and television, just as amusement parks had enriched the national desire for entertainment in an earlier time. However, underlying all technology is the marketplace and the contribution techniques make to it. As a technique, humor has an enormous importance for the economy, especially as it works in tandem with other forms of entertainment and the leisure industry. As an invisible technology, humor has a powerful effect not only on the economy, but also on the culture and the individual, as consumer, who finds much of life shaped and directed by the industry that depends on humor. Postman makes a similar claim more bluntly when he notes the belief “that the engine of technological progress worked most efficiently when people are conceived of not as children of God or even as citizens but as consumers—that is to say, as markets.”12 In a Technopoly, then, it is naive to think of humor only in its original form, simply as a corrective for paradox. It has been transformed (some might say deformed) into a commodity, a product that a rich variety of industries depend on for their existence. Humor, like cereal and electronic products, is manufactured, not only for the exploration of paradoxes, but for the enjoyment (some might say manipulation) of persons. The result is a form of totalitarianism which may control people’s thinking, and even their moral options. Worse, the totalitarian quality found in a Technopoly opposes, and ultimately dominates, all competing cultural forms and their associated worldviews simply by making “them invisible and therefore irrelevant.”13 Postman makes the point that, at one time, “two opposing worldviews—the technological and the traditional—coexisted in uneasy

11. Ibid., 63. 12. Ibid., 42. 13. Ibid., 48.

 The Technique of Humor tension.”14 Technopoly, of course, has destroyed this tension and now dominates the cultural scene. Humor needs the thinking of that scene to deﬁne laughable situations and ﬁnds it in cultural forms such as sitcoms, talk shows, and even horror movies. Rarely, though, does our culture view humor as a corrective that returns a situation to traditional notions of harmony or equilibrium. There is little opportunity for the culture to develop the kind of good humor associated with well-being. Rather, the culture sees humor as a technique to generate disequilibrium, the kind of amusement found, by some, in deviant behavior that sells. Consequently, humor creates those new paradoxical situations from the ordinary and shapes them into the extraordinary products needed by the entertainment industry to sell to its consumers. The resulting reciprocal relationship binds humor and culture together into a hegemonic whole.

THE TWO VOICES There is a common belief that everyone needs to stay firmly grounded in the reality they experience while, at the same time, subtly trying to improve on it. We accept the mundane routines of life but periodically want to escape them. Daily living is serious business. If we take it too seriously for too long, however, we lose our perspective on it; we become “burned out.” There is a need to change our thinking, to play with life in new and creative ways. We need to look at the real world in a different way, from some place outside our daily schedule. We need some hope that things can be different. That hope can often be supplied by a variety of activities involving humor, which offers a new way of looking at the world. In his classic study of play, Johan Huizinga describes play as an inherent part of any culture. In all societies, play exists “as a well-defined quality of action which is different from ‘ordinary’ life.”15 Together with seriousness, which is its opposite, play provides a necessary balance for life. When maintained properly, this balance conveys a sense of well-being needed to keep our sense of humor. If we can’t play with life by escaping to other places or activities, we do it mentally with jokes or stories and laughter. Humor, then, becomes the means by which we try to maintain a balance between the two dominant realities of our life; our experience of it and our escape from it, that which is serious and that which is humorous.

14. Ibid. 15. Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 4.

 From Faith to Fun Some people maintain this balance very well and learn to ﬁt com- fortably into the culture. Others lose some of the balance and stress the escape rather than the experience. Think of the Don Quixotes or the Walter Mittys of the world. Their antics make us laugh because they are out of touch with reality; they’re unreal. They appear as fools who have not taken life seriously. Henri Bergson refers to them somewhat whimsi- cally as “runners after the ideal who stumble over realities.”16 But we learn from them; we understand it is important to take life seriously but not too seriously. Playing is important, but not to excess. We could also look at play as a corrective as Bergson did. A correct way of looking at life is to see it as completed with play, a combination of the serious and the playful. There’s something wrong about taking life too seriously and playing helps us to understand that. Humor expands our thinking about something by showing us its limitations. We are freed from easy assumptions about life and learn to see it as more complex and challenging. As a corrective, humor may teach us about life. I want to use these comments about work and play as a basis for stating some principles of humor. First, all humor focuses on two forms of reality, what I refer to here as “two voices.” These voices may be the natural and the supernatural, as in the case of Abraham and Sarah, or experience and escape from it, as illustrated above. They may consist of traditional values and their components or contemporary institutions and their breakdown. The possibilities for arranging and combining these realities are limitless. In each case, there is some paradox or alteration in the system of logic or common sense surrounding those realities. Humor explores the arrangement of these forms of reality to understand the larger truth behind them. A second principle is this: we think of something as funny when one form of reality exposes a weakness in the other. Abraham laughed at God’s promise because it suggested the human understanding of birth was wrong. Later, Sarah realized she had been wrong and laughed at herself because of her ignorance. An important point here should not be missed: laughter as a corrective is not necesarily “correct.” We may perceive an apparent problem, but that is not necessarily the real problem. If we are to understand a situation correctly, as Sarah did, we might have to realize that our initial perception was incorrect. To put it more simply,

16. Quoted in Sypher, Comedy, 69.

 The Technique of Humor humor helps us understand the deeper meaning of the problem—at least, it should. To understand the deeper meaning of the problem is to understand more fully how the various parts of both forms of reality fit with each other. We appreciate the greater complexity of the problem which has been made more clear. This principle implies that humor changes our understanding of the problem, not necessarily the problem itself. To change the problem, it would be necessary to accept the exposed weakness and take it seriously. But taking the problem seriously requires a view other than humor. Bergson provides a third principle when he states “the comic does not exist outside the pale of what is strictly human.”17 This human quality has an elan vital, a sense of life and resiliency that becomes comic when contrasted with anything rigid or mechanical. He uses the example of people laughing at a man who stumbles and falls while running down a street. Falling while running is funny because it is abnormal; it shouldn’t happen in a normal situation. But, it is also a reminder that good runners don’t fall; the abnormal highlights the normal. Let’s assume that instead of watching one man falling in the street we are watching six men in a race on a track. Suddenly, they all begin to stumble and fall as they try to continue to the finish line. We may laugh, but we also know something is wrong. In fact, there is something paradoxical about runners in a race who cannot do what they should be able to do: run a good race. What had been funny now points to a larger problem: why can’t they run as they should? The principle here is that humor may create another paradox as it solves one. We may accept one man falling on the street, but not six men falling on the track. Our sense of reality, of what should be happening, is stretched to the point that it can’t be taken seriously. Let me illustrate some of these principles with a cartoon. The 1988 presidential election underscored some of the problems caused by the polling process, especially as polls were seen as having an influence on voting patterns on the West Coast. The day after the election a cartoon appeared showing two men discussing the election. The one says, “You

17. Ibid., 62.

 From Faith to Fun did your patriotic duty? You mean you voted?” The other replies, “Naw. I responded to a poll.”18 Two voices. Two actions. Two systems of thought. The ﬁrst represents a traditional view of a citizen’s responsibility and the patriotism it suggests. The second hints at another view; public opinion polls have taken the place of elections. It is this second view, the punch line, that points to the weakness of both the election system and the polling system; one is replacing the other. Worse, the meaning of patriotism is changing as well. It’s this essence of patriotism, something that cannot be captured in a mere election process, that raises a broader problem that Bergson would refer to as human. Note, too, that the problem is not readily solved. The old reality of a national election had consisted only of voting. The new reality is more complex; it consists of voting and poll taking together, a more complex combination that is less comprehensible. The punch line points to a weakness in our national elections that should be taken seriously. The humor oﬀers a corrective, but not a solution.

Humor as Solution What is the diﬀerence between a corrective and a solution? Franklin Shaw seems to hint at this when he says, “laughter . . . occurs in response to incongruity and represents a triumph over, rather than submission to the unexpected.”19 Laughter is triumphant when the premise of the punch line is accepted. Our laughter implies we agree that poll taking is becoming equal with voting, that opinion polls are now an integral part of the election process. This is a view we must now accept if we are to have a correct view of the national election process. There is no solution, though, as long as there are problems with this process or a traditional view of elections is not dominant. Shaw uses the apt word “reconciliation” to describe how humor resolves incongruity.20 We bring a certain point of view to the paradox that allows us to make sense of it. Shaw refers to Winston Churchill’s famous speech rallying Britons to ﬁght invaders “on the beaches,” “on the streets,” etc. At this point, Churchill is reported to have said on the side, “And we

18. Mike Uckovich of the Times-Picayune as reprinted in The Chattanooga Times, November 8, 1988. 19. Shaw, “Laughter, Paradigm of Growth,” 151. 20. Ibid.

 The Technique of Humor will hit them over the head with beer bottles for that is all we have.”21 There is no solution here, no remedy for the problem. But Churchill’s point of view does show how a reconciliation is possible with words, if not with weapons. It is a reconciliation that offers hope. If humor were to offer a solution, it would take a situation seriously, but then it wouldn’t be humor. An aide to Churchill might say, “Get real, Winston,” but then there would be no hope. As a corrective, humor wants us to consider the unreal as an alternative to the reality, as a way of freeing ourselves from the real world. If humor cannot completely reconcile the impossible with the possible, if it cannot provide a basis for hope, it may, at least, correct our view that the world must be a serious place. Humor may free us from the real world and offer a world that is somehow not real. It is in that world we learn to cope, and perhaps to hope. Humor as a coping mechanism, then, reverses a normal world, a real world to be taken seriously, and replaces it with an abnormal world, an unreal world that is funny. This use of alternative worlds is a favorite device of cartoonists who use the worlds of children, vikings, or cave- men to interpret life. This is a world outside our normal experiences. As a reflection of that world, as a mirror of the reality we experience, it offers new insights into our world. These insights or “schemas,” as Wallace Chafe prefers to call them, could not be displayed in the real world because they would appear to be unreal there.22 But in an unreal world, they can be played with and interpreted for use in the world we experience. It is in this interpretation process that we learn to cope and to function in the real world. According to Chafe’s idea of “humor as a disabling mechanism,” humor functions “to keep us from taking seriously those things that we ought not to take seriously.”23 Potentially, there is a problem. If humor became a dominant part of the culture, if it offers a plethora of schemas, a person might have difficulty interpreting them for use in his or her life. Indeed, we may learn not to take seriously things that must be taken seriously—responsibilities, for example, as parents or children. When sitcom schemas present unreal approaches to such responsibilities, humor may

21. Ibid., 155. 22. Chafe, “Humor as a Disabling Mechanism,” 17. 23. Ibid., 18.

 From Faith to Fun become counter-productive. In this sense, too, humor may be a disabling mechanism while at other times, it is enabling. Two of my favorite comic strips might illustrate the point. The King of Id awakens on a Sunday morning feeling out of sorts. His aide suggests he might go to church. The King agrees and, standing in front of the church, learns from the bulletin board that the sermon is entitled “The Evils of Greed.” The King’s response: “What’s playing down at the Presbyterian?”24 The dominant theme suggests that people attend church for a moral lesson. The punch line suggests a counter-theme; church is a form of entertainment for some people. However, that is a view that cannot be taken seriously or religion’s credibility would suffer. In the comics, we may accept it. Fuzz (the white lieutenant) and Flap (the Afro-American lieutenant), in the strip Beetle Bailey, are arguing about the neatness of black and white soldiers. Acting as a mediator, the white captain says, “There’s no black and white in this office. As far as I’m concerned, we’re all green.” Fuzz and Flap seem convinced as they leave the office, until the captain yells to them, “And you, the dark-green one, clean up your desk.”25 As much as we would like to think we are not racist, the punch line suggests there is a flaw in this thinking; unconsciously, there is a racist bias in all of us. Humor helps us to understand this so we can deal with it more realistically, and with some humor.

Humor as Reality To this point, we have been discussing the real world as the dominant voice which is contrasted against some new sense of the unreal. It’s been suggested that a major function of humor is to allow us to cope with that real world if we cannot ﬁnd some basis for hope there. But, if humor is very successful, we might not want to return to reality. We might prefer an escapist mode that relieves us of the burdens of the real world. By escaping, we no longer have to hope or cope. In this mode, we may even escape from thinking. This is a theme we’ll have to return to later. One of my favorite ﬁlms,Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, puts us into this mode by juxtaposing a world of humans with a world of Toons. This world

24. Wizard of Id., Brant Parker and Johnny Hart, ﬁeld Enterprises, Inc., August 17, 1975. 25. Beetle Bailey, Mort Walker, King Features Syndicate, December 31, 1978.

 The Technique of Humor of humans and animated characters is not real; it couldn’t possibly exist. Consequently, there is complete freedom for the director to do anything in it, and yet, it is presented as real. Seriousness, as the dominant mode, is assumed for any situation that might occur. But this is not a seriousness we might experience. It is always tempered by the frivolous and blended with the humorous. The result is an experience we can’t take seriously, even though it is presented in that way. For example, there is the marriage between a goofy rabbit and a gorgeous “human” toon. This schema of an unlikely marriage couldn’t exist because they are not human. Yet we are left with the impression that such an unreal marriage could be real. Only when we remember the dominant setting is not real do we conclude this does not describe life. It is all in fun. It is not presented for thought. Humorists play with these forms of reality to help us laugh at the world or to escape from it. The genius of Charlie Chaplin allowed him to be in both worlds at the same time. Yet, unlike Roger Rabbit, both of Chaplin’s worlds seem reasonable and close to our experience of real life. In his dominant character as a tramp, Chaplin showed the contrasting worlds of a gentleman and a lover. Bringing both characters together, the major figure of the tramp and the minor figure of a lover, he provided a measure of hope for the outcast and the desolate. He offers schemas for coping: arranging a New Year’s Eve party for some young women or be- friending a boy. But these schemas are deeply embedded in the real world; they could exist. And if Charlie’s plans don’t work as planned—and they usually don’t—he shows us how to laugh at life’s foibles. If Chaplin allowed his viewers to escape the real world with his tramp’s persona, he brought them back to it with hope. And in the process, he helped them to think. Other humorists worked in pairs to accomplish the same effect. Straight men such as Bud Abbott or Dean Martin offered the dominant voice for the comic, Lou Costello or Jerry Lewis, to oppose. Gracie Allen’s scatter-brained wife played against George Burns’ straight husband, and gave arguments that seemed to work. If her schemas had been offered as real life, they would have seemed nonsensical. But, in a comic sketch, they often made sense. Other comics, like the Marx Brothers, grouped their talents to display a wider variety of schemas. Their satirical style, for instance, effectively pointed to the flaws in the upper class in A Night at the Opera and in politics and patriotism in Duck Soup. The humor offered by other groups such as The Three Stooges was more escapist in intent. It was meant to amuse and entertain and nothing more.

 From Faith to Fun We’ve been describing humor as a way of using an unreal world to interpret life as we live it. Such humor is based on two assumptions: that life as we live it is good and that we want to learn to live it better. Humor is our way of playing with life, of giving it new and different interpretations. It becomes a way for us to learn how to counter-balance the more tedious and routine aspects of life. Increasingly, we find that many people no longer accept those assumptions. For some, society changes so rapidly there is no stable life to refer to; reality is meaningless. Others find little in the life they want to adjust to. They prefer to escape rather than to cope or to hope. In either case, humor begins with the unreal as the dominant voice and a limitless variety of other deviant forms as the secondary voice. Without a meaningful real world to relate to, humor consists of playing one form of unreality against another. If humor allows us to play with the serious world, there will be times when that play will be taken seriously. Michael Flaherty uses the term “reality play” to refer to an “inversion of normative expectations.”26 As an example, he refers to the clown, Emmett Kelly, who, on the circus floor, would use a broom to sweep spots of light together. Action like this could not be taken seriously in such a setting. But performed in a kitchen, one could only conclude the person was either insane or having fun. Sweeping spots of light together is not a schema to be transferred to the real world. Children, of course, play in such an unreal world all the time. Much of that play, such as playing house or school, is meant to simulate the real world and encourage children’s adjustment to it. Other play, such as jumping from a roof holding a pillow case as a parachute, could have tragic consequences. But such incidents are not limited to children. There was the recent case of a 19 year old woman working in a minimum salary job who ran up a $40,000 debt in credit card charges. I use this illustration to make a very specific point; our culture does not always provide us with a very realistic picture of ourselves or the world we live in. Rather, it encourages us to hope that the unreal will become real or the abnormal become normal. In such cases, the hope that culture produces may be false hope. How else can we explain the thinking of most people who gamble in state lotteries. Those persons who rely on false hope usually live on the fringes of society. Unfortunately, our culture often feeds their sense of the unreal by

26. Flaherty, “A Formal Approach to the Study of Amusement,” 76.

 The Technique of Humor offering settings that stimulate their imagination. The type of humor found in horror movies—a genre now appropriately named horror humor—is an example. Humor provides a means of escape into another world that is unrealistic. But escape comes close enough to their life experiences that humor offers more sense than nonsense. When that occurs, horror humor schemas may prove dangerous if used as a means of coping with real life situations. Playing with reality, then, may have real consequences. For this reason, it may be safer to play with language that represents the reality we want to play with. Playing with language allows us to test reality and our perception of it before we construct it. We use language play to experi- ment with situations before becoming involved with them. Joan Emerson describes how people use humor to test the acceptability of taboo topics.27 Conversation among friends, for example, might allow an absent friend to be referred to as a nag. The question is whether the others agree with that definition. By means of jokes and laughter, conversation negotiates the acceptability of the label for the person. If, at the end of the talk, it becomes apparent that the person applying the term was only joking, the label would be dropped. Two other brief examples might clarify the point. The agenda for a business meeting usually represents the dominant view, the one expected to direct the meeting. Some in the meeting may be opposed to the agenda but cannot formally question it. They may suggest, in joking fashion, that it is unrealistic and negotiate, with humor, another agenda for the meeting. In the same way, people negotiate the meaning of work by questioning whether it should be taken seriously on a Friday afternoon. Ordinarily, employees would accept the dominant theme of work in a work setting. Yet, if there should be some reason not to take it seriously—it is a Friday afternoon—they might attempt to negotiate, with humor, a setting of play. In short, humor in a relationship may change that relationship when all accept the humor in that setting. An important point here should not be missed. There is a subversive quality to humor when a critical secondary theme questions some dominant, accepted theme; play is raised as an alternative to work. Joking provides a paradigm for testing whether that subversion will be acceptable. The counter-theme has a punch line which points out the flaw in

27. Emerson, “Negotiating the Serious Import of Humor,” 169–181.

 From Faith to Fun the dominant theme; it is Friday afternoon and, realistically, we know no work will be accomplished.28 Laughter confirms the flaw, mocking and subverting that theme. But nothing is changed in the real world; work may continue, and the formal agenda may be followed. Humor provides the license to re-interpret reality and nothing more. Group consensus is necessary to change the situation being interpreted. In such a situation, a person may not be held responsible for his actions when a group defines it as humorous, as one that is not to be taken seriously.

NEGATIVITY Referring to the subversive potential in humor, we have been describing it in negative terms. Without mitigating that potential, I want to note the positive benefits in subversive humor. Paradoxically, both the positive and the subversive in humor arise in what one commentator refers to as “the spirit of disruption.”29 Harvey Mindess values the freedom found in humor because “we need to become elastic with regard to society’s demands.” 30 For him, such freedom is necessary as it allows for greater personal development. For those who embrace society’s values, the freedom could be more negative. As Wittgenstein would remind us, it all depends on one’s perception of the game’s rules. The positive side of humor is most apparent when it discourages a completely serious approach to life. This is the halo that humor jauntily wears today. Mindess says it well: “[Humor] may not enable us to change reality, but it enables us to endure it. It may not allow us to discard our egos, but it allows us to transcend them.”31 But Mindess holds another view of humor which he describes as providing “humor’s highest, most valuable function.” He claims humor provides a “god’s-eye view of life— the attitude of semi-detachment, of quasi-indifference, of looking down on the affairs of men as from a height.”32 Its this capacity for objectivity, the ability to see the negative as well as the positive qualities in a situation,

28. See Otten, “Punchlines as Paradigms,” 51–53 for development of this concept. 29. Mindess, Laughter and Liberation, 22. 30. Ibid., 41. 31. Ibid., 30. 32. Ibid., 123. Elsewhere, he gives credit to D. H. Monro, Argument of Laughter, for this concept. p. 30.

 The Technique of Humor that enlarges one’s understanding of the truth. Indeed, as Mindess might suggest, it is a transcendent view as well. Rarely do we have such an objective view of our social surroundings. There is too much vested interest in life as it is to be critical of it—at least in serious tones. As a paradigm for life, humor must reverse reality; it must see the opposite side of things which also takes place in everyday life. Humor allows us to be critical, even negative, without being criticized. Humor must be critical if it is to find paradoxes for its playground. Similarly, subversive thinking relies on humor for expression in society. Put quite simply, we can be negative if we do it with humor. But negative humor need not be critical or destructive. A denial of reality with laughter may be positive. For this reason, there is so much potential for healing in humor. Those with serious ailments may find laughter provides considerable help for the sickness as well as for the spirit. It is also true, however, that a comic spirit can be a useful palliative for groups. The reality of a group problem may be quickly denied when laughter undermines the seriousness of the problem. Intentionally or not, the implicit unpleasantness of the problem is denied or at least portrayed as superficial. David Gross claims there is a cultural element underlying this decision not to take “the under-side of life” seriously.33 “Underneath the facade, in the interstices of social life and in the hidden spaces still considered taboo, one can often find the key tounderstanding the official world of surfaces.”34 This key is the tendency to compartmentalize life, to set aside, in simplistic fashion, the good from the evil or the sane from the insane. Gross claims this desire to see the abnormal, as absolutely opposed to the normal, defines this “other” as inferior and not worthy of serious consideration. To accept the negative as linked with the positive, or even implicit, in it would highlight the contradiction, indeed the paradox, to be found there. Humor accepts and plays with this contradiction which ordinarily would be socially unacceptable.35

33. Gross, “Culture and Negativity,” 127–132. 34. Ibid., 127. 35. Gross oﬀers an insight on the relationship of the positive and the negative that helps to explain why there is a general tendency to ignore negativity when it is linked with the positive. “This may be the essence of genius: to see connections where others see none.” Ibid.

 From Faith to Fun Only by seeing the oneness of the normal and the abnormal, the positive and the negative, can we understand the totality more fully. As Gross states, each deviant form of culture “not only accurately reflects the whole . . . but also provides a critique of the very culture which rejects it.”36 It is that counter-theme, the comic playing against the straight man or the fool mocking the king, that helps us to understand the whole. While the deviant, the foolish, or the critical may produce humor with laughter, it may also produce wisdom with thought. Gross illustrates his argument for the positive qualities in humor with an insightful analysis of the carnival, those now whimsical travel- ing assemblages of curious human types and purveyors of questionable games of chance. He claims that medieval fairs and troupes of entertain- ers, as precursors of the modern carnival, introduced a sense of “negativity and otherness” into an otherwise drab and mundane world. The carnival, as well as those fairs, provided an “occasion for the suspension of ordinary rules of behavior.”37 In that suspension, good humor prevails. If taken seriously, the carnival would reflect a side of society not usually acknowledged. Seen as an opportunity for escape, for fun, the carnival contributes to—if not confirms—society’s distorted perception of itself. As Gross puts it, “the net result is that carnival life as a critique of the established reality appears absurd if not laughable.”38 It was not always this way. In a pre-industrial setting, Gross claims, the carnival provided the potential for “real negation”; a clear and true counter-theme to society because it offered a mirror image of it. This is not the case today. The carnival now appears as an “abstract negativity”; it opposes the façade but not the reality, the symbol but not the thing itself. Quoting Shierry Weber, Gross says, “abstract negation . . . does not negate the whole complex of forces which are concretized in the gesture, object, style.”39 Since the carnival no longer offers a real alternative to society, it “has moved into a further stage of ‘pseudo-negation,’ which is to say, it now represents no negation at all.”40

36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., 129. 38. Ibid., 130. 39. Ibid., 131. 40. Ibid.

 The Technique of Humor Most humor today offers no real negation to society which is too complex, too changeable, for clear definitions of themes. It is also true that society often does not want any real negation; it does not welcome serious criticism. For this reason, humor offers only abstract negation by poking fun at society’s stereotypes and surfaces, but not at the reality beneath them. Consequently, humor is more likely to become a technique for special interest groups rather than a critique of them. This is a theme to be returned to later, for it suggests how humor has become a pervasive cultural technique in our modern world. It is that form of humor we refer to as “fun” that is valued so highly by corporation and comic alike to gain consumer support for some form of commodity or consciousness. In that world, pseudo-negation offers the opportunity to say “No” without meaning it. With laughter, we can mock Brand X and deride presidential comments. Expressed in humor, pseudo-negation allows us to appear serious without being serious.

CONCLUSION There is a sense of reconciliation in Bergson’s description of laughter as a corrective. We can laugh at the comic in others or ourselves and adapt the spirit accompanying the laughter. Winking at the world, we’re more inclined to accept what we find there. Our sense of humor enables us to skate across the ice oblivious to the cracks about us. With a playful and often detached spirit, we can become reconciled to all that is problematic and even disagreeable in society, our friends, and ourselves. As a corrective, humor also offers the possibility of redemption. It encourages us to play with reality so we understand it in new and creative ways. A good sense of humor focuses on the totality, the negative and the positive, and seeks to interpret the contradictions found there. We want to gain new insight into the paradox and rejoice in it. With laughter, we transcend our old ideas and redeem some former meaning that had been lost or unnoticed. Humor, in short, may provide the revelation that leads to redemption without religion Our worldview largely determines whether we see the reconciling or the redeeming qualities in humor. This is not to suggest these views are mutually exclusive; either view is often dependent on sharing something of the other view. But, our viewpoint on humor does influence much of our viewpoint on the world about us. Indeed, it even influences whether

 From Faith to Fun we take that world seriously or not. There are times when it might be best not to ﬁt into a situation. With laughter, we may deny it has important meaning for us. On other occasions, a situation might best be taken seriously. We would prefer not to ﬁnd a resolution to a problem with humor. In many settings, a person who makes such a choice could appear to be a fool—or a prophet.

 

And God Laughed

The devil laughs because God’s world seems senseless to him; the angel laughs with joy because everything in God’s world has meaning. —Milan Kundera

n Psalm , God is pictured as one who laughs at those who oppose IHim. They are rulers who plot to change the world’s order by banding against the Lord and against his Anointed One. United, they believe their power will prevail in the world. But God scoffs at them and rebukes them, for they don’t understand that He rules over his creation. Kings are to serve God, for He has established his son as ruler in the land and will make the ends of the earth his possession. With wisdom, the rulers of the earth are to understand the truth of God’s authority in the land and take refuge in Him. Looking at this Psalm with a god’s-eye view, as Mindess calls it, we can see the humor here. There is something audacious and outrageous in human pretensions when compared to God’s power. In Kundera’s words, “everything in God’s world has meaning,” and it’s laughable to think human efforts can change that meaning. Indeed, it’s paradoxical to reverse the order of things, to place man over God. To see things from God’s point of view requires a wholistic, complete understanding of the world as He has made it. But, as Kundera suggests, there is another worldview, one that sees God’s world as senseless. This is a view that revels in frivolity and finds meaning in chaos. Rejecting God’s order, it establishes its own disorder. The two worldviews and two forms of orderliness are opposed to each other, each with its own interpretation of what is humorous. And yet, in daily life, we need to understand both of these points of view if we are to

 From Faith to Fun have a good sense of humor. Defining humor as “a capacity to appreciate and understand,” Doris Donnelly suggests our sense of humor must deal with “those many puzzling, curious, and mismatched events and occur- rences that permeate the dailiness of existence.”1 In daily life, humor must enable us to cope. But if our god’s-eye view of the world is to be complete, if it is to appreciate and understand as God does, it will also encourage us to hope. A sense of humor should expand our vision beyond the obvious and the mundane. It should move beyond the scientific and the rational when such thinking fails to explain the paradoxes of life. At this point, the “Comic Vision testifies not to the presence of what is seen, but to the as yet unknown or unproven.”2

THE OLD TESTAMENT Kundera’s two worldviews—the one seeing the meaning in God’s world and the other believing it to be senseless—are well summed up in Patrick O’Neill’s conception of a “humor of order” and a “humor of entropy.”3 A humor of order celebrates an orderly view of life and is secure in its traditional norms and standards. As change occurs and outside forces or values threaten that order, humor is used to mock those forces and defend traditional norms while rejecting the disorder represented by the forces of change. Humor, in short, may operate as a powerful cultural technique to maintain the stability of society A humor of entropy represents the changes opposing the orderliness of society. It reﬂects a worldview that parodies the traditional norms it has rejected. In a spirit of normlessness, it rejects the orderliness of a traditional life style. A humor of entropy celebrates disorder and the chaos found there. It is not concerned with how things “really are” in everyday life or what good might be found there. There is a spirit of mischievous- ness—even lawlessness—that seeks to reinterpret the order in society as disorder. In such a worldview, little is taken seriously—at least in the traditional sense. In the Old Testament, God’s viewpoint is the dominant theme. Through his people, He is working for the fulﬁllment of creation and for

1. Donnelly, “Divine Folly,” 390. 2. Harris, “Religious Education and the Comic Vision,” 391. 3. O’Neill, The Comedy of Entropy, 46–53.

 And God Laughed the orderliness planned for it. His humor reflects the humor of order, of stability, and fitting in with God’s plan. People are to celebrate the meaning of that order and to find there the joy God intended for them. But human sinfulness presents another viewpoint, a secondary theme of disorder that tries to disrupt God’s plan. This humor is the humor of entropy. God laughs at such efforts. He mocks attempts to usurp authority from Him or to find freedom from it. From God’s point of view, “the laughable becomes a link with the transcendental, measuring the finite no longer against the equally finite but against the infinite and finding the contrast infinitely ludicrous.”4 O’Neill’s comment is a reminder of the necessary transcendental quality in God’s point of view. What is unreal to us is real to Him. There is a redemptive quality as well, a need to see God’s orderliness as He does and to fulfill it. This is the viewpoint of Sarah, who can say, “God has brought me laughter.” For mankind, the unreal must become real. And if that seems a paradoxical requirement, it is a reminder of the humor to be found there, a humor of wholeness and completeness. The humor of entropy always occurs as well. It is the human point of view that disobeys because it disbelieves. It appears in the laughter of Abraham, who mocks God’s promise to him. It is the viewpoint of the people who met the couriers of Hezekiah commanding them to “return to the Lord” and who “laughed them to scorn.”5 The same scornful laughter was directed at Nehemiah when he began to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.6 This is the viewpoint which, O’Neill claims, increasingly rejects the orderliness of the world as we have known it. Indeed, the humor of entropy, traditionally relegated to the margins of serious discourse, has increasingly impinged on areas where its presence would once have been unthinkable—to the point, indeed, [that it] . . . represents a paradigm change of major significance in the way we see the world around us.7

4. Ibid., 43. 5. 2 Chronicles 30:10. 6. Nehemiah 2:19. 7. Ibid., 13.

 From Faith to Fun Balance in Humor O’Neill’s observation is a major point to be developed in later chapters. Now, we want to return to God’s point of view, especially as it is found in the Old Testament where there is a tension between God’s orderliness and human disobedience, between one sense of reality and another. Repeatedly, we find laughter of derision as God points out the flaw in human thinking which assumes it can challenge God’s order. This can be seen in Psalm 2 or Job 41:29, where God “shall have them in derision” and “laugheth at the shaking of a spear.” Laughter of joy erupts when God’s order is recognized and accepted as real and true. As Bildad says to Job, “[God] will yet fill your mouth with laughter and your lips with shouts of joy.”8 This is laughter of hope which sees the flaw in human thinking and the possible in the seemingly impossible. Humor in the Old Testament provides insight into its basic themes, helping us to understand God’s relations with his people and their response to him. However, it is a humor that must be taken seriously and interpreted in terms of the paradoxes God presents to his people and his ultimate plan for them. Humor is not to be a display of frivolity or playfulness. It is in this spirit that the writer of Ecclesiastes says, “Laughter is foolish. And what does pleasure accomplish.”9 It is the trivial side of laughter that is scorned, not the serious. In The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, the propriety of laughter for the Christian is debated by William of Baskerville and Jorge, the li- brarian of the monastery. William, the hero of this intriguing tale, claims that laughter is proper to humans, that it symbolizes human rationality and may be used to show foolishness in the wicked. As the villain in the story, Jorge holds an opposing view; laughter signals merriment and encourages doubt. The comic world is the reverse of that established by God; it is weakness and foolishness of the flesh. Worse, laughter and comedy become art forms and the object of philosophy. Ultimately, Jorge claims, comedy would encourage “defect, fault, weakness—would induce false scholars to try to redeem the lofty with a diabolical reversal: through the acceptance of the base.”10

8. Job 8:21. 9. Ecclesiastes 2:2. 10. Eco, The Name of the Rose, 578.

 And God Laughed Jorge’s argument has merit; much in God’s creation has been trivialized with humor. But Jorge assumes the humor of entropy will dominate God’s orderly creation. He believes human efforts to reverse this order and laugh at it will, in the long run, replace God’s plan for the world. The comic spirit will be the means by which humans free themselves from God’s authority. Apparently, Jorge lacks faith while trying to be faithful. William is more generous in his view of humor because he doesn’t fear it. There is a need to balance the serious with the humorous. Humor is a means to edifying ends, not an end in itself. “Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh.”11 Humor points out the flaws in truth as people like Jorge see it. Laughter allows us “to free ourselves from insane passion for truth.” At the same time, laughter allows us to look beyond truth, to transcend it, and understand the faith Jorge lacked. There is another way to compare these two views of laughter; Jorge didn’t understand paradox and, perhaps, even feared it. The idea of a world that was the opposite of what God created was nonsensical to him. There was no place for negativity in his thinking. He believed images which are not faithful reproductions of God’s world distort the world and lead to corrupt and blasphemous thought. William, however, accepted paradox as part of God’s world. Negativity, for him, could be a means to understand the truth. He rejected Jorge’s notion that the imagination could not indulge carnal enjoyment. Instead, William believed the imagination was free to play with these inconsistencies and find new, and perhaps richer, meanings in them. A god’s-eye view of the world recognizes these contradictions in the world and attempts to interpret them. It understands the world isn’t perfect and accepts it that way. Human depravity will always be there, and with it, the foolishness and even the sin that Jorge feared. But it is because of such contradictions, such flaws in the social order, that humor can exist. Because of human frailty and disorder, we know something more of God’s perfection and order. What we don’t understand is how to respond to it. Humor, by itself, provides no hope.

11. Ibid., 598.

 From Faith to Fun Transcendence in Humor Referring to the work of Reinhold Niebuhr, Donnelly describes how faith and humor are related. Taking a god’s-eye view, people step back and gain the balance, perspective, and sense of proportion necessary to match up against the incongruities besetting them. In this way . . . humor is a starting point in the life of faith. Religious faith offers the deep insight that the incongruities of life do not need to defeat us. An ultimate victory over powers that seem insurmountable is possible.12 While humor may provide a basis for faith, it is also true that faith is a basis for humor. It offers another reality to consider, one that contradicts that which we accept in everyday life. Put more simply, faith frees us to laugh. This view of faith and humor implies a transcendent perspective on reality, one that requires a belief in what might be considered unreal. God scoffs at kings of the earth in Psalm 2 because he has installed his King, who “will rule them with an iron scepter.” This laughter of derision comes because of God’s knowledge of what He has already done but what is not apparent to people. God sees the latent weakness of the kings, not their apparent strength. While coming at the expense of others, this knowing laughter recognizes God’s provision. Laughter may also be a manifestation of joy when faith expresses thankfulness for this provision. This is the laughter of the virtuous woman, in Proverbs 31:25, who laughs “at the days to come.” In either case, faith completes the humor; it acknowledges God’s order and accepts it as good. However, laughter may also express disbelief, as in the case of Abraham and Sarah. It lacks a god’s-eye view of transcendence and the faith it implies. At the same time, it rejects the notion of paradox. Without belief, there is a limited sense of truth, a one-dimensional sense of reality. In Abraham’s case, he was unable to believe in anything but a natural view of birth. Perhaps that is why William of Baskerville says humor is “to make truth laugh.” Humor is to expand our point of view and show us the contradictions in life, especially those that push us to see things as God does. In short, humor should show us the paradoxes that transcend the realities of everyday life.

12. Donnelly, “Divine Folly,” 391.

 And God Laughed Humor, then, can point us to God’s order and help us to understand how it impinges on our human disorder. Faith focuses on paradoxes and oﬀers hope. It implies sharing God’s laughter as we come to accept his view of the world. Holy laughter, if we could call it that, points to our weaknesses and inherent sinfulness. In Wittgenstein’s view, it plays the game according to God’s rules and expectations. It is then we ﬁnd a redemptive quality in humor. Cultural humor results when we don’t respond to God’s view of the world; we take his expectations and put them in our pocket. Without faith, we focus only on the human order and the contradictions there. Such humor has only social meaning and lacks the spiritual dimension faith may provide. Laughter responds only to the weakness of others and not to the strength of God. Without transcendence, such laughter may become trivialized as it conforms to cultural expectations.

THE NEW TESTAMENT In the Old Testament, God is on stage and actively involved in his Creation. He speaks to his people, warning them, telling them what He will do. His law defines his order and expresses his authority. His laughter is directed at human foibles and pretensions. In the New Testament, God is off-stage, so to speak. It is Jesus, the Son of God, who brings God’s order into human disorder, but it is a covert order that is inconsistent with what people have known. Wherever He goes, Jesus reverses the meaning of things; water is made into wine, and death is changed to life. He is always at the center of contradiction and apparent disorder. People are unsure of who He is or what He is doing. He calls them to faith so they will understand, so they will make much that could arouse laughter. But there is little laughter in the New Testament; you don’t find Jesus sharing jokes with the disciples. Indeed, James tells us to change laughter to mourning.13 The crowd laughs at Jesus for believing a dead child could be raised to life, but this was because they lacked faith, and Jesus apparently promises laughter to those who weep because of faith.14 The humor in the New Testament—and there is much there—calls us to respond with faith, not laughter. There is a transcendent quality to this humor as

13. James 4:9. 14. Mathew 9:24; Mark 5:40; Luke 8:53, 6:21.

 From Faith to Fun it points to another reality, a sense of the ultimate that waits for faith to make it real for the believer. It is this transcendent quality that provides so much of what is unexpected in humor. Frederick Buechner claims that the unforeseeable is the critical element in the comic.15 There is much truth in this claim, especially when we remember that faith completes humor. Faith allows the unforeseeable to be foreseen. We couldn’t expect Jesus to calm the waves or to raise Lazarus from the dead unless we ﬁrst believed these were ridiculous acts. Faith shifts our thinking from a belief that these acts are impossible to the belief that they are possible. Nor could we expect Jesus to challenge the Pharisees unless we understood his mission and believe, through faith, in it. Once we believe and understand that mission, we have faith and take things seriously. Inconsistencies are resolved and paradoxes make sense. If faith doesn’t stretch our vision, if it doesn’t move us into new vistas of the unknown, we lose our sense of the comic and the development of our faith.

The Possibility of Paradox Throughout the New Testament there is a juxtaposition of the foreseen and the unforeseen. We could predict that Jesus would be a concerned guest when the wine ran out at the marriage in Cana, but we could not have expected him to change water into wine. Surely his disciples realized Jesus might make a triumphal entry into Jerusalem, but not riding on a donkey. Peter Berger calls such a discrepancy the essence of the comic spirit.16 The spiritual “unmasks” anything that is pretentious or artiﬁcial by showing the ﬂaw in it. Jesus does this when he shows the people the foolishness of the Pharisees and they respond with laughter or faith. In the New Testament, this discrepancy is “between spirit and all that which is not.” He also unmasks the unbelief of the crowds with miracles of healing. In each case, we gain a new sense of truth, a truth that William of Baskerville would say laughs at folly. There is a dialectic in the unforeseen that leads to the discrepancy which Conrad Hyers calls “the dialectic of the sacred and the comic.”17 He sees this dialectic as an ongoing interchange between the serious cosmos

15. Buechner, Telling the Truth, 57. 16. Hyers, Holy Laughter, 123. 17. Ibid., 208–240.

 And God Laughed and the playful chaos.18 This interchange reveals the relationship between the cosmos and the chaos and the way each, as the negation of the other, also represents something of that other. Standing at the intersection of that dialectic, we have a choice. We might take the cosmic view, and like Jorge, reject anything playful or chaotic. We might, instead, move to the side of chaos and reject anything orderly. In either case, we lose the comic spirit and the dialectic it requires. Reinhold Niebuhr’s analysis of humor and faith leads us into a more discerning view of the problem.19 While both humor and faith deal with the incongruities of life, “humour is concerned with the immediate incongruities of life and faith with the ultimate ones.”20 We laugh at those immediate incongruities but respond with faith to those ultimate incongruities of life that threaten us. The problem is to understand the diﬀerence; when do we laugh and when do we believe? The answer to this question would seem to come from scripture, where “humor manages to resolve incongruities by the discovery of another level of congruity.”21 It is this other “level of congruity,” a transcendental level, that we look for in scripture. It is the reason why paradox becomes a necessary, as well as a possible, element in faith. This is not to say that all paradox is humorous. The contradictory condition called sin in Romans 7, in which Paul doesn’t do the good he would do and does the evil he would not do, certainly is a serious matter. While we might chuckle at some of the paradoxical experiences of daily life, ultimately we must take them seriously. Faith makes that seriousness possible. The Romans 7 passage makes us aware of the personal dimension of sin. There is a tension there that cannot be clearly resolved. Daily, we know we do what we don’t want to do and don’t do what we want to do. But the reality of this condition, once we are sensitized to it, may become so burdensome that we don’t take it seriously. We want to escape it, or at least, learn to cope and let it go at that. Niebuhr’s approach—to resolve the incongruity by raising it to another level of congruity—returns us to faith as a resolution of the paradox; we learn to hope instead of to cope. But we need to deal with the reality of sin on both levels; we need to cope with

18. Ibid., 214. 19. Ibid., 134–149. 20. Ibid., 135. 21. Ibid.

 From Faith to Fun the sin in others by laughing and to hope for redemption from the sin in ourselves by believing. Paradoxically, we deal with sin with both humor and faith. Humor brings the immediate incongruities of life to our attention, and we resolve them with laughter. However, the ultimate incongruities are less apparent. They are humorous, but we don’t always see the humor in them. Often, they are more likely to be centered in sorrow and diﬃcul- ty. They are always unforeseen and usually are a discrepancy in our daily lives. They come to us with a sense of awe, and perhaps even mystery. Always, Elton Trueblood claims, they involve a connection that links the two parts of the incongruity.22 Like a punch line in a joke, the connection in a contradiction makes the point. And like the punch line, the connection is not readily apparent. A certain point of view, a worldview, is needed to see the connection that makes sense of the incongruity.

Worldview and Paradox Johnny Hart, the prize winning creator of B.C. and the Wizard of Id, uses comic strips to bring together the immediacy of humor and the ultimacy of faith. At Easter season, he has a caveman complain to his wife that fruit juice stained his suit. The caveman’s wife takes it to a lake to wash it and is surprised to find herself engulfed by a red liquid. More surprising, she finds her husband’s clothes and herself have turned white. Baffled, they turn to see three crosses on a hill with a flow of blood coming from the center cross.23 A similar Easter strip showed a cross on a hill. Suddenly, it is zapped by two lightning bolts. The cross plummets into hell and then rebounds like a rocket into space. From a burning bush come the words, “That’s my boy!”24 Such strips may offend those who, with Jorge, share the point of view required to understand the strip. The connection between the immediate and the ultimate in a dialectic is not always understood, especially when the context of a comic strip seems to require a comic point of view and nothing more. Hart has another approach, which satirizes religion. A caveman climbs a mountain to ask a guru of wonders to come. The guru recites the usual: famines, pestilences, and earthquakes. But, the caveman

22. Trueblood, The Humor of Christ, 41. 23. B.C., Johnny Hart, Creators Syndicate, Inc., April 16, 1995. 24. B.C., Johnny Hart, Creators Syndicate, Inc., March 30, 1997.

 And God Laughed asks, “What’s the good news?” The guru responds, “God will wipe away every tear . . . and there shall be no more death nor sorrow nor pain.” The caveman asks how he can know such things. Showing a Bible in his hands, the guru replies, “Nobody escapes the Gideons.”25 In a similar vein, the watchman in the Wizard of Id announces to the city that an earthquake is occurring. People frantically run about with warnings: “Evacuate the castle!” “Release the horses!” “Save the women and children!” The king appears from his castle window and shouts “Raise the price on Bibles!”26 We should look behind the humor in these strips to note an important point. The first two strips present to the reader ultimate incongruities which, Niebuhr claims, are necessary to raise our understanding to a spiritual level. On this level, we understand the incongruities by faith. The second set of strips does not require a particular view point from the reader. There is incongruity, yes, but it can be interpreted from everyday experience with Christian groups and economics. These are incongruities that anyone can understand and chuckle over. But there is also an implicit warning: we might become too serious in our daily spiritual lives if we don’t temper our faith with a dash of humor. While the first set of strips suggests the need of awe, the second set suggests the need of humility. Religion, like humor, finds in every paradox a dominant and a sub- ordinate voice, an ultimate and an immediate theme. A point of view provides a link that leads to faith or laughter. In the Old Testament, God clearly presents this link as obedience to Him. Faith, for Abraham and Sarah, simply meant taking God at his word. Moses, Gideon, and others experienced the same challenge; nothing was preposterous or laughable if God was obeyed. In the New Testament, the emphasis shifts. Faith is more a matter of believing than of obedience. The challenge is to understand, first, what Jesus meant and then to obey. Jesus himself was a profound paradox. When He asked his disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” He wanted to know what they believed, what their point of view was. Did people see Him as a prophet or as the Son of God? That viewpoint would determine how people would interpret Jesus and his message. It would indicate whether people would see Jesus as a paradox, in immediate or ultimate terms. It was a serious question to be met with faith, not a trivial one to be mocked with laughter.

25. B.C., Johnny Hart, Creators Syndicate, Inc., August 26, 1990. 26. Wizard of Id, Brant Parker and Johnny Hart, News America Syndicate, March 22, 1987.

 From Faith to Fun In the Old Testament, God knew his people. They were often disobe- dient and unfaithful, but they understood their relationship to God as his chosen people. The problem was to express that relationship in faithful obedience. Jesus faced a diﬀerent problem. It was necessary for Him to ﬁnd his followers, to identify those who believed in him. For this reason, the paradox became an important test to separate believers from unbelievers, those who took the paradox seriously and those who chuckled among themselves. The question was whether a person could understand the critical link in a paradox that moved understanding to a new level of congruity, a transcendent level that brought redemption with belief.

The Problem of Parables When the disciples come to Jesus to inquire why He speaks to the people in parables, He replies they have been given “the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven.”27 But others don’t understand or believe because the “heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears and they have closed their eyes.”28 Parables are paradoxical because they use a story from everyday life to teach a lesson of ultimate and spiritual meaning. For this reason, parables are important teaching devices if the link between the immediate and the ultimate is to be grasped. Taken literally, parables may be preposterous and even humorous. It is the meaning hidden in words, and how they are used, that makes parables more than educational tools. Jesus, apparently, did not use parables simply for their educational value. His other concern was to filter out those who understood the paradox in the parables and believed. Humor, remember, separates persons with different points of view—those who take the paradox seriously and those who don’t. For this reason: “He did not say anything to them without using a parable.”29 It was to fulfill the saying in Psalm 78:2: “I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things hidden since the creation of the world.”30 The teaching came “when He was alone with his own disciples,

27. Mathew 13:11. 28. Mathew 13:15. 29. Mark 4:34a. 30. Mathew 13:35.

 And God Laughed

He explained everything.”31 In Jesus’ ministry, parables provide both paradox and pedagogy. Our concern, of course, is with the paradox, and especially, with the humorous dimension in parables that leads us to greater understanding of the truths communicated in them. Trueblood lists 30 humorous passages in the Gospels, many of them parables.32 What they have in common is the use of metaphors which link the paradoxical elements of the ultimate and the immediate. Such metaphors as the plow, the seed, the yoke, the door, and many others are all associated with some spiritual truth to bring greater meaning to that truth. The objective is to see the similarity in apparent diﬀerences; how a door, for example, could represent Christ. Trueblood suggests that much of the paradox in parables involves word play called “paronomasia.”33 Much of this word play carries over from the Old Testament and loses its meaning in translation. But Jesus’ use of metaphor is exaggerated, even preposterous; camels going through eyes of needles and mountains moving. It is intended to make a strong point for those who are to hear, regardless of culture or background. Trueblood considers the parable of the wineskins to be the ﬁnest example of humor in the parables.34 The old wineskins, representing Jewish law and custom, cannot contain the freshness of the Kingdom of God as Jesus is bringing it to the people. New ways, like new wineskins, are needed. The double parable, using the reference to patching a garment, makes the same point. But, Trueblood says, the punch line is in verse 39: “And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, ‘The old is better.’” Some, Jesus says, will prefer the old ways, such as fasting, even after experiencing the new. This statement, made right after the argument for new wineskins, produces a dilemma; can old wine be put into new wineskins? Spoken in the presence of Pharisees for whom the comment was apparently intended, Jesus’ statement carries some irony and the humor it implies. If the Pharisees want to keep the old wine they will have to keep the old, leaky wineskins as well. Other parables point out the more ludicrous aspects found in paradox. Ending the parable of the sower, Jesus states, “Whoever does not have,

31. Mark 4:34. 32. Trueblood, The Humor of Christ, 127. 33. Ibid., 34. 34. Ibid., 94–98.

 From Faith to Fun even what he has will be taken from him.”35 What a foolish statement if one is thinking only of the material world and the natural order. How can anything be taken from someone who has nothing to begin with? When Peter comes to Jesus to ask how many times he should forgive his brother, Jesus replies, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven.”36 Taken literally, this is an exacting and impossible expectation. One can imagine the foolishness of trying to meet this demand. But the Pharisees had become literalists; they were exacting in the application of legal minutiae. Jesus’ statement was intended not only to convey a sense of the Kingdom of God, but also to poke fun at the literal-minded of his day.

Literalism as a Problem However, it is the literal-minded who would not understand the parable. They could not make the connection in the paradox or get the point of a joke. Literal-mindedness is a worldview that accepts a certain form of orderliness and rejects others as disorderly. For that reason, Jesus spoke in parables; to gain the support of those who could understand the Kingdom of God as a new order that substituted the spirit for the letter of the law. Jesus often reversed the symbolism of the social order and the natural order as he moved among the unprivileged and outcasts of society. Small coins were worth more than great wealth, for example, and the prodigal son was valued more than the working son. Literal-mindedness understands only the precise meaning of words and the clear definition of relationships. Literalists are always predictable and consistent as they fit into every nook and cranny of society’s expectations. They are like old wine in old wineskins. To make humor work, there must be a comic reversal, a second theme that finds a flaw in the primary theme and brings it into question. The parables do this by setting off the Kingdom of God against Pharisaism. We might not find much humor in the parable of the Pharisee who prides himself on his legalism and the tax collector who is humbled by sin.37 But for some of those who heard Jesus, this reversal must have been comic. Such behavior was clearly unexpected and inconsistent with their experience. Others would have seen the truth in the parable and nodded in

35. Matthew 13:12. 36. Matthew 18:22. 37. Luke 18:9–14.

 And God Laughed agreement. The first group responded with laughter and the second with faith. There is also a third group, those who neither believe nor laugh. For them, the parable remains a paradox without explanation or meaning. In his ministry, Jesus brought disorder wherever He went; He reversed what was natural and disorganized people’s expectations. Much of this reversal was humorous. Often the humor was unintended and only apparent to those who did not see or hear what was intended. On other occasions, the humor was intentional. Consider, for example, his entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey to fulfill scripture. Jesus wanted to illustrate humility when royalty was expected, and even justifiable. Whatever He did shook up the familiar categories of life and often the values associated with them.

The Comic Hero The clown is a study in self-contradiction.38 As the quintessential clown, Charlie Chaplin was both a bum and a gentleman. At the same time that he tips his hat to a lady, he might pick up a cigarette from the street. His clothing, symbolic of class and status, masked his vagrancy and homelessness. A perpetual outsider, he was also an insider who gained entrance where others would be rejected. Paradoxically, his contradiction succeeds in a society that scorns contradiction. In his films, Chaplin is the hero who rescues the child from a burning building and is rewarded with a large sum of money or walks off into the sunset with the leading lady. In a world of propriety, his impropriety pays off. From his birth, Jesus manifested the same self-contradiction; He was both human and divine. As God’s son, He was to bring a new order - the Kingdom of God, but as Joseph’s son, He brought disorder and confusion. For centuries, prophets had told of his coming as the Messiah, but when He came, people wondered whom He was. As King of Kings, He was treated worse than a murderer. Although He was sinless, He took upon himself the sins of others. In each case, He was a paradox who provoked either laughter or faith in people. For many, He was a tragic figure. For others, He was a comic figure. In either case, He fulfilled Northrop Frye’s words: “tragedy is an episode in that larger scheme of redemption and resurrection to which Dante gave the name of ‘commedia’.”39

38. For development of this point see Hyers, Holy Laughter, 75–88. 39. Quoted in Hyers, And God Created Laughter, 33.

 From Faith to Fun Peter Berger could have had Dante in mind when he said: “Comedy is a signal, an intimation of transcendence. It is here that its Christian signiﬁcance is to be found.”40 And it is the clown, Berger suggests, who best represents the transcendent quality in comedy. It is the clown who continually cuts against the grain of society with his antics. He creates laughter by having people understand their foibles, even their sinfulness. He unmasks human pretensions and pokes holes in social facades. If life were composed of such ﬂimsy structures—if laughter could destroy us so quickly—it would be tragic. But, Berger claims, in the art of the clown, “there is a faint hint of redemption”; there is hope for something more.41 It is in Jesus that this redemptive quality becomes a reality. Tom Boyd describes the clown as an outsider who is both innocent and intentional.42 As an outsider, the clown takes a god’s-eye view of the world, one that can look at society honestly and objectively. Unemotionally, he sees life more deeply and more completely than others. Consequently, he challenges society with his attitudes and actions, exposing its unac- knowledged weaknesses. Pitting the sacred against the social, the religious clown displays the disorder coexisting with order and encourages us to laugh at it. He helps us to understand that this world is not to be taken seriously. In the same way, Jesus shows us an alternative to life as we know it and the joy to be found in that alternative. But Jesus never laughed.43 Unlike God, he did not mock his enemies or laugh derisively at them. Instead, he asked God to forgive them, setting an example for us to follow. He sets a model for humility as well as faithfulness. Laughter, remember, implies a superiority of self and a weakness of others. Humor, however, implies wholeness, completeness. It also implies how things may be told or read. Humor implies a sense of the ideal and the reality, of the present and the future, of the now and then. Humor is not concerned with how things “really are.”44 There is always the hope for improvement—that victory may come from apparent failure. Jesus provides that hope, not with laughter but with another expression of victory, Resurrection.

40. Hyers, Holy Laughter, 127. 41. Ibid., 129. 42. Boyd, “Clowns, Innocent Outsiders in the Sanctuary,” 101–109. 43. Sanders, Sudden Glory, 137. Sanders suggests that some scholars have attributed a sense of humor to Jesus although there is no record of his laughter. 44. For this important distinction, see O’Neill, The Comedy of Entropy, 53.

 And God Laughed Hyers refers to the sense of humor found in Easter by earlier Christian groups. In the early Greek Orthodox tradition, clergy and laity gathered in the sanctuary the day after Easter to tell jokes and anecdotes as a way of celebrating how the Resurrection fooled Satan. In Slavic areas, a similar celebration occurred the day after Easter. Indeed, in the early church, Easter was seen as a “big joke,” and Jesus was represented “as the bait in the mousetrap with which Satan was caught.”45 While we might wince today at this apparent merger of the hilarious and the holy, we certainly recognize the joy in the Resurrection. The problem is to decide how that joy is to be expressed and what it is to be called. It’s helpful to remember the principle of wholism, which accepts the joy in sorrow and the order in disorder. These are paradoxes best understood with the help of humor, especially when taken seriously. As a comic hero, Jesus’ actions and words were comical but his intentions were serious. Certainly He wanted to be taken seriously by the crowds who followed him. He wanted them to see the orderliness in his disorder, the positive in the negative. It was in the Resurrection that the paradox was most clearly resolved. It was then that God could laugh and the devil could mourn at a senseless world made sensible.

CONCLUSION From God’s point of view, laughter is a sign of victory. The Resurrection is a triumph worthy of God’s laughter because it points to the ﬂaw in Satan’s plan. It reﬂects the divine comedy planned in heaven, which encompasses and surpasses the tragedy enacted on earth. But to understand this point of view, to see things as God does, requires faith. One must believe that Jesus is the connecting link in the paradox, the means by which there is congruity in incongruity. This is laughter that is faithful, laughter that shares God’s point of view. Jesus didn’t laugh on earth because the victory had not been completed. Faithful laughter is possible after the Resurrection, after we understand the paradox of God’s plan of order for the world. As with all humor, laughter becomes the means by which we share the worldview of another. God’s laughter is contagious for believers. It is to be shared with joy and assurance, but it is not to be trivialized. It is not intended as a means for dealing with the contradictions of being fallen. It is not the kind of laughter often employed in everyday life. This is “fallen

45. Hyers, And God Created Laughter, 25.

 From Faith to Fun laughter”; it “is the kind we employ when we wish to ridicule someone or elevate ourselves above others.”46 With such laughter, we laugh at others, not with them. It is fallen because it is not the gift of God. Such laughter is part of the humor of entropy, which celebrates disorder and confusion. Rather than unifying, it fragments and disorganizes. If faithful laughter is godly, then fallen laughter is devilish. An important point here should not be missed. We share God’s laughter because we share his point of view. In other words, his worldview is the basis for our faithful laughter. But as we employ fallen laughter— as we laugh, often without thinking, at the trivialities in daily life—our worldview may be affected. Gradually, the importance of the trivial may overcome the importance of the transcendent. We may even see the disorderly in order and falsehood in truth. And, if there is paradox, there is difficulty in raising our understanding to a higher level of congruity. In short, we may see things from a different worldview, one that is more likely to be Satanic than sanctified.

46. Ibid., 15.

 

Jewish Joy

The saint is hilarious when he is crushed with diﬃculties because the thing is so ludicrously impossible to anyone but God. —Oswald Chambers

The opposite of joy is not sorrow. It is unbelief. —Leslie Weatherhead

There is always something they prefer to joy—that is reality. —C. S. Lewis

od’s gift of laughter to Abraham and Sarah deﬁned more clearly Gthe covenantal relationship He was to have with his people. Sarah’s earlier laughter of disbelief suggests faith had nothing to do with Isaac’s birth. It was a gift that symbolized God’s faithfulness in the future. It was also a gift that produced joy for Sarah, who had wanted a child for so long. God would provide joy for his people but not without patience and per- severance on their part. Joy would come only as a mixed blessing. Finally, God’s gift was to be shared with others. Sarah assumes some responsibility here when she says, “everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.”1 Laughter and joy would be a constant reminder of God’s faithfulness to his people.

THE GIFT OF JOY As a community, Jews had a responsibility to share God’s gift among themselves. Laughter would be a reminder to all of God’s covenant. It would also be a reminder of a common worldview, one that allowed all listening to get the point of any joke. God’s gift would conﬁrm the unity

1. Genesis 21:6b.

 From Faith to Fun of the people and their awareness of a common spiritual heritage. They would come to accept joy as it was mingled with sorrow and suffering. The Jewish experience was not unadulterated happiness. Rather, it was to be a realization of God’s provision in times of need and an opportunity to understand joy as God intended it to be understood. This understanding of joy is quite different from the Christian experience, largely because of the Resurrection. This was a victory by the Messiah over death and Satan. Laughter came to those who believed, who could understand what Jesus had been teaching. The hope had been fulfilled, but the Jews continued to wait for the Messiah, to see the hope completed. Laughter came as a gift to be shared by them while waiting, not as a sign of victory. Laughter also came to the Jew as a warning; God would laugh whenever He believed his people had rejected Him. Laughter could not be frivolous. It was serious business for the Jew. For Christians, there was little need of laughter. It had not come to them as a gift from God. The objective was to know joy as it came through salvation. Lionel Blue summarizes well the distinction in this way: “Both Christianity and Judaism had to cope with a worldly defeat. The former uses paradox and turns a worldly defeat into a victory of the spirit. The latter tries to live with defeat, as a normal condition of existence, and uses humor to do so.”2 For the Christian, then, the paradox of hope is resolved. But for the Jew, it is an inherent part of daily life. Ambiguity remains to remind of God’s providence and the people’s dependence on it. Chaim Potok describes this dependence through the words of Asher Lev: Even the most unlearned of men knows that the truly important matters of life are those for which we have no words. Yet we must speak of them. We speak, as it were, around them, under them, through them, but not directly of them. Perhaps the Master of the Universe thought it best not to give us those words, for to possess them is to comprehend the awesome mysteries of creation and death, and such comprehension might well make life impossible for us. Hence in His infinite wisdom and compassion the Master of the Universe gave us the obscure riddle rather than the revealing word. Thus we should give thanks to Him and bless His name.3

2. Blue, To Heaven with Scribes and Pharisees, 75. 3. Potok, The Gift of Asher Lev, 54.

 Jewish Joy Buried in this discussion of Christian and Jewish humor is an important point for our study. The Jewish experience brings a god’s-eye view of humor down to earth. Humor is not just sacred, it is social as well. Humor becomes a means for group identity and even possible frivolity. Paradox remains as a reminder of God’s provision, not as a remnant of his power. He remains the connecting link in paradox that makes sense of the nonsensical. God still looks down and laughs while man looks up and rejoices. Laughter remains as a gift to mankind, but it is not to be treated lightly. The ancestral laughter of Abraham and Sarah is a reminder that humor is serious business.

The Divine Incongruity 4 In his study of Jewish culture, Marvin Wilson observes how the early church, against the advice of Paul, left its Jewish roots and was inﬂuenced by Greek thought. “When Christianity severed itself from Judaism, the Christian faith itself became distorted.”5 In what ways? I would suggest two. First is the loss of paradox as a critical element in the Christian faith. The New Testament use of paradox in the parables and in Christ’s life was a means to bring the believer to redeeming faith and to some understanding of the Kingdom of God. For the early church, faith assumed belief and certainty, not paradox, which implies questions and uncertainty. What was lost was a sense of mystery, a realization that we depend on God for the answers to life’s contradictions. It is this awe that paradox may encourage. In addition, the close relationship of the sacred and the social, so typical of paradox in Jewish life, was lost. Much of Jewish humor focuses on this exchange. By contrast, Christian thinking focuses more on the problems found in this world, those enigmas we struggle with in everyday life. As a result of this loss of paradox or divine incongruity, Christianity also moved toward a distorted, or at best limited, sense of community. Wilson summarizes the thought of Jewish writers in this way: “We must view ourselves and our world not dualistically but in terms of dynamic unity and oneness.”6 While dualism stressed an ascetic view of the world, Jewish life accepted pleasure as one of God’s gifts that was to be enjoyed. Humor was one of those pleasures that led to a sense of joy and amuse-

4. Eckhardt, “Divine Incongruity,” 399–412. 5. Quoted in Wilson, Our Father Abraham, 167. 6. Ibid.

 From Faith to Fun ment in the Jewish community. For Christianity, a personal savior implied the individual side of faith and eternal life. This emphasis prompted the idea that the material world is inferior to the spiritual and separate from it. But Sarah shared God’s gift of laughter with others in the community, a fact that strengthened social ties in a spiritual as well as a cultural bond. In the Christian community, faith was not the basis for social unity as it was in the Jewish community, which looked to God for a spiritual unity. But this spiritual unity was realistic in its view of the world. The Jew, more than the Christian, struggled to understand how God related to the problems faced by the community. According to Blue, “the answer to a Jewish question is always another question.”7 The result is a dialogue with other members of the community and with God himself. In Jewish thought, it is necessary to maintain the tension in that dialogue, to be faithful to each side of the dialectic, the social and the sacred, the real and the ideal. Maintaining this tension was, for the Jew, a spiritual need, for “God is the union of opposites,” the connecting link found in paradox.8 Consequently, the Jew does not reduce the tension in the paradox. To do so would be to distort God’s creation. It is this divine incongruity in Jewish life, the paradox found in the juxtaposition of the sacred and the social, which Jews experience together. Each Jew sees the self as part of the larger Jewish community, both in space and time. God’s covenant was not only with Abraham, but also with each Jew living today. If God promised to bless Jews, why have they struggled so much? Why were the Jews decimated in the Holocaust? If God is good, why do Jews experience so much evil? As Jews struggle with these questions, they reaﬃrm God’s presence in their lives and believe, in faith, that answers will be forthcoming if none are apparent now.

The Comic Fool Another divine incongruity was the fool, the person in the community without wisdom. Because fools were unlearned, they were unsuccessful in life and in spiritual growth. “The fool was the center of ﬂawed relationships” with others as well as with God.9 There was a closed mindedness to others and especially to advice encouraging dialogue. The fool, then, was

7. Blue, To Heaven with Scribes and Pharisees, 65. 8. Ibid. 9. Wilson, Our Father Abraham, 284.

 Jewish Joy an outsider, someone who didn’t fit into the group well—either socially or spiritually. The objective of the community was to drive out folly and return wisdom to the fool, who was something of a paradox, someone who contradicted the group’s basic values. In a negative fashion, the fool represented everything the community stood for. For that reason, it was important for the fool to be brought back into the group so it might be complete again. As a contradiction, the fool was a comic figure, but he had to be taken seriously. Ultimately, the fool had to be forgiven if there were to be full acceptance by the community. Forgiveness, Eckhardt maintains, is an expression of humor.10 The fool reminds the community that it is not perfect, that it failed in its training. To forgive the fool is like laughing at a joke; the fool is forgiven because the community’s error is seen and acknowledged. Humor, remember, implies the restoration of health, of a balance in the parts of the organism. With forgiveness, there may be restoration, reconciliation, and redemption, but only when accompanied with spiritual transcendence. While the fool might not be a welcome member of the Jewish community, the comedian is. Jews emigrating to America were marginal to the New World. The paradox was that they were cultural rejects, though designated God’s chosen people. The community used humor to close the gap between the reality of their experience and the idealism of the Promise. Jewish comedians assumed the role of the comic fool as a way of integrating the Jewish people.11 And yet, they would never be completely integrated. They would always be marginal in a largely Christian nation, in the same way their traditional views would be marginal in a modern culture. Israel Knox uses the Book of Esther to illustrate Jewish humor and the Jewish role in history.12 Mordecai is a typical outsider, a fool, in the eyes of those who told him to honor Haman.13 Mordecai stood firmly against the pagan culture of his day, but he did more than that. When Haman ordered the destruction of the Jews, Mordecai expressed his grief with wailing, seeking justice for his people. Through unforeseen circum-

10. Eckhardt, “Divine Incongruity.” 11. Eckhardt notes that although Jews constitute less than three percent of America’s population, they comprise 80 percent of its humorists. 400. 12. Hyers, Holy Laughter, 151. 13. Esther 3:1–3.

 From Faith to Fun stances that suggest the paradoxical nature of the situation, Mordecai is honored by King Xerxes, and Haman is hanged. There is nothing light about this humor, nothing trivial. It epitomizes the deep irony typical of the Jewish experience. It is the type of humor that restores hope to the Jews and illustrates God’s victory over the enemies of his people. Historically, Jews have accepted the role of the comic fool. They have had little choice. If life was a tragic experience for them, it was comic too.14 When God intervened, as in the case of Mordecai, it became a spiritual experience as well. Humor, then, was identified with this spiritual experience because it brought good health to the people at the same time that it provided insight into God’s provision. In fact, Blue calls humor “the most typical weapon of Jewish spirituality.”15 However, this weapon had to be honed as the Jewish experience expanded. It fell to the Jewish comedian to probe the new contradictions of modern life, to reinterpret the traditional meaning of suffering. A major pattern of Jewish humor has been identified as “transcend- ing the mundane,” understanding how God solves the problems of everyday life.16 This is a positive view of the sacred that sees reality as an affirmation of all that is religious. But Jewish humor adds an ironic twist, suggesting the personal, covenantal relationship with God. The story is told of the Jewish mother walking on the beach with her young son. A sudden wave scoops up the son and sweeps him out to sea. The mother, on her knees, implores God for the safe return of her son. Immediately, another huge wave rolls onto the beach, depositing the son on the sand. On her knees, again the mother raises her eyes to heaven and says, “He was wearing a cap, you know.”

Mundanizing the Transcendent It is this intimate, almost irreverent view of God that is so common to Jewish humor. Without it, there would be little likelihood the mundane would be transcended. At the same time, it leaves open the possibility of “mundanizing the transcendent,” the reality that secular life dominates

14. In this description of the rebuilding of the temple in Ezra 3:11–13, it states that the older priests and Levites and family heads wept while others shouted for joy. No one could distinguish the sound of the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping. 15. Blue, To Heaven with Scribes and Pharisees, p. 75. 16. Davis, What’s So Funny, 210–216.

 Jewish Joy the reality of sacred life.17 Murray Davis, for example, attributes the following joke to Woody Allen: “The universe is merely a fleeting idea in God’s mind—a pretty uncomfortable thought, particularly if you’ve just made a down payment on a house.”18 Such humor tends to demystify the world of the Jew. With one foot in heaven and the other on earth, Jewish humor balances the influence of one against the other. The Jewish experience has a variety of similar characteristics that Jews may share as they use humor to explore their group identity. There is the example of a sports contest between two Jewish schools, both of which claimed defeat.19 The corporate sense of marginality has led to this characteristically self-deprecating humor. Although Jews feel deeply the sense of persecution they experience as a group, they can make light of it with jokes like this: Rabbi Golden is waiting at a stop light when a car driven by Father O’Brien hits him. Officer Kelly approaches the priest and asks how fast the rabbi seemed to be going when the rabbi backed into him.20 As Jews became acculturated to modern life, their humor was more concerned with the problem of group identity and whether there is a loss of Jewish culture. There is, for example, the story of the Jew who went to a Reformed service and found the rabbi was a gentile.21 A more classic Jewish joke refers to three Jewish mothers discussing their sons. With customary pride, the first speaks of her son who is a surgeon, and the second talks about her son who is a professor at a law school. The third mother says her son is a rabbi. “A rabbi,” the first mother says. “What kind of a career is that for a Jewish boy?”22 The shift in cultural values here is clear. As the values of modern culture prevail, transcendence and paradox diminish. Success is more apparent than suffering as the transcendent is mundanized. And while that success is left open to criticism from some Jews, it comes across as the dominant theme in the joke. Indeed, this shift in values suggests some

17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., 211. 19. Ibid., 275. 20. Ibid., 78. 21. Ibid., 181. 22. Ibid., 261.

 From Faith to Fun secularization has appeared in Jewish humor. Success is no longer a serious threat to Jewish culture, which comes to rely more on social institutions than God’s provisions. In fact, laughing at a gentile rabbi opens the door for the acceptance of a new paradox: a form of Judaism which accepts the exact reversal of the traditional and valued. Negativity, remember, underscores the values it opposes. But in social change, that which is negative and denied may become positive and acceptable. Since this is a point to be developed more fully later, it only merits comment here. Jewish humor maintained its style because of paradoxes that resulted when two major styles of conflicting themes overlapped, the spiritual and the social, and the traditional and the modern. When some cultural change reduces the tension between these conflicting themes, some new paradoxes must be created to stimulate humor. These paradoxes, more often than not, are derived from experiences with modern culture. As a result, there may be differing opinions as to what is humorous. A Hasidic Jew, for instance, would not necessarily laugh with a Reformed Jew; their worldviews are no longer the same. Consequently, the basis for humor has shifted to a new level of reality, where it is as likely to fragment as it is to unify. To be more succinct: “Depending on context, one and the same joke can either inflame fears or else domesticate and master them.”23 Once acculturated into modern society, the Jewish community no longer experienced the sense of deprivation known in traditional European culture. Nor did they necessarily turn to God for their wisdom. They relied on another quality in their humor, what Avner Ziv has termed “an intellectual dimension” to deal with the problems of modern life. This quality included “a desire to distort the reality, to alter it and make it laughable [and thus less frightening and threatening]. Reducing the awful reality into absurdity is a cognitive process by which one tries to make life more tolerable.”24 And, it could be added, it is a process which makes life more tolerable by becoming more trivial. In modern life, Jewish humor is less concerned with a response to God and his creation then with immediate, social life. The spiritual dimension is gradually replaced by cultural efforts to adjust to a world which is often intimidating. The resulting anxiety must be balanced and resolved

23. Davies, Exploring the Thesis of the Self-Deprecating Jewish Sense of Humor, 202. (emphasis added) 24. Avner Ziv, “Introduction,” 146. (emphasis added)

 Jewish Joy with humor, as awe is reduced to absurdity. This is a “cognitive process”— not a spiritual quest—that attempts “to make life more tolerable,” rather than an exploration of the paradoxes of life. Gradually, the spiritual depth found in early Jewish humor is replaced by secular shallowness. This is a process not unique to the Jewish community, for it is the general trend in humor as it develops in modern life.

JOY Jewish joy stands as a bridge between the victorious laughter of the New Testament, which denies the reality of earthly suffering and pain, and Jewish comedy, which interprets the reality of modern life. It is a transitional emotion, or better still, a spiritual quality that finds fulfillment in faith or in play. Joy is based upon God and derived from Him but it may become what C. S. Lewis has called “a sort of emotional froth arising from the play instinct.”25 When joy becomes mere frivolity, it succumbs to happiness and nothing more. Like God’s blessing, joy comes to God’s people accompanied by difficulty and seriousness. Happiness has little to do with seriousness, largely because it is a response to a carefree life. In the Old Testament, joy is a sign of corporate worship and of personal adoration. The group expresses joy in dancing, singing, and feasting. While joy is an emotion, it is also a fulfillment of God’s will in moral and ritual activity. The joy of being faithful to God is linked with the enjoyment of personal good fortune and health. The individual’s personal relationship with God becomes the basis for joy in this life. Joy, then, is the source of good humor that integrates the spiritual and the social. It also merges the present with the future. In times of oppression, Jews experienced the joy that would accompany their future deliverance by God. Put more simply, joy is the dominant aspect of Israel’s eschatological hope.

Joy as Paradox In the New Testament, joy arises from the fulﬁllment of that hope in Jesus Christ and in the recognition that He is the Messiah. Thus, joy is a characteristic of the Christian and a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It results from God’s triumph over evil in the Resurrection, as it expresses health or victory in some other aspect of personal life. It is also a basic characteristic of the Kingdom of God. There is an implicit excitement in joy that comes with

25. Lewis, The Joyful Christian, 155.

 From Faith to Fun an awareness of God’s plan being fulfilled on earth. But, paradoxically, joy is also associated with the outcome of suffering and sorrow for Christ’s sake. The distinction between Jewish joy and Christian joy is slight but crucial. Ironically, Jesus exemplifies the qualities of Jewish joy in his experience of suffering. He was the outsider who experienced the pain of marginality and rejection. Like the Jew, He wondered if God had forsaken him. But He was also the Messiah, the Redeemer of Israel. The hope of the Jews was fulfilled in him, and this is the critical difference. Without that hope, the Jew continues to experience joy and all that it implies. The Christian, especially as a member of a culturally dominant group, is more likely to experience happiness. Mark van Doren makes the distinction in this way: “Happiness is a very solemn thing. Joy is the most solemn thing on earth. You express it with tears.”26 In the film Shadowlands, the story of C. S. Lewis and his wife Joy, there is a poignant scene where they consider the future, knowing her death from cancer is inevitable. “The pain then,” Joy says, “is part of the happiness now. That’s the deal.” After her death, Lewis, remembering her statement, says, “The pain now is part of the happiness then. That’s the deal.” Did they experience happiness or joy? I suspect they experienced both: happiness in the immediate life shared with the other and joy in the transcendent sense of knowing how that happiness fit into the future. Henri de Lubac says: “Suffering is the thread from which the stuff of joy is woven. Never will the optimist know joy.”27 Certainly the Lewis’ shared suffering and tears, but they could have no optimism about Joy’s condition; their hope was transcendent and sure. What they did experience was a paradox, a blending of pain and happiness, which could make sense only from God’s point of view.

Forms of Joy I want to stress the two diﬀerent worldviews implied in this discussion. The Jewish is dominated by two very diﬀerent facts: the waiting for the Messiah and the painful experience of cultural marginality. These are merged in daily living and expressed in an attitude of joy which accepts

26. Kammen, People of Paradox, 289. 27. de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith, 39.

 Jewish Joy the reality of the pain they often feel. This joy is aggressive and active, using opportunities to laugh at the cultural masochism they feel. Laughter and play are natural outlets for this joy, which comes as God’s blessing to them. Joy is a critical part of their survival kit as they hope for the Messiah while coping with the world. “Dancing, religious ecstasy, and sheer exuberance of the human spirit dramatized . . . that the purpose of humankind was to redeem the evil that is in nature and to conquer it.”28 The Christian worldview is based on the completed, redemptive work of Christ. The reality of this world is secondary to the heavenly home Christ provides. But the Christian may feel comfortable, even happy in this world. Unlike the Jew, the Christian enjoys a majority culture in the West with little of the suffering experienced by the Jew. The problem of pain and rejection, so common to Jewish joy, is not known on a daily basis by the Christian. Consequently, the Christian experiences less contradiction and ambiguity in everyday life. Since paradox is seldom prevalent in this experience, it may be left in the spiritual realm or denied as an influence in this life. Paradox has simply not been as significant in the Christian experience as it has been in the Jewish experience. Unlike the Jew, the Christian experiences life as comprehensible and malleable. It is only at those breaking points experienced by the Lewis’ that life may lose its meaning and appear nonsensical. At such times, the meaning of happiness may lead to the meaning of joy. Largely because of these qualities in daily experience, the Christian worldview on humor is very passive. Laughter does not suggest a natural expression of joy as it does for the Jew. Nor does laughter have the self- deprecatory quality found in Jewish humor. For the Christian, laughter might be directed at others rather than self simply because it is the other who is likely to be the outsider. It is unlikely that laughter will have much meaning for a religious experience. Instead, it is more likely to be shaped by the cultural experience and become part of the technique of humor. Consequently, the Christian worldview on humor tends to reflect modern culture rather than reject it. In the same way, playfulness does not have the same religious significance for the Christian that it has for the Jew. Much of the Christian worldview is dualistic, remember; one may play in the world but not in the church. Playfulness could be threatening to the orderliness of God’s

28. Koller, Humor and Society, 182.

 From Faith to Fun world. For the Jew, however, playfulness is part of God’s world since there is no other world to play in. The Jewish response to Jurgen Moltmann’s question “How can I play in a strange land?” is, “One can’t.”29 “Games are regarded as a means of escape from the rest of the world,” and the Jew cannot escape into a hostile world.30 Escape is possible only for a dominant group, for the Christian in the modern world. For the traditional Jew, there is fulfillment in joy, but not escape. Joy, then, does not hold the same place in the Jewish worldview that it does in the worldview of the Christian. The Jew experiences pleasure as a gift from God which is to be returned to him as a responsible steward of such gifts. All that God has to offer is brought into the social world and made mundane, so it becomes meaningful. Joy is an expression of this relationship with God and his people, as well as an expression of the good humor resulting from the balance of these spiritual and social components. This worldview could be called “joyous secularity”; the social life is the source of joy and blessing. This worldview, however, is not constant. It is open to change and the strains it produces. Acculturation, especially, may alter the meaning of joy as experienced by the traditional Jew. The meaning of joy is quite different in the Christian worldview. It is primarily a spiritual gift associated with the Kingdom of God and the suffering of Christ. Joy is a gift of the Holy Spirit and not something the individual produces. There is little in the Christian concept of joy that resembles the kind of relationship with God found in the Jewish worldview. Dualism emphasized an ascetic lifestyle that produced a debasement of life. Happiness, not joy, became an acceptable norm with acculturation. This worldview could be called “secularized joy”; while the spiritual life may be the source of joy, social life is the source of happiness. This worldview, too, is open to change, especially as the group shares more of the culture’s resources. At such times, happiness may take a more prominent place in the worldview. It might become a different form of pleasure or even a form of idolatry.

IRONY “The humor of the Jewish Scriptures is the humor of irony, and it is not the opposite of high seriousness. It is complementary to it: another way

29. Moltmann, Theology of Play, 1. 30. Ibid., 6.

 Jewish Joy of telling the truth, of putting things right.”31 Since the scriptures became so much a part of Jewish life, irony became a way of understanding God’s relationship with his people. More than that, irony became a way of understanding life in a hostile world. It was used to justify what seemed to be unjustifiable and to correct what seemed to be wrong. Irony in Jewish humor is a natural expression of all that was found in the Jewish experience. Irony is a way of speaking in which the meaning literally expressed is the opposite of the meaning intended. Often the quality of some event or situation is the opposite of what was promised or expected. Indirectly, this reversal mocks a person’s expectations. As a literary technique, irony may be used to show the incongruities between appearance and reality or interaction and achievement.32 As an important concept in sociological research, “Irony suggests a ‘mocking discrepancy’ between the way things are and the way they are supposed to be, between promise and fulfillment, between appearances and reality.”33 The comic possibilities surrounding the discrepancy between the ideal and the real are many and varied. Irony occurs more clearly when “we state what ought to be done, and pretend to believe that this is just what is actually being done.”34 The joke about the woman walking on the beach is a case in point. We assume she prayed for the return of her son with his hat, but God’s response was not complete since the hat was missing. The mother has to assume that God is faithful, even though she didn’t get all that she asked for. In an imperfect world, irony helps the Jew to accept the imperfections. Irony explains why the Jewish experience continues to be painful after centuries of trusting God for redemption. If God is perfect but allows imperfection, if He is a loving God but allows his people to suffer, irony, rather than logic, explains the contradiction.

Biblical Irony The scriptures abound with irony. The account of Rebecca’s deception of Isaac with the substitution of Jacob for Esau is an example. There is a humorous quality in the way Rebecca makes Jacob to appear like Esau. But

31. Hyers, Holy Laughter, 154. 32. Longmans English Larousse. 33. A quotation from Louis Schneider in Davis, What’s So Funny, 157. 34. Ibid., 102.

 From Faith to Fun the irony comes with the fact that Jacob is given the blessing, not Esau. The reality is far less than the ideal in the divine sense of things. The truth that deception may be justifiable may be difficult to accept, except with some implicit irony. We are forced to remember that God’s ways are not like human ways. In the same way, Laban’s deception of Jacob results in the marriage with Leah, a union that Jacob neither requested nor expected. And yet Leah was more successful in giving sons to Jacob, suggesting that irony is included in God’s plan for his people. Knox claims that laughter at idolatry produces the greatest depth and intensity of irony in scripture.35 There is irony, for example, when Elijah mocks the priests of Baal on Mount Carmel. He challenges the idea that Baal is a god by asking why he doesn’t come to the aid of the priests. Has Baal gone on a journey? Is he asleep? These questions offer to explain the inexplicable, while Elijah laughs at Baal and the priests. This same kind of irony occurs when Isaiah compares God’s perfection with the hollowness of idols.36 Even the psalmist mocks the insufficiency of idols while adding another twist: the makers of idols will become like them.37 Such irony is typical of Jewish humor; it is aggressive, insightful, and true. Blue suggests that Jewish humor provides an antidote to the legalism of the tradition. “God is the union of opposites,” and irony is the key to understanding that union. There is more to life than what is presented in the Torah. “Because of our human condition, reality is always fragmented for us. We are so constructed that we can only know by opposites.”38 Ironically, the Torah must be seen in opposition to the reality of life. The Jew is responsible to maintain the tension between these opposites. To do otherwise would be to falsify the world as it is. Irony, especially, transcends the opposites to locate that divine incongruity and the wisdom it offers. Irony, like other Jewish humor, is not limited to the scriptures or some religious teaching. It finds its way into all aspects of the culture and provides insight into Jewish character. The person who seems like a fool may really be a hero. Something that seems like a tragedy is really a blessing. Peter Berger tells the following joke while making a different point.

35. Knox, 154. 36. Isaiah 40:18–19. 37. Psalm 115:4–8. 38. Blue, To Heaven with Scribes and Pharisees, 65.

 Jewish Joy

Two partners in the garment business need to sell a large number of shirts. A buyer from out of town places an order for a thousand shirts but adds that he needs approval from the home office. If the partners do not hear by telegram from him by the end of the week, the order is confirmed. Days go by and on Friday, just before clos- ing time, a telegram arrives. Opening it anxiously, Sol reads it and then shouts, “Abe, wonderful news! Your sister has died.”39 Although irony is clearly apparent in scripture and the biblical tradition, the Jewish experience has also done much to reinforce an intellectual style conducive to irony. Berger suggests, for instance, that Talmudic study developed a form of dialectical reasoning that led to the dissembling of arguments and then to the reorganizing of them in another argument.40 Dialogue, in the Jewish tradition, was simply an opportunity to learn not just the Torah, but the differing sides of an argument. Berger goes on to suggest that this quality of Jewish thought was carried over not only in their humor but also to the modern world as they found it, homeless and without national identity. And yet, it is this state of homelessness, of marginality, that becomes the experience of everyone in the modern world. Pope Pius XI put it more succinctly: “We have all become Jews.”41 If the Pope can say this while cloistered in the Vatican, how much more true is the claim for the rest of us!

Modern Irony It is not very difficult to find irony in the modern experience. We have one foot in a culture we know and the other in a culture we are coming to know. The power of cultural change is not something we control. Often, we don’t feel at home when daily expectations change our familiar routines. Always we feel increasingly marginal to some segment of a culture we should know: how to use new electronic devices, for example, or how changes in the job market affect us. There is irony, too, in the case of a couple retiring from urban life to a rural farm, only to learn that a major expressway is planned to pass by their backyard fence. Irony is also found in the small crossroads town that clings to its homely way of life and struggles with the benefits of being a neighbor to a new automobile

39. Berger, “Humor as a Religious Phenomenon,” 2. 40. Ibid., 92–93. 41. Ibid., 95, n. 8.

 From Faith to Fun manufacturing plant. Faced with such paradoxes, we want an explanation and then a solution. However, answers to modern problems do not come easily. There is an inherent irony there that must be accepted, a certain tension that must be maintained. As Blue has said, to do otherwise would be to falsify the world, to make it something it isn’t. Humor, especially irony, allows us the opportunity to cope with that world. In the Jewish experience, there is also hope, rooted in faith in God’s provision. Humor allows for this affirmation of reality. Yet Berger points out that humor may also provide a form of reality denial and an opportunity to escape from the problems of everyday life.42 Society provides enclaves in space and time that offer retreats from the mundane and the serious, places like Walt Disney World or a football stadium, or times such as holiday weekends or Mardi Gras. At such times and places, paradox may exist but not as something to be taken seriously, and if we escape to such times and places, there is little reason to hope or to cope. Irony, then, is characteristic of that cultural condition called modernity. It reflects the increasing complexity of everyday life and even por- tends some of the cultural contradictions to come. But there is a deeper meaning in irony, one that is found in the human condition. Paul refers to it in Romans 7 in his discussion of sin. Paradoxically, I find that when I want to do something good for a person, I do the opposite. Even when I do not want to hurt that person, I find that I do. Our intents and actions always seem to have unexpected consequences, and these are usually the opposite of what was intended. This is irony of the most profound sort. It is irony to be taken seriously, not laughed at, unless that laughter ac- companies forgiveness. Perhaps that is why Eckhardt suggests there is an element of forgiveness in humor. “That’s what humor comes down to really: forgiveness.”43 And forgiveness, like laughter, comes from God.

CONCLUSION There is an earthly quality in Jewish joy that sets it aside from Christian joy. It is the transcendent quality in Christian joy, the sense of hope fulfilled, that produces a different worldview which, either consciously or unconsciously, leans toward dualism. Despite the common roots in Judeo- Christian tradition, then, Christianity and Judaism have different cultural

42. Berger, “Humor as a Religious Phenomenon,” 2. 43. Eckhardt, “Divine Incongruity,” 410.

 Jewish Joy perspectives. The dynamic unity found in Jewish life has produced a community that accepts its place as a minority set aside in the modern world. This is, of course, not a uniform view. Jewish thinking does vary with a community’s acculturation to the modern world. But the integration of faith with life, however that might be interpreted, remains an integral part of the Jewish community and its sense of good humor. It is the Christian culture, however, that is largely responsible for the modern world in which the Jew is a minority. Whatever influence the Protestant ethic might have had in stimulating modern thinking, it has remained a dominant force in shaping it. This is changing, of course, as new forces for change are shaking the foundations. There remains, however, the sense of manifest destiny that accompanied Christianity to the New World. Protestants, especially, have seen much of that presumed destiny fulfilled in tangible ways. The result has been a perspective that was confident and positive, a viewpoint that denied negative thinking. Put another way, everything was possible for the Protestant and nothing was paradoxical. But this way of looking at the world is no longer in clear focus. Rapid cultural changes around the world have produced chaos instead of consensus, paradox instead of possibility. And, paradoxically, it is the Jewish worldview that may be more accepting of this chaos. It understands that God’s ways are not man’s ways, and it can accept that fact with joy. It accepts the fragmentation of the world and tries to find its place in it. It also accepts negativity as a blessing from God, even as the prophets brought judgment from God upon the Israelites. The Christian worldview shares much of this thinking in tradition, if not always in experience. It is the experience of this rapid cultural change that constitutes a shift from modernity to what is being called postmodernity.

 

The Therapeutic Trend

Humor is, therefore, the lazier principle to adopt in approaching all questions, and that is why muddle is visibly increasing everywhere. —Ludovici

ver the past  years or so, a number of books have been writ- Oten about American culture, all attempting to describe the national character. One of the least well known of these books is The Triumph of the Therapeutic, written by the sociologist Philip Rieff in 1966. Brilliantly insightful in its observations of the time and its predictions for the future, it is written with a graceful elegance not usually found in such works. Rieff did not make things popular, unlike his contemporaries Alvin Toffler or Theodore Roszak. His work was too sweeping and too theoretical to fit into such a mold. Yet, the concept “the therapeutic” has nudged itself into much of contemporary cultural criticism. What is meant by the therapeutic, and what that should mean for a study of humor, is the concern of this chapter. Culture, as Rieff sees it, is a moral demand system which forbids certain actions and thoughts while expecting others. This very traditional view of culture supports the belief that character is formed as the young learn to channel their latent emotions into stable sentiments. However, Rieff recognizes that such moral demands may be perceived as too harsh. Culture must allow, even provide, certain remissions from those demands as a counterbalance to them. The resulting freedom would allow us to do what should not be done, without pain of guilt or punishment. Cultures that are too restrictive become intolerable to the individual and breed social discontent. Those cultures that become more permissive than demanding, however, produce a character type that Rieff calls the thera-

 The Therapeutic Trend peutic. In therapeutic cultures, the breaking of demands and expectations becomes socially acceptable and even normative. Consequently, the therapeutic character type is always seeking self-affirming experiences without moral cost. Such is the character type found by Rieff in contemporary American culture. Writing in 1966, Rieff was clearly reflecting on the impact daily events were having on society. Youth, especially, challenged traditional institutions with a vengeance, bringing new and often irremediable changes to society.1 Much of this change occurred on the symbolic level, since culture itself is largely symbolic. Indeed, the revolution in symbol-making and symbol-meaning that began at this time was nourished by the technological revolution that was just coming into its own. The result confirmed and strengthened the dualist tone of the culture as signs became separated from their substance. How people spoke was not necessarily related to their actions, and what they believed was not necessarily translated into commitment.2 Paradoxically, inconsistency and contradiction were gradually accepted in a culture which traditionally had opposed them. What does all of this have to do with humor and its secularization? For now, we could make two observations. First, a culture based largely on Christian tradition might have been, to use Rieff’s term, too “restrictive.” Such a society could have lacked the balance of forces needed to maintain a good humor. Herbert Marcuse, writing two years before Rieff, made a similar observation. One-dimensional thinking, he claims, led to the crisis of the Sixties. It was uncritical thought, lacking in the kind of negative thinking which could balance traditional cultural biases.3 In short, one- dimensional thought, threatened by the possibility of paradox, rejected any thinking that was negative or complex. The other observation has to do with the notion that the therapeutic character seeks to be self-affirming without moral cost. How is this to be done? How is it possible to reverse morals and accepted standards of behavior without criticism? One way would be to develop a climate in which such behavior would not be taken seriously. In a jocular setting, one might do what one wouldn’t ordinarily do, as long as others agree to that setting. Since laughter generally defines a jocular setting, laughter,

1. Rieﬀ, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, 249, n. 12. 2. Ibid., 3, n. 1. 3. Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man.

 From Faith to Fun or symbols suggesting it, is expected in the therapeutic culture. Thus, the therapeutic triumphs best in a world of laughter and good-will.

THE THERAPEUTIC CULTURE Rieff claims that a cultural revolution occurs when the newer, permissive cultural elements prove more compelling than the older, restrictive ones.4 The tensions which had been kept in balance reach a breaking point as newer symbolic forms and their supporting elites gain dominance in the culture. These new permissive elements tend to contradict rather than serve traditional moral demands. But a cultural revolution of this sort does not readily tolerate such contradictions. Its intention is to replace deeply internalized moral demands from the past, not accommodate to them. Culture finds its richest meaning in homogeneity, not diversity. In the forefront of this change is a challenging elite which may appear deviant or even immoral in the traditional order of life. But, by offering new modes of release, these elite may become the founders of a new moral demand system. Rieff concludes that these cultural elite will not be made up of the lower classes. Rather, the therapeutic type is more likely to be a person of leisure who will be able to choose a variety of new ways to develop a sense of well-being or good humor. Some 17 years after Rieff’s work was published, Fox and Lears did a study of the culture of consumption in America dating from 1880.5 They explain how “newer values, which sometimes seem potentially subversive at first, are frequently sanitized and incorporated into the mainstream of enlightened opinion.”6 What emerged was a “therapeutic ethos” that was part of a general concern for health reform linking medical with moral precepts. The resulting therapeutic elite—consisting largely of physicians, psychologists, and social scientists concerned with sickness in people and society—gradually replaced the moral voice of ministers who subse- quently accepted the therapeutic model. At the same time, the educated classes, especially, experienced something of a reality crisis, a sense that reality was more problematic than what they had experienced. They considered the routines of life to be unreal and wanted to experience real life in new forms. Much of this unreal-

4. Rieﬀ, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, 233–249. 5. Fox and Lears, The Culture of Consumption. 6. Ibid., 5.

 The Therapeutic Trend ity, Fox and Lears claim, stemmed from the new urban and technological development at the turn of the century. There was a new ease in life which paradoxically led to a sense of dis-ease as the comforts of modern life aroused public dissatisfaction. Modern conveniences gradually insulated people from the primary experiences in the natural world that had traditionally provided for personal self-identity. The new lifestyle demanded a new basis for a sense of self. In rough outline, these conditions formed the boundaries for the development of the therapeutic ethos. There are several prominent features of this ethos as Fox and Lears describe it. First, the question of self-identity led to doubts that it could be self-made. Increasingly, others became more important than an autono- mous self and formed the basis for defining self.7 In the corporate world, especially, “personal magnetism began to replace character as the key to advancement.”8 It became more important to appear to be a certain type of person than to be that person. These new perceptions of the self led to a shift in moral climate including a loosening of the work ethic. Forms of entertainment previously considered questionable, if not clearly deviant, began to influence cultural values. William James referred to “the Gospel of Relaxation” that began to permeate the ranks of all social classes.9 Finally, this redefinition of the Gospel influenced religion as popularizers sought “to replace morality with morale.”10 Although these popularizers often used traditional religious language, their thinking was secular. Gradually, faith was replaced by a feel good factor which became a cultural definition for a good humor. With this background from Fox and Lears and the qualities found in the therapeutic ethos, we may turn to Rieff’s more theoretical work. Rieff, remember, writes at the height of the modern period while Fox and Lears describe the therapeutic ethos at the beginning of the twentieth century. For a half century, apparently, this cultural revolution had been evolving, sometimes unobtrusively, but often with pain and turmoil. The inherent contradictions in this period could not be balanced; the tradi-

7. This shift in personality is described by David Riesman inThe Lonely Crowd. Fox and Lears refer to Riesman’s work and to the self that had to be shaped according to the expectations of others and the needs of the moment. 8. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., 10. 10. Ibid., 13. This apt phrase should be credited to Riesman who employed it more pointedly in his work.

 From Faith to Fun tional and the therapeutic could not be integrated. The triumph of the therapeutic involved radical changes in at least four cultural areas: the religious, the psychotherapeutic, the perception of self, and the symbolic. Combined, these changes produced a new way of looking at reality, a new worldview, and a new deﬁnition of humor.

Therapy as Religious At the end of the nineteenth century, traditional ideas of faith in a religious community still dominated the thinking of most people. They were satisfied with a life which balanced daily routines with a suitably permissive attitude toward these routines. If life seemed restrictive and devoid of excitement, it was an experience shared by all. In a traditional society, with limited opportunities for new experience, commitment to traditional values was not a problem. The ascetic component in traditional religion neutralized status-seeking; all felt deprived outside of the spiritual meaning of life. The clergy performed a therapeutic function with their support for this balanced way of life. Salvation seemed almost synonymous with sublimation. But as the twentieth century dawned, that balance was tilted by a series of cultural changes that had been emerging. Technology offered a wide array of new goods and services for consumption and communities experienced strain as some consumers made choices which challenged traditional patterns of behavior. The purchase of an automobile, for example, provided church-goers with a new option for the Sabbath: the opportunity to visit family in a distant town instead of going to church. In effect, a wide array of “thou-shalt-nots” was displaced by exciting new “thou-shalts.” The traditional religious view of the therapeutic which had concentrated on good morals now shifted to a social definition which emphasized good morale. This shift was not limited to traditional religion alone. A wide array of new forces centering in urban growth, immigration, and technological growth combined to unbalance traditional ways while at the same time offering a new definition of a healthy society. Fox and Lears rightly suggest that “a web of connections joined national advertising, the therapeutic ethos, and the new forms of mass entertainment.”11 Together, such forces provided new meaning for the individual, something outside the routines

11. Ibid., 28.

 The Therapeutic Trend of daily life. The shift in thinking was from commitment to escape, from community involvement to self-gratification. Much of religious life was caught up in this new therapeutic ethos. The gospel, in fact, was often definedin individualistic terms to the point of being identified with self-fulfillment. Indeed, as Rieff noted: “Any religious exercise is justified only by being something men do for themselves, that is for the enrichment of their own experience.”12 This was the basis for the new therapeutic understanding, what Rieff calls “the unreligion of the age, and its master science.”13 Faced with the challenges implied by this reversal of traditional religious thinking, the clergy could choose to accept it or risk marginalization in the culture. In effect, they had to decide if they would become professional therapeutics. As Rieff suggested, this was possible “only if they break away radically from almost all, if not all, of their traditional religious pursuits.”14 Many, of course, made the break. Bruce Barton was an early expo- nent of the new ethos in his book The Man Nobody Knows, which “presented Jesus as ‘the founder of modern business.’”15 Barton himself was a businessman who helped found a prominent advertising agency and further promoted the rise of a cohesive consumer culture. Consumption, not saving, became the new ideal in the therapeutic ethos. Leisure and pleasure, not work and denial, became hallmarks of the emerging culture and shaped a definition of the healthy self and the healthy society. Part of that culture included the gradual substitution of the psychologist for the clergyman as a therapeutic agent. Rieff describes this change in his pointed manner: “Religious man was born to be saved; psychological man is born to be pleased.”16

Psychotherapy Two major shifts in thinking were developing in the way people looked at good health in themselves and in the community. The ﬁrst included the change in public values from a search for salvation to a search for satisfaction. The other was more structured and included a conscious

12. Rieﬀ, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, 251. 13. Ibid., 13. 14. Ibid., 252. 15. Fox and Lears, The Culture of Consumption, 31. 16. Rieﬀ, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, 24–25.

 From Faith to Fun and aggressive effort by psychology to challenge religion’s grip on public consciousness and public values.17 Psychotherapy challenged religious authority as a theory of human nature, suggesting that suffering could be minimized and people could take some control over their lives. It claimed it could provide a more modern and progressive alternative to religion’s efforts at dealing with human problems and social issues. By understanding more about the self, people could deal more realistically with the patterns of life as well as the complexities of the modern world. Lawrence Lilliston, a contemporary psychologist, has said: “Being comfortable— with yourself, with your place in the world, with your lifestyle choice—is a worthy goal of psychotherapy, but it is not a goal historically embraced by religion.”18 Put differently, the faith factor was being replaced by the feel good factor. It was this feel good factor that formed the basis for much of the therapeutic ethos and psychotherapy’s attempt to heal what was considered to be disease. As opposed to the religious perspective on the world, it was supposed to take a more realistic view. And yet, what could be less realistic than denial of the reality of suffering and failure? Could the belief that life may be without paradox and contradiction be realistic in the modern world? Such views are far removed from the joy that characterized the Jewish community. But they are close to the thinking which gradually was emerging in the dominant Protestant community. Psychotherapy would have the person cope with the reality of this world, but it offered no hope for the reality of another. At the same time, it encouraged escape from problems and a search for pleasure. In short, it encouraged happiness but not joy. There is, then, a certain meaning or purpose in life which psychotherapy espouses. Traditionally, this meaning had been centered in the community and commitment to it. People felt secure in their collective identity and experienced a sense of well-being there. It was the kind of community that provided joy for the Jew. But psychotherapy stressed the importance of a relationship between the person and the therapist— however that role might be defined. All relationships beyond that primary one are based on self-interest and the belief that moral judgments come

17. Lilliston, “Psychotherapy as a Cultural Shaper of Religion.” 18. Ibid., 13.

 The Therapeutic Trend from subjective feelings. Ultimately, “the self is ‘the only or main form of reality.’”19 If that should be the case, psychotherapy encourages the nurturing of the self in a more diverse environment of excitement and release. Much of the purpose of life, as advocated by the therapeutic ethos, is found by maximizing experiences in that environment. Fox and Lears, for example, link the therapeutic ethos with “the culture of consumption.” As the self was freed from commitment to the community, it was redirected to a new lifestyle based on commodiﬁcation, the idea that anything could be packaged and sold to provide a therapeutic experience. It was this kind of thinking that moved the individual from the therapist’s couch into the marketplace, largely through the enticement of new advertising techniques. The objective was always to encourage adjustment to the new potential to be found in a developing economy. Rieﬀ claims that the success of the therapeutic ethos, and of psychotherapy especially, can be seen in the rise a new type of person, the psychological man, who is “more native to American culture than the Puritan sources of that culture would indicate.”20

The Relational Self An early critic of the therapeutic culture was David Riesman, who published The Lonely Crowd in 1950. Of his well-known personality types, we need only comment here on the other-directed character. Riesman claims this personality type is distinct from earlier American types but increasingly representative of urban types in all Western cultures. Fifty years of hindsight suggest he was correct. What is common to all the other-directed people is that their contemporaries are the source of direction for the individual . . . dependence on it for guidance in life is implanted early . . . it is only the process of striving itself and the process of paying close attention to the signals from others that remain unaltered through life.”21

19. Bellah, Habits of the Heart, 143. 20. Rieﬀ, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, 58. 21. Riesman, The Lonely Crowd, 21.

 From Faith to Fun What is important for the other-directed person “is not a code of behavior but the elaborate equipment needed to attend to such messages and occasionally to participate in their circulation.”22 It is this elaborate equipment that provides the sense of morale for the other-directed person that replaces traditional morality. The equipment consists largely of symbols and commodities that contemporaries share for the purpose of identifying one’s place in the culture or group. Presumably, such identification is thought to be therapeutic. But Kenneth Gergen believes otherwise. He claims this personality type shifts “from the world as it is to the world as represented . . . from objects to objectification, from reality to construction of reality.” The result is “self-reflexive doubt . . . doubt of all authority and all claims to truth.”23 Ironically, therapy is not always therapeutic. When directed to others, we don’t necessarily find the stability we seek. Apparently the self cannot be completed or made whole by means of others. Individually, as well as culturally, the therapeutic ethos may produce more dis-ease than good humor. A study of elite Eastern boarding schools makes the point well.24 The authors suggest that students in such schools are taught that morality counts in life but winning is essential. Consequently, despite the fact that they are taught cooperation, they learn competition.25 They also learn to live in a world of apparent contradictions and “to balance contradictory imperatives without losing their ‘cool,’” for that is the nature of the world they are being prepared for.26 To accomplish this goal, these schools stress “repetitive encounters” among the students that will encourage a collective identity and “resonating relationships.”27 However, many students do not respond well to these views. For one thing, the ascetic view of hard work fostered in the schools is not always accepted. Others become cynical toward the obvious gap between the contradictory expectations. Those who do respond to this ethos find that the constant nurturing of relationships is the basis for the definition of self and of success.

22. Ibid., 25. 23. Gergen, The Saturated Self, 134. 24. Cookson and Persell, Preparing for Power. 25. Ibid., 19–20. 26. Ibid., 163. 27. Ibid., 21.

 The Therapeutic Trend Gergen’s description of “the saturated self” is a model for the development of the boarding school self. The first stage in the development of this self is “strategic manipulation” in which the person plays a variety of roles to attain success.28 A “pastiche personality” forms as the person learns to accept a variety of complex, contradictory, and tension-filled identities. Finally, a relational self results when one realizes that individual autonomy is not possible and one must accept “a reality of immersed interdependence, in which it is relationship that constructs the self.”29 But Gergen notes a problem here. It is difficult to take any one relationship seriously if one’s self depends on playing with relationships, so to speak. “Serious play” results “when we enter into various relational forms . . . while at the same time treating the forms as contingent or contextually bounded.”30 Put more simply, we give the impression that we are serious in a relationship when, in fact, we are not. Paradoxically, we learn to play with those relationships we used to take seriously while taking seriously those relationships we used to play with. The relational self relies on Rieff’s notion of therapy as release that eases the pressure of communal purposes. The result is a new cultural style, a new type of therapy and humor. We don’t necessarily find happiness by escaping the expectations of others or the need to fulfill those expectations. Nor do we avoid paradox and contradiction. Instead, we learn to cope with coolness; we don’t take such matters as seriously as we might. In the ensuing relativization of responsibilities and relationships, each one is no more important than the other. We tend to play with such relationships, often in new and creative ways. Consequently, play becomes a new therapy, even a new morality, as it replaces the asceticism of restrictive behavior. There is a downward pull to new levels of order and even disorder where therapy may function again. Gergen, among others, notes this trend that leads eventually to chaos. On that level, only play is taken seriously.

Symbols as Therapy But before play may be serious, it must be frivolous. Gergen believes “All our attempts to do good works, to achieve, to improve, and to be respon-

28. Gergen, The Saturated Self, 147. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid., 196.

 From Faith to Fun sible can be punctured with wit . . . [one must] carry the clown on one’s shoulders—to always be ready to step out of ‘serious character’ and locate its pretensions, to parody or ape oneself.”31 And yet, such playfulness can only lead to chaos. If all conversation is playful, then nothing is serious, even the relationships shared in the conversation. For balance, there must be some interchange of the serious and the playful. At some point, people have to get real. It is essential that they learn how to separate the sensible from the nonsensical and respond accordingly. Only then do they understand who shares their worldview and their group identity. Without such understanding, people feel disoriented and uncomfortable, even in otherwise familiar and comfortable groups. It is good therapy, then, to be able to read the language of relationships. Words make no sense unless another agrees to the meaning you give them. And one is not really a part of the group unless all accept and confirm the meaning of the symbols used. An other-directed person understands this principle well. Words or non-verbal symbols like smiles or laughter are used to gain the approval of others. In the therapeutic culture, such approval is a sign of the group’s morale or good humor. Symbolically, laughter, regardless of its origin, is considered a healthy sign. It defines the setting as playful; one need not be serious. In such settings, facts give way to friendships. “Fraternal laughter” is the norm in settings such as the boarding school where inconsistencies are not taken seriously. It’s the kind of laughter that defines approved relationships, those that are to become resonating relationships for life. It is fraternal laughter, then, that defines good morale in the peer group. In the therapeutic culture, especially, symbols allow us to fit into a group, to associate with others like us. Paradoxically, they are also the means by which we learn to stand out from others. Gergen tells the story of the mother who went shopping for a dress with her teenage daughter. Drawn to a very stylish dress, the mother tries it on and decides she doesn’t like it. She tells her daughter: “It just isn’t me.” The daughter responds with some criticism. “But Mom, that isn’t the point. With that dress you would really be somebody.”32 Segments of the culture understand this desire to fit in at the same time we stand out better than others do. In the marketplace, especially,

31. Ibid., 193. 32. Ibid., 139.

 The Therapeutic Trend language—even a stylish dress—becomes a sort of consumer good. Words are the means by which we identify with our peer group while, at the same time, separating ourselves from others. The peer group stands as an intermediary between the individual and the mass media’s retailing of consumer goods. But the flow is not all one way. While the peer group decides what is to be passed on for consumption, peers circulate the symbols of consumption to the mass media for wider distribution. Gradually, consumer goods acquire a therapeutic meaning for the peer group, a feel good meaning of morale and good health. Fox and Lears see this kind of thinking as a major component in the culture of consumption. This culture flourished with “the rise of a new gospel of therapeutic release preached by a host of writers, publishers, ministers, social scientists, doctors, and the advertisers themselves.”33 Such cultural leaders—what Rieff would call a therapeutic elite—looked beyond the health of the marketplace to the society as a whole. They believed the average American could find contentment and satisfaction through consumption, especially if consumption were given a broader meaning. The thinking of the consumer, as well as the marketplace itself, needed a release from the constraints of traditional economic practices. Thinking had to provide its own form of therapy. This meant a complete reversal of values, “particularly the shift from Protestant salvation in the next world to therapeutic self-realization in this one.”34 The key to this change in values lay in creating a system of symbols that could redefine the meaning of the good life and then encourage the consumer to buy those symbols. Such encouragement could come only if the consumer acted reflexively, without thinking. Advertising style could not be serious. It had to create a euphoric feeling, a positive tone that left the consumer believing a purchase would be shared with others, a peer group which would, symbolically, affirm the buyer as well as the purchase. Advertising developed a therapeutic vocabulary which stressed feeling instead of fact. Symbols were separated from their traditional meanings and valued only for the positive emotional tone they conveyed. Nike, for example, has become more than a symbol for footwear. Its meaning is now associated with power and the freedom to do what one wants to do. Like

33. Fox and Lears, The Culture of Consumption, xi. 34. Ibid., xiii.

 From Faith to Fun all symbols in the consumer culture, it leaves a positive impression on the consumer that extends beyond the meaning of the product symbolized. Through the manipulation of symbols and the creation of positive impressions, advertising presents a new sense of reality—not as it is, but as it should be. Advertising now denies a traditional meaning of reality and promotes a reality based on therapeutic meanings. Consequently, therapeutic symbols become consumables. They become commodities themselves, as evidenced by the fact that T-shirts are bought not as items of clothing but as a meaningful collection of positive symbols with therapeutic benefit. Indeed, “impressions made by commodities become more important than the commodities themselves.”35 Their importance is measured by the therapeutic value defined by the peer group. But peer groups alone do not control impressions as commodities. The mass media’s concern is to extend commodification to all cultural segments of society, to encourage a feel good factor in all consumers. In that way, the therapeutic ethos leads to the development of a therapeutic culture.

RELIGION AS THERAPY As Rieﬀ suggests, it is the religion in any culture that is therapeutic, largely because it produces a moral order for the stabilization of society. This traditional religious order is challenged by the gradual development of a new permissive, therapeutic order. These two cultural themes, one dominant and the other secondary, compete for the commitment of the people. As in humor, the secondary theme will gain dominance if the primary theme is no longer taken seriously. In the case of the therapeutic, the moral order of the ethos of permissiveness gradually gains acceptance and partially or completely replaces the traditional religious worldview. Consequently, the new therapeutic acquires many of the characteristics of a religion, as will be discussed in a later chapter. As these two cultural themes converge, traditional religion must either maintain its sacred worldview or move toward some acceptance of the therapeutic worldview. It must accept much of the terminology of therapeutic thinking along with its premises and objectives. Where there is not acceptance, paradox will evolve as components of the two systems blend together. In either case, secularization occurs; the traditional religious order is gradually changed or replaced. In eﬀect, religion is unwill-

35. Ibid., xvii.

 The Therapeutic Trend ing to accept a secondary place in the developing cultural order. If it is to maintain much of its customary cultural inﬂuence, religion must not only accept therapeutic thinking but also apply that thinking in ways acceptable to those with a religious worldview. Above all, religion must reach the people with its new message. It must become popular once again.

Popular Religion In a church ad that appeared some 50 years ago, four main reasons were given for a person to support a church and to attend its services. They are: 1. For his own sake. 2. For his children’s sake. 3. For the sake of his community and nation. 4. For the sake of the Church itself.36 There is a traditional restrictive quality here: a person should support a church and attend its services. But the therapeutic quality is more apparent; a person should attend church because attendance benefits first oneself and then, moving outwards, the rest of society. In effect, religion is therapeutic because it provides a sense of well-being for all levels of society. What is striking in the ad is the absence of any reference to God. There is no sense of some transcendent truth or spiritual responsibility. Religion is presented merely in subjective and social terms that suggest religion can help maintain a healthy society and healthy families. While these benefits would always be present in a traditional religion, they would not be stated so baldly. Characteristics which would have been taken for granted in a traditional religious setting now become intentional and primary. Faith becomes intentional because it works. Indeed, faith becomes a means of selling that church to local people. Presented in this way, religion is meant to appeal to the masses, to be popular. The classic study of popular religion was done about the same time as this ad.37 The study involved an intensive examination of the contents of 46 best sellers in inspirational literature from 1875–1955. The objective was to study how the contents of these religious books might have influenced the thinking of the American public during this 80 year period.

36. Althauser, “Paradox in Popular Religion,” 585. 37. Schneider and Dornbusch, Popular Religion.

 From Faith to Fun The authors, Lewis Schneider and Sanford Dornbusch, proceeded with the assumption that literary works would reflect the climates of culture and opinion of that period. In general, the authors found the literature encouraged “the theme that religious faith gives life meaning by providing a feeling of one’s individual worth or potential significance.”38 After the two world wars, this feeling was more sharply defined; religion provided a justification for existence or a moral basis for action. Social crisis apparently moves religious concern away from personal concerns to broader, moral concerns. More specifically, the findings suggest a strong therapeutic content in the literature. Religion eased the pain of decision-making in an increasingly complex society. The theme that religion provides “power to live by” appeared throughout the time period studied. Specifically, this theme supported the belief that religion promotes success or successful living and that it will provide “a feeling of ‘emotional’ security.” Significantly, the authors found strong support for the theme that religion promotes happiness or satisfaction in this world, but the emphasis within the theme varied throughout the period. In the earlier literature, there was a strong bias “toward promising [happiness] on decidedly ‘unworldly’ terms, by comparison with many of the later emphases.”39 The basic belief in a transcendent God is seldom referred to in the literature. In the crisis period of the depression years from 1930–1936, the existence of God was usually linked with the idea that belief produced positive results for the believer. This individualistic approach, separating the believer from the larger community, was typical of the literature. After the mid-thirties, this approach stressed the use of religion in combination with psychology for therapeutic purposes. Religion alone was not encouraged for changing one’s life. This same period saw a retreat from dogma and the belief that faith alone was necessary for salvation. Similarly, a stress on human goodness, without qualification, was more popular than views of human depravity. Finally, the theme of suffering, especially as it might have divine significance, became less important at this time, at least in the Protestant literature. Beyond these specific findings of trends in the literature, Schneider and Dornbusch suggest that popular religion becomes instrumental; it is

38. Ibid., 12–13. 39. Ibid., 15.

 The Therapeutic Trend used as a means to some secular end.40 By contrast, traditional religion would have encouraged faith, but not for the purpose of gaining some end. Faith, in itself, would constitute a good or necessary end and any results coming from it would be secondary. A person would be motivated by faith ﬁrst, then action, with some end as a natural but unintended result. But Schneider and Dornbusch note that in the literature the process is reversed; desired results lead to some action and then to faith. Faith, in this case, may not be the answer because it is true, but because it works. As Schneider and Dornbusch put it, faith becomes a piece of “spiritual technology.”41

The Consumer Church42 What Schneider and Dornbusch are describing here is a major change in the relationship of religion and culture. The traditionally dominant influence of religion on culture was gradually reversed and religion was increasingly influenced by culture. This influence broadened as religion shaped itself around a variety of new cultural forces. Taking the lead of business and commerce, for example, religion saw itself as marketing a product to meet human needs such as self-improvement. A competitive tone developed as religion repackaged doctrine for mass consumption and to challenge other cultural forces. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Religion was itself rapidly taking on aspects of a commodity. It developed marketing strategies, ways of advertising itself, and distribution networks . . . Religious entrepreneurs made aggressive use of technological changes in the media that were later copied by businessmen and politicians.43 But this process of religious commodification had been ongoing for over a century. Even George Whitefield has been accused of presenting “religion as a ‘product that could be marketed,’ a force competing ‘for a market share according to new rules governed less by mercantile controls and elite institutions . . . than by market forces and the sheer power of

40. Schneider and Dornbusch, “Inspirational Religious Literature,” 476–481. 41. Ibid., 479. 42. Shelley and Shelley, The Consumer Church. 43. Quoted from Moore, Selling God in Pew Notes, Pew Program in Religion and American History (Fall, 1995), 3.

 From Faith to Fun public opinion.’”44 But most early church leaders recognized that linking the church with frivolous worldly activities was questionable and threatening to the social order. Either the church had to develop its own form of spiritually directed entertainment or it had to find ways to legitimate commercial amusements and play as part of organized church recreation. At various times, the church did both. The result led to a process of popularization whereby church leaders “had to compete for people’s attention if they would be a counter-force to ‘political and other worldly excitements.’”45 For some church leaders, the popularization of religion meant going into the marketplace, much as writers of inspirational literature had done. In this century, technological developments such as radio and TV have justified and facilitated the entry of religion into the mass culture. Numerous studies of the impact of this entry on religion remain largely inconclusive; there are benefits to televangelism which counter the negative aspects. A realistic view would suggest TV ministers do not offer a substitute for worship. As a medium of communication, television focuses more emphatically on the preacher than on God. Similarly, the gospel is often distorted as TV emphasizes therapeutic values of abundance and acceptance rather than traditional religious values of service and sacrifice. In the opinion of Neil Postman, “on television, religion, like everything else, is presented . . . as an entertainment . . . [there is] no sense of spiritual transcendence . . . Television is . . . a form of graven imagery far more al- luring than a golden calf.”46 The more popular way to commodify religion is to bring the culture into the church, to make it a consumer church. For many churches, this commodification has been so slow as to be imperceptible. For other churches, usually the larger ones driven by a more competitive mode, commodification has been more apparent. Often the change is limited to the use of secular standards for the improvement of service to the congregation, service in the form of child care or adult recreation intended to draw the congregation to the church instead of to worldly amusements. In other churches, the change is more encompassing, settling for nothing less than success in the religious marketplace.

44. Moore, Selling God, 42. 45. Ibid., 50. 46. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, 116–117, 123.

 The Therapeutic Trend

Ministers, churches and voluntary societies were under constant pressure to adopt the methods and styles of American success . . . But success in America came to mean numbers, growth and power, not the biblical ideals of sacrifice, service and giving.47 Indeed, success becomes the defining quality of the consumer church. But in the therapeutic culture, success does not stand alone. It is always associated with other virtues such as happiness and self-expression. In the consumer church, personal satisfaction becomes a religious objective and the church becomes a means to obtain it. To be competitive in a free religious market, satisfaction must be encouraged by the church. Referring to studies of congregational growth, Shelley and Shelley suggest that “congregations prove unusually successful in reaching people and incorporating newcomers when the church and ‘the world’ are socially compatible.”48 This compatibility is most likely if it is not questioned by the church or taken seriously by it. When a church relies on the feeling component essential for mass marketing today, rather than on the element of faith, it reflects the therapeutic tone guiding its ministry. It also defines much of the direction of that ministry. Much discussion today centers about the mission of the church: should it challenge or comfort? This seems to be a false dichotomy since the church has always done both and, paradoxically, much of the strength of the church was based on meeting these conflicting needs. The tension in paradox was resolved by faith, resulting in a sense of spiritual health and good humor. But a traditional congregation was often isolated and stable—if not stagnant—in a culture which was more likely to be congenial and not challenging. All of that has changed. The culture now challenges the church and the church comforts the congregation. Much of the traditional tension in the church’s efforts to fulfill its paradoxical ministry has been lost. Faith in God’s provision to guide that ministry is often replaced by some religious expression in culture which redefines it. Nowhere in the ministry of a church is that more evident than in the preaching of a sermon.

47. Shelley and Shelley, The Consumer Church, 119. 48. Ibid., 170.

 From Faith to Fun Preaching for Pleasure The widespread use of humor in the American pulpit since Colonial times would suggest that it has always been acceptable in preaching styles. But that is not to say that humor has always been employed in sermons for the same reasons. In the earlier period, humor was usually used to belittle opposing doctrinal and social ideas. Humor was also used as it is in scripture: to ridicule human pride and the practice of idolatry. It was generally understood that humor could offer contrast to the monological style of the preacher and present another “voice”—a sense of humor to balance the serious. In addition, humor often resolved difficult theological and biblical questions which seemed irresolvable. The use of humor would suggest to the congregation that the question was not important enough to be taken seriously or that it was up to the parishioners to get the point of the argument buried in the humor. Used in this way, pulpit humor had a clearly intended didactic purpose.49 Many preachers used humor because it was human; it reached down to the average person to gain his or her insight. It allowed the preacher to gain a hearing from the congregation, to catch their attention, and then to keep it. Humor went beyond reason when attempts were made to encourage change in the congregation. Outside of the church, humor was used to handle disruptions from the crowd in an urban setting or in a frontier camp meeting. It wasn’t until the twentieth century, however, that pulpit humor was used “as an expression of ambiguous truth and an end in itself.”50 By contrast, earlier views of humor in preaching as a means to some other end were more mundane. Few preachers developed humor as essential to the human condition or saw its integral role in scripture. Unlike the Jew, who had a greater appreciation for the transcendent quality in humor, the Protestant pastor on a Sunday morning stayed with the more earthy qualities found in a joke. It is not too difficult to distinguish between pulpit humor which is transcendent and that which is secular. At the very least, the transcendent balances the ultimate against the immediate or the spiritual against the social. What is more difficult to discern is the way humor may be used as a means to some other end in a sermon. Whether used at a camp meeting or in a television ministry, humor becomes instrumental when it is used for

49. See, for example, Adams, Humor in the American Pulpit. 50. Ibid., 220.

 The Therapeutic Trend some purpose other than to develop the message of the sermon. For some ministers, there was real concern that such preaching would be viewed as entertainment and little else. Others might have tried to entertain with their preaching. Such a style would allow them to be more competitive in the religious marketplace. Consciously or unconsciously, then, pulpit humor may become a form of entertainment for the congregation. Traditionally, the preacher used humor for his purpose; he had a point to make and humor helped him to make it. But this point would have come from scripture and been developed in an expository manner. This traditional preaching style—whether it employed humor or not—was concerned with some spiritual truth and the development of it for the congregation. Used in this way, pulpit humor was instrumental. But, the Shelley’s claim, after World War II this preaching style changed. Cultural factors influenced preaching to present “truth on a slant.” This preaching “captures the interest of people who would only be bored by truth as a statement.”51 The primary influence in the development of this preaching style, they claim, came from the widespread use of counseling in the church and television ministries. An earlier significant influence had been the preaching style of Harry Emerson Fosdick who “began with a need or issue in human life, surrounded it with Scripture, and then crafted his manuscript.”52 Stated differently, the instrumental tone in traditional preaching was reversed. Instead of interpreting scripture to meet perceived needs of the congregation, congregational need was used to interpret scripture. The shift in preaching style during this century suggests how American Protestantism has been influenced by the therapeutic trend in the culture. The same pattern of inversion described in the study of popular religion applies here as well: the feel good factor in religion is given precedence over the faith factor. Consistent with the therapeutic ethos, a permissive tone supplants the restrictive one. Gradually, the gospel message which was to challenge and comfort was limited to a message that comforts. There appears to be an unwillingness (or inability) to maintain the traditional paradox that a sermon is both to challenge and comfort. Indeed, it is this loss of paradox which is so characteristic of the pattern of secularization in both contemporary religion and humor.

51. Shelley and Shelley, The Consumer Church, 192 and Englund, “Observations on Preaching Since 1950,” 54–55. 52. Shelley and Shelley, The Consumer Church, 193.

 From Faith to Fun One study of contemporary preaching seems to support these con- tentions.53 Marsha Witten’s study of sermon content was stimulated by the awareness of mixed messages in contemporary Protestantism; “one side bearing the visage of traditional piety, the other the face of secularity.”54 This mixed message is more likely the result of therapeutic thinking than any inherent quality found in the gospel message. Witten’s study examines this pattern of inconsistency through a case study of 47 sermons, almost equally divided between pastors in the Southern Baptist denomination and the Presbyterian Church (USA). The sermons were all based on the parable of the Prodigal Son found in Luke 15:11–32. She ﬁnds that God’s transcendent qualities are minimized in favor of his more immanent features. Easily accessible, God is patiently concerned with the extraordinary and daily problems of people. He is tolerant of human foibles and errors, and democratic in his treatment of mortal beings. When God is seen in transcendent terms at all, his fearsome qualities are either deemphasized or banished from the discourse.55 Witten concludes that these sermons present a God who is made plausible through the individual’s emotional identiﬁcation with him . . . a God whose transcendent qualities have, for the most part, disappeared; a God who, in his immanence and understanding, smiles benevolently on the age of psychology.56

CONCLUSION The triumph of the therapeutic in the middle of the twentieth century opened the door to a new way of thinking, a new worldview which had been evolving since the beginning of the century. Technology, urbaniza- tion, industrialization, and immigration all created a newly problematic world. The resulting dis-ease prompted a response which led to the therapeutic ethos. In contrast to earlier responses to cultural change, this ethos denied the reality of paradox which, in the past, had led Christians to be “in the world but not of it.” Witten claims the sermons she studied “suggest

53. Witten, All Is Forgiven. 54. Ibid., 5. 55. Ibid., 34. 56. Ibid., 132.

 The Therapeutic Trend that living a proper Christian life is more a matter of adopting an attitude of modest enjoyment of the world’s offerings than of making behavioral sacrifices.”57 Permissive thinking was chosen over restrictive thinking. Another way of stating the shift is to say that while the traditional Jew accepted the reality of paradox, the contemporary Christian denies it. A subtle pattern of secularization crept into the therapeutic ethos. The traditional Jew, who accepted the order in the world as he found it, learned to hope with humor. The contemporary Christian is less accepting of this order and its inherent paradox. The therapeutic ethos encourages a person to see humor as a coping mechanism, as a means to become adjusted to the world with its inherent tensions. Consequently, the modern Christian learns to cope, but not necessarily to hope. There is a fine line here that Witten detects from the sermons she studied: The Christian message is tantamount to a set of principles that one lays over the experiences of the natural world in order to get more out of them—which, in effect, means properly enjoying them . . . The emphasis is not on the glorification of God, but on people’s enjoyment of life in the world.58 As modernity winds down, so does the therapeutic ethos. For some who have never learned to hope, coping becomes a bland experience. Indeed, they may seek new tensions in their lives, new forms of paradox and excitement. Tired of coping, they need a new hope, a new form of reality to which they might escape. Others have never learned to cope with the modern world. They have always been marginal to it, partaking neither of the benefits which enriched the lives of others nor of the problems they experienced. They, too, seek escape. They want some new form of humor that will help them feel good about themselves and the world about them. Together with the “copers,” the “escapees” want another lifestyle, one that will provide some direction for the future. Postmodernity offers much for both groups. It supplies the deconstruction of modernity and the construction of a new reality, even a new form of humor to make sense of the paradoxical and the nonsensical. We could call that form of humor “fun.”

57. Ibid., 59. 58. Ibid., 62–63.

 

The Fun Factor

To be happy, to enjoy ourselves, we must above all be free. —Jürgen Moltmann

If nobody makes you do it, it counts as fun. —Hobbes (of Calvin and Hobbes)

Sometimes there’s a ﬁne line between criminally abusive behavior and fun. —Dilbert

Fun is winning. —Julio Franco

was walking across campus several years ago just before final exams, Ienjoying a sense of ease and completion. As I passed two students fin- ishing a conversation, I heard one say to the other, “Well, study hard and have fun.” What a curious idea, I thought. What a paradox. Certainly as a student, I could never have fun while studying hard. Surely, I thought, that was not what the student meant. She intended to say, “Well, study hard and then have fun.” But that was not what was said, and I believe that was not what was meant. After many years of teaching, I’ve learned that students today are more capable (in some ways) than students were in my day. They had learned, among other things, to juggle multiple conflicting tasks with considerable ease. No, I decided, the student meant what she said; while studying hard, have fun. As paradoxical as it seemed, she encouraged commitment to one kind of activity while, at the same time, escaping it with another activity. This way of thinking in itself could be a new experience, an escape from the traditional way of doing things.

 The Fun Factor It didn’t take much thought from me to conclude that the student would probably not be successful. Her thinking was characteristic of the therapeutic ethos with its permissiveness, and in the long run, fun, in some form, would win out. The goal of studying hard would become secondary and would continue to be so. It would be possible, symbolically, to give the impression of studying while actually having fun. She was typical of a generation that has learned to redefine a task so that studying hard may mean anything we want it to mean. Nor must it mean the same thing for me that it means for you. My freedom implies complete permissiveness with no restraints. And, as Hobbes suggests, that’s fun. I can’t be critical of this student. After all, she is a product of a pervasive way of thinking found in all levels of our culture. It’s now common practice to take working holidays by combining work with leisure. And on such holidays, it’s not uncommon to talk work while playing. Paradoxically, we might even take play more seriously than work. We are free to interpret the holidays as we will. Nor is it necessary that our interpretation be shared by another; I may define work in one way and you in another. In today’s world, one interpretation may be as good as any other. But as an outcome of the therapeutic thinking of the last 50 years, we are more influenced by permissive ways of acting than by restrictive; we’re more inclined to play than to work. There are few restrictions or norms to guide us. Consequently, my student friends are more likely to be serious about fun than studying hard, and without guilt. This is a new way of thinking, a new worldview. It is a slice of the postmodern culture. It’s a culture which, more often than not, does not take things seriously. One might even call it a culture of fun, or more simply, a Fun Culture.1

THE MEANING OF FUN Before the eighteenth century, fun was deﬁned as a trick, hoax, or practical joke played on someone. The word was derived from the verb “fon,” “to make a fool of,” which came from the noun “fon” or fool. The meaning, apparently, was applied to individual, singular acts of a person who would look foolish in a crowd. He was generally regarded as incompetent and irresponsible, someone to be tolerated but not punished. While he oﬀended propriety, he didn’t necessarily break rules. Except for isolated

1. Todd Gitlin uses the term America’s fun culture in the Preface to the revised edition of The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, xix.

 From Faith to Fun celebrations usually associated with religious practices, fun had no broad cultural meaning at this time. But psychologists have come to understand that all human emotions may be expressed on three different levels; the universal, the cultural, and the personal. Grief, for example, has a universal meaning for all those who experience the immediate and personal loss of a life, regardless of their cultural background or experience. But the cultural response to death may be conveyed in rituals and practices which are meaningful only to the members of that culture. And the personal expression of grief will vary with the individual experience of it. In the same way, fun may be understood universally, culturally, and personally. A clown, for example, who wears an extraordinarily bulbous nose and disproportionately large shoes would bring laughter from anyone. But the town fool who breaks community standards of propriety does so in a cultural context and may be quite acceptable in another community. On the personal level, the fool may be defined as such for reasons which are unique to the person. To others, the fool may appear more as a hero than a curiosity. In any case, the fool brings into life some form of crisis or ambiguity that requires interpretation. By the eighteenth century, fun meant amusement or merriment which led to the adjective funny or amusing. The meaning had broadened to describe a certain atmosphere or feeling that could refer to a variety of circumstances or persons. Further elaboration of the meaning of the word in the nineteenth century led to the idea that something or someone was strange or odd. To have fun or to be funny implied that some action was different from some standard, perhaps even deviant. Something funny could not be taken seriously as part of normal, everyday life. Gradually, fun became associated with thinking and behavior that balanced the routines of life, if not escaping from them. Lewis Gaylord Clark, editor of the Knickerbocker in 1846, apparently had this meaning in mind when he wrote to his brother, “the present age is emphatically the Age of Fun. Everybody deals in jokes, and all wisdom is inculcated in a paraphrase of humor.” 2 Wisdom, apparently, could be enriched with humor or could no longer be taken seriously. In either case, fun was characterized as blending humor with seriousness to produce a new spirit, a new sense of freedom from the past. John Tebbel claims

2. Quoted in Tebbel, The Media in America, 160. (emphasis added)

 The Fun Factor that the humor of the time had a uniquely American ﬂavor and was characterized by rich local sources that developed tall tales and character stereotypes.3 Such humor was of the common man and was used to describe and, perhaps, even explain the curiosities found in everyday life. It produced “folk laughter,” a type of earthy, frivolous laughter of the people that deﬁned times of merriment.4

Cultural Fun Until the twentieth century, then, fun was clearly associated with escapist activity, some form of amusement that took place at designated times and places such as fairs or carnivals. Gradually, people came to agree on what was and was not fun. In general, these times would include activities outside the routine of life. But by the twentieth century, this notion of fun was changing. The idea that fun was increasingly used as a euphemism and a “general-purpose substitute for something worse” is probably correct.5 Today, fun is often used to describe some activity in daily life that breaks a taboo or belittles it. In the context of fun, for example, obscenity and vulgarity are often not taken seriously. Fun implies some act of freedom is justiﬁable regardless of the circumstances. That is not to say that fun initially intends to break some code. It is more likely that fun trivializes propriety as it responds to some other cultural need. Gradually, fun has become the means by which permissive behavior is accepted as a major goal of modern life. Writing of American culture in the middle of the twentieth century, Jules Henry describes a society in which “self-denial seems to lead nowhere any longer.”6 People had come to realize that containing their impulses no longer provided the reward they had experienced in the past. They sought a sense of freedom, “a capacity to seize any opportunity to stay alive,” a capacity Henry refers to as “adaptive radiation.”7 He chose this term because it expressed America’s determination to stay alive amidst the pressures of those years.

3. Ibid. 4. See Sanders, Sudden Glory, 138. 5. Rawson, A Dictionary of Euphemisms, 112. 6. Henry, Culture Against Man, 21. 7. Ibid., 43.

 From Faith to Fun

In fun the American saves part of his Self from the system that consumes him. Fun, in its rather unique American form, is grim resolve . . . we are as determined about the pursuit of fun as a desert-wandering traveler is about the search for water, and for the same reason.8 In this context, fun becomes an essential part of the system, a part which balances the seriousness of life and contributes to a sense of cultural joie de vivre. But Henry goes on to say that “fun in America is also a clowning saboteur undermining the very system fun was meant to sustain.”9 Fun could be described as subversive because it encourages disorder where there should be order. Society needs students to be serious about work and to study hard, and fun puts into question this need. Paradoxically, fun is necessary to counter the seriousness of life, while, at the same time, it can’t be taken so seriously that it consumes that seriousness. Henry claims that serious matters like work must be taught because society depends on them for its existence. But fun is more personal, more spontaneous and counters the serious in us. It is “the repository of all untamed instinctual cravings that surge within us.”10 Henry describes this “metaphysic of fun” as a value which claims that fun is necessary to complete the world, to make it whole. The more restrictive life seems, the more fun is needed to balance that restrictive- ness. In the youth culture, adolescents “are just learning to have fun—it’s as if you were opening a new frontier.” 11 Fun is a necessary part of growing up, a part of learning how to become an adult. Fun may begin in the teen culture but it quickly ﬁnds itself outside the normal, the accepted, and usually it is expressed in adult fashion. That’s why, Henry claims, high school students do not consider extra-curricular activities and sports to be fun. They spend long hours on the ice rink or in swimming meets to please others, not to please themselves. For this reason, fun is usually found outside those legal or moral boundaries accepted by others.

8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. 10. Ibid., 44. 11. Ibid., 271.

 The Fun Factor Natural Fun It is within these boundaries that we find what Henry would refer to as the “morality of fun.” There is a spontaneous, natural mirth in fun that causes it to be highly valued. It is the kind of fun parents refer to when they tell their teenagers to “have fun.” This thinking assumes the universal quality of fun which implies the innocence remembered by the parents. It’s the kind of fun which reminds them of sledding on hilly pasture land or skinny dipping in the river. There is a nostalgic quality to it which rein- forces the moral quality associated with it. While this is an important and continuing notion of fun, it is not the major concern of this book. Teenagers may give another slant to the meaning of fun and think of it differently. While parents may assume value-conforming behavior, teenagers may think of value-denying behavior. Fun for the teenager becomes cultural when it responds not to the activity itself, but to the values other teenagers attribute to it. Sledding gains a cultural meaning when the objective is not simply to slide down a hill, but rather, to cut off as many other sleds as possible in the process. Similarly, one can have fun by swimming in a river or by throwing others into it. Unfortunately, fun is often gained at the expense of another. Paradoxically, fun may have two different meanings which both support and subvert some moral system at the same time. And yet, Henry claims, the system contributes to its own subversion. If adults accept fun, in principle, as good, how can they discriminate clearly those acts of fun which are acceptable and those which are not? Knowing their own teenage experiences, adults often find their perceptions blurred and the definition of fun is broadened rather than nar- rowed. Consequently, Henry believes “that the development of fun . . . has intruded so far into the orthodox procedures, obligations, and austeri- ties of school, that it has received recognition by the school authorities.”12 Apparently, school culture had entered an age of fun in the mid-Sixties.

Fun as Subversive It would be naive to think of fun only in terms of random, spontaneous acts or thoughts. Fun is deﬁned not only in terms of what could generally be considered funny or foolish. These two qualities describe fun in its moral, natural form. The other meaning of fun is closer to the euphemis-

12. Ibid., 204.

 From Faith to Fun tic definition of fun “as a substitute for something worse.” The “worse” could refer to individual acts of drunkenness or reckless driving or it could include the interruption of some party or other social event. In this case, fun suggests there is something in culture that accepts, and even approves, such behavior. This cultural form of fun occurs when actions, if not defined as fun, would not be approved. This approval, whether given consciously or unconsciously, gradually subverts the moral and normative structure of the system by misrepresenting or distorting what is true and traditional. Fun, remember, is a substitute for something else. At best, it asks that something serious not be taken seriously. At worst, it masks intentions and actions in a variety of dubious forms of behavior. There is a sense in which all humor is a mask for something else. Behind all laughter is some unspoken feeling or intention. But this laughter is usually constrained by some cultural definition of propriety. Because fun prefers to be free of such expectations, it becomes subversive as it focuses on self, not society. There is no concern for the consequences of thought or action, no recognition of paradox or contradiction. Consequently, fun is never stretched to consider alternative ways of thinking or acting. As the morality of fun gives way to the metaphysic of fun, it becomes self-absorbed. The spiral is always downward to other levels of freedom expressed in frivolity and triviality. But fun masks all of this by suggesting it is moral, that it is a natural expression of joy and uninfluenced by culture. Stated differently, when people are having fun they are often thinking something else. Let’s use the example of a leading hitter on a baseball team who is interviewed before a crucial game in the World Series. He says, “We’re just going to go out there and have fun.” What does he mean? How are we to interpret his meaning of “fun”? According to Julio Franco, the goal is to win. There is also the idea that a World Series game is still only a game, that it is not to be taken seriously. The fan is left with the impression that money or prestige are not important, that the team will look upon the game as routine. The player may want to redefine the situation for the fans by breaking away from the belief that baseball is only a business. In fact, the fan knows more is at stake. But he also understands the high moral value of fun, especially in sports, and will probably accept the player’s definition. In effect, fun denies one reality, that a World Series game is serious business, to assert another reality, that baseball is only a game we enjoy playing.

 The Fun Factor But the fan would probably not accept such a statement from the owner of the player’s team. He would understand the owner can be nothing but serious, that his investment in the team defines baseball as a business. The fan expects this thinking from him in the same way he expects the player to see baseball as a game. In short, the player has more credibility than the owner when claiming a game is fun. The fan takes the player seriously and believes his claim. Indeed, the fan wants to believe him, for it would be troubling to think the player, like the owner, sees baseball only as a business. But the player’s credibility may be stretched a bit when he holds out the next year for a multimillion dollar raise in his contract. The player’s monetary interest in the game is masked by his claim that he’s “just going out there and having fun.” I want to use this illustration to make two separate points, both of which will be developed later. The first is that fun in our modern world allows us to cope with two conflicting cultural meanings; it constructs one reality while denying another. As baseball has evolved into a paradoxical mix of sport and business, with all the complexities and contradictions that change implies, fun provides some rationale for the idea that baseball is more than a business. Fun doesn’t resolve those contradictions. It merely denies the seriousness of any inconvenient claim. Thus, the player who defines the game as fun when winning on the field has no problem defining it as business when signing a multi-million dollar contract in the off-season. For him, there is no inconsistency in such an action. Fun simply allows us to deny the seriousness of all problems. The second point relates to the player and his role in the cultural elite. Rieff, remember, suggested that a cultural elite arises in a new cultural system to challenge the old system. As a member of that elite, the player does more than simply define baseball as a game and not a business. When he says the game is fun he models an ethic of play over an ethic of work. In an atmosphere of fun, life is free from routine expectations. As a sports star, his influence extends to larger cultural values and the traditional morals embedded there. As Rieff puts it,”by offering modes of release, a challenging cultural elite may become the spiritual preceptor of the moral system that is being born.” 13

13. Rieﬀ, The Triumph of the Therapeutic, 249. (emphasis added)

 From Faith to Fun PLAY In his classic work Homo Ludens Johan Huizinga has clear opinions on fun; it “resists all analysis, all logical interpretation . . . it cannot be reduced to any other mental category.”14 Although he knows of no equivalent for fun in other languages, he does note that it is of recent origin. He suggests that fun is the essence of play; it is “an absolutely primary category of life, familiar to everybody.”15 In that sense, fun is natural and non-cultural, what Henry refers to as the morality of fun. Indeed, Huizinga refers to the playfulness of animals which, presumably, have fun while playing. But he also notes the possibility of fun in religious rituals when “holy earnest reduces itself to mere ‘fun.’”16 Here is the subversive quality in fun. There is also some pretense when religious intentions are masked as fun. The position of practitioners in such rituals “is much like that of parents playing Santa Claus for their children: they know of the mask, but hide it from them.”17

Fun as Purposeless As noted earlier, there is a fine line between fun that is natural, or moral as Henry would refer to it, and that which is more cultural and often deceptive. Huizinga claims it is not possible to mark the line where one becomes the other. When playing a game, can we know when we are “only pretending” and when we are not? Does it make a difference? Probably not if play is not taken seriously. Indeed, Huizinga believes that is how play should be taken. Since there is no contradiction in play, no paradox, there is no reason to take it seriously. Initially, Huizinga claims, play is dominant over culture which evolves from it. Later, play tends to recede and the more serious elements of culture come to the fore. “But at any moment, even in a highly developed civilization, the play-instinct may reassert itself in full force, drowning the individual and the mass in the intoxication of an immense game.”18 It’s this irrepressible quality in play that finds widespread expression in society. Play is not merely the opposite of work. Understood more

14. Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 3. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., 23. 17. Ibid., 22. 18. Ibid., 47.

 The Fun Factor broadly, “it’s an antidote to all the mundane duties of adulthood, from partnering and provisioning right down to the tedious maintenance of Self.”19 There is a purposelessness in playthat reaches into every corner of life. And yet, that purposelessness is not completely satisfying. We idealize play too much and expect more from it than we should. “Yet even as we idealize play, we’re finding the ideal is elusive and depressingly complex . . . [play] can also be disruptive, dysfunctional, even addicting.”20 The serious sports fan may play when he goes to a major event, but there isn’t much fun if his team loses. To guarantee fun, one resorts to face-painting, weird headgear, signs, and banners. To have fun, one must move outside the ordinary, outside the normal and routine patterns of the game. Culture then redefines fun for us and provides new ways to enjoy it,usually with little interest in the rules of the game. In any case, play and its correlate fun extend throughout society. In every phase of life, we make provision for play as a balance to “boring sameness” and “anxiety-producing chaos.”21 Once that balance is maintained, play reduces boredom and contributes to the well-being of the system. But it is also possible that play may lead to anxiety-producing chaos, if not for the player, then for others. While the player experiences fun, then, others may experience chaos. Much depends on how the player symbolically redefines the play setting. The baseball fan who expresses his/her enthusiasm with body paint may have fun and contribute to the competitive spirit of the game but the fan who decides to have fun by “streaking” across the outfield in a crucial inning is breaking the law. In either case, he/she differs from the fan who takes the game seriously by keeping score. The question is which of these fans best represents the spirit of the game?

Fun as Purposeful Psychologists believe that at times of playfulness, people are inclined to have considerable conﬁdence and self-assurance. At such times, they are likely to stop “asking questions about whether they can do something or whether they should do something.”22 They tend to be more permissive

19. Roberts, “Gooﬁng Oﬀ,” 36. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid., 38. 22. Ibid.

 From Faith to Fun than restrictive in their thinking. In a therapeutic culture, people are encouraged to “just do it”; to play with new thoughts and practices. Modern society, especially with its technological bounty, offers enormous potential for such play. Symbolically, we have fun playing with new computer programs and TV channels. We have developed a new world of “counter- environments,” as Marshall McLuhan called them. With few, if any, traditional restrictions in these environments, we may be free without guilt. No rules or expectations constrain or even guide us. In such a world we may play and have fun. Paradoxically, when play becomes highly valued for the freedom it affords, society wants to control it. “Adult play is now entirely secular, un-sacred. It has become a thing, a commodity, an event undertaken at a specific time, for a specific purpose.”23 As play loses its spontaneity, it is forced into some larger cultural purpose. For the participant, play is good for health and physical well-being. For the observer, a winning team is good for morale and community spirit. There is a spirit of fun to be defined and shaped in tangible ways. A plethora of new industries, from the manufacture of athletic shoes to the establishment of new profession- alized sports, has arisen to meet newly defined needs. Society encourages us to take play seriously, to spend money on it, to fit it into our schedules. At that point, play loses some of its appeal. The self is lost among all those others playing in the same way. Play becomes routine, predictable. We want to escape again, to have fun in new and creative ways. We want to be free to just do it, whatever that might mean at the moment. Ultimately, fun demands the denial of its original spirit. There is a sense in which one person’s play may be another’s fun. Climbing Devil’s Tower may be fun if I have never climbed before. It’s an escape with some excitement and risk involved. It certainly wouldn’t be play because I don’t know the rules or have the experience. But if I have climbed Devil’s Tower many times, it’s no longer fun. There’s no challenge, no way to test myself or to learn something new. Now it would be fun to climb Mt. McKinley or perhaps Everest. Play accepts the past and enjoys it; it understands the world as it is and lives with it. Fun rejects the past and escapes it; it looks to the future and anticipates it. For the teenager, fun is driving a car, drinking, or experimenting with sex. Jurgen Moltmann puts it in these terms: “We are then no longer playing merely with the past

23. Ibid., 39. (emphasis added)

 The Fun Factor in order to escape it for a while, but we are increasingly playing with the future in order to get to know it.”24 Play implies a consensus that certain minimal rules exist and that we can play the game according to them. In fun, if any rules exist, they are open to interpretation or even misrepresentation. Consensus is to be gained, not assumed. What is needed is some agreement that fun is not only good but also that it accomplishes some larger goal. For my student friends, it means agreeing that, indeed, they are studying hard while also having fun. If laughter among them identifies fun, it does not identify study. Defining fun requires, first, that traditional meanings of study be rejected. Then, there must be some consensus as to the meaning of study if it does not require reading certain material or memorizing certain facts. When students agree upon such meaning, studying is defined in new ways that are acceptable to them. Studying is now a group activity accompanied with food, music, and always the laughter which provides the necessary consensus that, indeed, we are studying while having fun. In this way, fun becomes functional for the student. In the same way, it becomes functional for the shopper who buys a brand of cereal because it offers more fun at the breakfast table or chooses a vacation in Hawaii because it offers more fun possibilities than Iowa. Ultimately, all fun becomes functional.

THE IMAGE Cathy, in her frenetic comic strip form, is evaluating her decisions as a “Baby Boomer.” She read 33 articles on how her generation needs to save more and then bought a $300 “Wizard” with an expense account function. She saw 12 reports encouraging people to be on the cutting edge of technology if they are to have job security and then bought a Far Side screen saver. She skimmed four books on the trend to simpliﬁcation and bought Calvin Klein sneakers, Anne Klein sunglasses, and a cup of Starbucks Special Blend. Her conclusion: “The Baby Boomer Motto: Ignore the signs, embrace the logos.”25 As a typical Baby Boomer, Cathy is learning to adjust to new contradictions in life. Logos, not signs, help them to make decisions and to take seriously what had been frivolous. They are learning that the power of the word is being replaced by the logo as image. They’re replacing much of

24. Moltmann, Theology of Play, 12–13. 25. Cathy, Cathy Guisewite, Universal Press Syndicate, September 9, 1996.

 From Faith to Fun what had been rational with the non-rational. Baby Boomers laugh with Cathy, traditionalists laugh at her. In either case, humor shapes our opinion of the changing times. It uses cultural conventions, which are familiar to all, or cultural inventions, which are unique creations.26 Humor plays with the conventions, fun plays with the creations.

The Image as Non-rational Our concern here is with images, whether conventional or invented. A general definition for an image is a “mental picture evoked by the use of metaphors, similes and other figures of speech.”27 Originally, an image referred only to a picture as an imitation or copy, usually of something conventional. Gradually, images became more inventive, leading to figurative language that could be deceptive and even misleading. Traditionalists felt rather hostile toward the use of metaphor in language and the freedom of expression it allowed. Language was to be clear and precise, with little room for deviation of meaning or even interpretation. But literary style changed, allowing for creativity and imagination. Image then came to have the meaning of a picture or imitation. Put more simply, “images don’t exist in the real world but, rather, in our mind’s eye.”28 In her study of the history of photography, Susan Sontag claims the separation between image and reality was stimulated by unbelief in the middle of the nineteenth century.29 The growth of scientific thinking did not, as expected, affirm conventional notions of reality. As words became important for themselves and not for their traditional meaning, one was free to say one thing and do another. With such freedom, the acceptability of unbelief rivaled that of belief. Like fun, words and images acquired a euphemistic quality that eschewed the negative and questionable in favor of the positive and preferred. One might even say that the meaning of a constructed form of reality challenged the meaning of a created form of reality. This thinking became part of the therapeutic culture that chafed at prohibitions and considered consistency and responsibility to be restrictive. The meanings of other signs were also changed to fit new expecta-

26. See Berger, Signs in Contemporary Culture, 85. 27. Frazer, “The Origin of the Term ‘Image’,” 149. 28. Berger, Signs in Contemporary Culture, 57. 29. Sontag, On Photography, 153.

 The Fun Factor tions rather than old conventions. A smile, for example, used to express happiness or joy. Today, a smile is often a symbol for something other than what it was traditionally used for. Freed from that conventional meaning, a smile may now suggest anything we can agree upon, from a sign for a satisﬁed customer to the hope that we’ll “have a good day.”

The Image as Rational Paradoxically, the image has gradually become more important than the thing it represented. Cathy is merely a contemporary example of a trend that is over a century old. Writing in the middle of the nineteenth century, Ludwig Feuerbach wrote about the period: that it “prefers the image to the thing, the copy to the original, the representation to the reality, appearance to being”—while being aware of doing just that . . . that a society becomes “modern” when one of its chief activities is producing and consuming images, when images that have extraordinary powers to determine our demands upon reality and are themselves coveted substitutes for firsthand experience become indispensable to the health of the economy, the stability of the polity, and the pursuit of private happiness.30 Several important points should be noted here in passing. First, the emphasis placed on images as inventions is part of the secularizing process which began in the nineteenth century. Meaning was no longer considered to be rooted in a reality created by God but was open to personal interpretation. Second, the preference for images instead of things led to a preference for illusion instead of reality. A reality, or more accurately a pseudo-reality, based on imagination was preferred to a reality based on experience. Third, the freedom impliedin this liberating process was undoubtedly part of the trend toward the meaning of fun described by Clark in 1846. One could play with images as one could play with cards, always finding new ways to escape the challenges of life. Finally, Feuerbach’s words are a pointed commentary on the way images may redefine the meaning of good humor in a society. Culturally, the concern is now for personal happiness, economic health, and political well-being which have become commodities to be gained if we are to be happy.

30. Ibid. (emphasis added)

 From Faith to Fun The Image as Cultural Let me be a bit more specific about this last point. Modern cultural elites are largely symbol handlers or image makers. They are at the forefront of cultural change, whether it be the trend toward vulgarity in language or triviality in entertainment. When Daniel Boorstin set the tone for studies of image makers in 1961, he limited himself primarily to the worlds of news and business.31 The image maker is always involved in ideals, something the public may escape to. If such ideals are nothing more than illusions, they are of no importance. Images of ideals, whether Big Macs or Hawaiian vacations, need not be true. They need to be functional, to encourage some action or belief. In the hands of a cultural elite, images distort one reality by suggesting another; facts become illusions while illusions become facts. Carried to the extreme, images may distort our understanding of the supernatural and our relation with it. Commenting on this possibility, Boorstin says an image of God becomes “a fabrication useful for a God-fearing society. God himself becomes not a power but an image.”32 Images, then, offer freedom, an escape to something better than what is experienced. We listen to friends describe their camping vacation to the Southwest and even share their videos with them as they tell us of the fun time they had. And yet, as events unfold, we learn they all were painfully toasted by the sun, had two tires go flat in remote desert areas, were sick from bad water, and even had their camp in a canyon washed out by a rare flash flood. But all these experiences are irrelevant compared to the image presented, that they did, indeed, have a good time. How can this apparent contradiction, this paradox, be explained? We could say that in a world of everyday life where routine and boredom may become intolerable, even a disastrous experience may imply some fun. This is an observation we’ll have to return to. In this context, I would prefer to think there is another explanation, and that is that the reality of problems is repressed in favor of the pseudo-reality of images. Contradictory experiences are resolved with humor rather than with seriousness. Truth, as it is experienced, gives way to illusion, as it is expressed. As images are used to convey idealistic illusions, they move fun from a personally defined experience to a culturally defined experience. Image

31. Boorstin, The Image. 32. Ibid., 183.

 The Fun Factor makers, like Kodak, have shaped a variety of fun experiences for all of us to share. In a world of new and radical possibilities, the idea of having fun provides consensus. As instruments of fun, images accentuate the positive and discount the negative. But images go beyond the positive tone encouraged by the therapeutic culture. They “have become the norm for the way things appear to us, thereby changing the very idea of reality.”33 This new idea of reality suggests that the world is unified simply through the use of images which deny conflict. “This spurious unity of the world is affected by translating its contents into images. Images are always compatible, or can be made compatible, even when the realities they depict are not.”34 In a world of images, there are no contradictions or paradoxes. Consequently, tension and dis-ease are unknown. There is always the impression of good humor—whether it exists or not.

DEVIANCE In 1993, Senator Daniel Moynihan of New York wrote a much publicized article titled Defining Deviancy Down.35 Working from well-established theories of crime and deviant behavior, he states there are times when a society will not define as deviant behavior that which ordinarily would be considered deviant and punishable. In his terms, deviancy is being defined “down.” This means that deviancy is being re-defined so behavior which would have been considered abnormal at one time is now accepted as normal. He suggests this pattern of re-definition is becoming commonplace in the United States; we’re accepting a lot of behavior that is not good for the culture or the person. In his analysis, he decides that a wide spectrum of groups look at new forms of deviance and decide they “benefit from re-defining the problem as essentially normal and doing little to reduce it.”36 In sociological terms, deviance is functional for those groups. Especially when a society is under stress, he concludes, it “will turn to pain killers of various kinds that end up concealing real damage.”37

33. Sontag, On Photography, 87. 34. Ibid., 174. 35. Moynihan, “Deﬁning Deviancy Down,” 17–30. 36. Ibid., 26. 37. Ibid., 30.

 From Faith to Fun Fun as Re-definition Fun is such a pain killer when it relies on images to deny the reality of problems. In a culture dominated by fun, images distort traditional meanings and re-define them in new and therapeutic ways. A striking example is a recent case that was described in the national media.38 A female em- ployee of a well-known fast food restaurant quit her job because of her employer’s “use of vulgar and obscene language,” much of which was directed at her. Her application for unemployment benefits was denied by a judge who claimed “the talk may have been an attempt to boost morale.” If this were the case, he said, the use of lewd talk “would have been an effort to achieve a legitimate business goal” and her claim for insurance would be invalid. He defended his decision by suggesting that such language “can serve to promote group solidarity.” Morale is a very therapeutic term and is used here to deny the reality of sexual harassment. On one hand, the judgment takes seriously the idea that vulgarity might improve morale. At the same time, it denies the fact of sexual harassment and the legal implications involved in such a denial. In Moynihan’s terms, a traditionally unacceptable, and even illegal, form of deviant behavior is defined down, allowing it to be accepted in a court of law. The definitions of behavior are reversed so that what had been moral is now immoral and what had been immoral is now moral. Surrounding this incident is a culture of fun which says that such experiences need not be taken seriously in a court of law. In such a culture, reality becomes an illusion and an illusion becomes a reality. Remember Feuerbach’s prescient observation that images will be re-defined by cultural interests in preference to first hand experiences. The result is a contradiction in meanings. In this example, the meaning of vulgarity becomes paradoxical when it is suggested that vulgarity might improve morale in a place of employment for men and women. What is the reality being evaluated by the judge? Is it the belief that male values should continue to be the norm in a mixed gender employment setting or that in today’s world the morale of both men and women is enhanced by vulgarity? In either case, traditional norms are being replaced with new expectations. Permissiveness which is not to be taken seriously becomes the standard for making legal judgments.

38. Article, “Lewd Talk Called Morale Booster” in The Chattanooga Times, September 26, 1997.

 The Fun Factor Fun, then, may be seen as an expansion of therapeutic thinking and the permissiveness it expects. But permissiveness in fun goes beyond therapy’s attempt to balance traditional restrictive norms. The freedom expected in fun looks to the future, not to the past, and is oriented to self, not society. Fun doesn’t take images and words seriously, even vulgar and obscene words. In a world of fun, paradox is essential to stimulate laughter in order to gain some sense of consensus. Indeed, fun has become a new form of therapy, a new way of looking at the world. When all else fails to make sense of life, we engage in fun so that we might laugh together at it.

Fun as Entropy Fun has become so much a part of the culture that it has given new meaning to it. And, as Moynihan suggests, the effects are widespread. Random acts of violence seem inexplicable as well as uncontrollable until we see them defined as fun by some violent group trying to escape an apparently hopeless situation. Legal judgments in a court of law appear ludicrous, and perhaps even immoral, until we understand that such judgments merely attempt to cope with a problem that seems too complex if taken seriously. When we are limited in our attempts to cope with a problem, fun allows us to trivialize the problem and ignore possible consequences. Moynihan is alarmed at “the trivialization of the lunatic crime rate.”39 But the climate of fun supports this trivialization, this belief that we should not worry about problems that are inexplicable or uncontrollable. If we can’t escape them physically, we may escape them mentally. Any inconsistency in this thinking becomes acceptable if we think of it as fun and enjoy some laughter over it. It’s important to note here the difference between fun as action and fun as attitude. Fun is a natural part of life when it provides a normal out- let from daily routines. All of us act in ways that are deviant to have fun. In general, these diversions remain non-problematic. But there are times when bounds are broken as fun spills over into behavior that is generally unacceptable to the majority at that time. Fun becomes attitudinal when such activity becomes the goal of fun-seeking. Fun is sought not because of the sense of freedom it provides, but because it is prohibited and exciting in itself. Fun is then no longer therapeutic. When fun dominates

39. Moynihan, “Deﬁning Deviancy Down,” 30.

 From Faith to Fun our thinking it needs no justification; it becomes its own justification. Something of this spirit of fun-making appears in Garfield who is playing with a ball of wool. Gradually, the ball unwinds as Garfield lies on his back, spinning the ball in his paws until we see only a huge pile of wool. From that pile comes a voice: “We’re having some fun now.”40 In a culture of fun, Garfield becomes a comic hero who leers at us from the rear window of a passing auto and encourages us to have”some fun now.” If fun is justifiable in our culture, it is not simply because it masks deviant behavior. Powerful cultural undercurrents disrupt our traditional sense of order and replace it with disorder. Little in daily life remains routine or mundane. Social norms and expectations no longer work as they did. In a world of constant change, there is only ambiguity and contradiction. Traditional humor has little to contribute to such a world. What is needed is a humor of entropy that rejects order and celebrates disorder. Fun provides that type of humor. It thrives on paradox, and with Garfield, revels in chaos. Little is taken seriously. Fun becomes the means by which we fit into such a world. It forms the basis for defining good humor and what is meaningful in the culture. In the process of change, what was sensible is now nonsensical and what was immoral is now moral. In a real sense, fun makes us comfortable in a world turned upside-down.

CONCLUSION Calvin is discussing photography with his father. He doesn’t understand why old photos are black and white and not in color. His father’s answer is not satisfying. Calvin pursues the question, reasonably and logically, but to no avail. The answers are always ambiguous and contradictory. Finally, he retreats to a tree with his pet tiger, Hobbes. “The world is a complicated place, Hobbes,” he says. “Whenever it seems that way,” Hobbes replies, “I take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner.”41 Hobbes’ tiger’s-eye view of the world is quite perceptive. Problems are often not real, but illusory. If one waits long enough, the problem will seem to disappear. Fun fosters this view by suggesting that problems need not be taken seriously; one can study hard and still have fun. At the same time, fun alters the meaning of the world and the language used to describe it. What is important is not always what is true but what is

40. Garﬁeld, Jim Davis, United Features Syndicate, Inc., April 18, 1992. 41. Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson, Universal Press Syndicate, October 29, 1989.

 The Fun Factor imagined to be true. If we imagine some deviant act to be fun, then it becomes fun and not deviance. It is often the image of the act that counts and not the act itself. Such thinking allows deviance to be defined down at the same time we pursue some form of culturally defined fun. Most of us, like Calvin, have a traditional streak that wants clear-cut answers. For most of the last century, our thinking was shaped by the idea that logic and good sense should tell us whether the world is black and white or a complex of colors. In fact, it could be both or neither, depending on your point of view. Like the answers of Calvin’s father, the world may be more paradoxical than we thought. In a world of paradox, life, like photos, is rarely black and white, and in a sense, it’s not important. What is important is our response to such a complex world. Do we take it seriously or not? How we answer that question often depends on those about us; are they serious or not? Humor, remember, is a worldview that requires consensus which then helps us come to some agreement when there might otherwise only be disagree- ment. It is the genius of fun to reduce complex problems to simple solu- tions. And if, in the process, truth is ignored, we can still laugh together. Fun becomes an antidote for the world’s problems when we agree that it is. And if, at the same time, fun becomes a dis-ease as well as an antidote, if it leads to lethargy as well as laughter, that’s an ambiguity we can live with. We might even find a tree branch and take a nap with Hobbes while we wait for dinner.

 

Secular Fun

Calvin: Don’t you think it’s odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it beneﬁt us? Hobbes: I suppose if we couldn’t laugh at things that don’t make sense, we couldn’t react to a lot of life. Calvin: I can’t tell if that’s funny or really scary. —Calvin and Hobbes

A smile is just a grimace that has been edited for public consumption. —Agnes

ew analysts of culture had the depth of insight that Marshall FMcLuhan brought to his study of the media in the Sixties. He understood that technology of the electronic age would create a totally new environment that would reprocess information in radically new ways. But what set McLuhan apart from other analysts was his understanding of how these changes in the media would affect the larger culture. The critical difference, he believed, was between media that are “hot” and those that are “cool.”1 Hot media have “high definition” meanings and convey much information while cool media have “low definition” and convey little information. A photograph, for example, is hot because it conveys far more visual information than a cool cartoon. The effect of this difference between hot and cool on recipients of the information is especially important. Since hot media provide much information, an audience may be more passive and less involved with the message while the opposite is true of cool media. Coolness requires much involvement by an audience to interpret information. Like a smile, coolness symbolically implies ap-

1. McLuhan, Understanding Media, 22–32.

 Secular Fun proval and suggests how we are to live. And like fun, coolness has become a euphemism that resists explanation. It is only to be accepted and not questioned. Any culture will be disrupted as one form of media replaces another. A period of culture shock is experienced before the transition is completed. McLuhan refers to an aboriginal culture based on stone axes used exclusively by the men of the tribe. When steel axes were given to women and children, the old culture collapsed as men lost the symbol of their importance. McLuhan concludes: “Specialist technologies detribalize. The nonspecialist electric technology retribalizes.”2 Elsewhere he states: Humor as a system of communications and as a probe of our environment—of what’s really going on—affords us our most appealing anti-environmental tool. It does not deal in theory, but in immediate experience, and is often the best guide to changing perceptions.3 The introduction of computers into culture has had a similar effect. The processing of information is now the responsibility of anyone who uses a computer, not just the specialist in a particular area of research. In general, the cultural trend in our society is from hot to cool, depending on the media referred to. TV, for example, has turned society into a cool culture as viewers become more involved in programs than they did with radio. The radio was a hot medium compared to the coolness of a tele- phone. Speech itself, however, is cooler than either radio or phone because the listener has to be fully involved in a conversation and its context to benefit from it. Quite likely, it is for this reason that instant messaging has become so representative of coolness in the youth culture. McLuhan recognizes the symbolic meaning of the terms hot and cool may be more important in the culture than in the media. As contemporary slang, cool suggests “a kind of commitment and participation in situations that involves all of one’s faculties.”4 Coolness is highly valued as it produces an excitement not readily found in everyday life. It implies a sense of freedom to offset the routines imposed by others at work, school, or home. But coolness is not a constant - its meaning changes with the culture. At one time, humor could have been considered cool

2. Ibid., 24. 3. McLuhan, The Medium is the Massage, np. 4. McLuhan, Understanding Media, v.

 From Faith to Fun as it played with the ambiguities of life. But old jokes no longer apply to modern culture; they have nothing to say about daily life today. “Humor is presumably not ‘cool’ because it inclines us to laugh at something, instead of getting us emphatically involved in something.”5 And what we must now become involved in, I suggest, is fun.

A CULTURE OF FUN In the therapeutic culture, permissiveness was needed to balance the restrictive aspects of life. This balance provided the equilibrium needed for good humor in the society. In a culture increasingly influenced by the media, a balance between hot and cool is needed to provide a similar sense of stability. For McLuhan, the radical interruption of hot culture by coolness, as in the case of the aboriginal culture, is disequilibrating. A hot culture needs to be gradually cooled by less threatening means. In many cases, this means the use of humor and play. “It is play that cools off the hot situations of actual life by miming them.”6 Since mimicry does not take a situation seriously, it is less threatening than if it did. Once mimicked, the situation also seems less real, even illusory. Gradually, then, the therapeutic culture is being replaced by another culture, one that is highly symbolic and that relies on the media to merge the values of coolness and fun. For want of a better term, we could call this a fun culture, a world where the unreal meets the real, producing a paradox resolved with illusion. The media have created a totally new environment, a cool environment that demands far more involvement from the audience than in the past. Involvement in that world produces fun as people, together, interpret the ambiguities found there and confirm those interpretations with laughter. But illusions are essential for interpreting the paradoxes in this new world. In the opinion of one commentator: “Man’s illusions are the basis of comedy, and laughter arises from the gap between illusion and reality.”7 Sociologists refer to this broad process of social change in terms of the social construction of reality.8 In an incredibly complex world, we

5. Ibid., vi. 6. Ibid., 31. 7. Rapf, “Comic Theory,” 195. 8. See Wuthnow, Rediscovering the Sacred, 11–20 for a succinct statement of this theoretical perspective.

 Secular Fun need some ﬁltering device to separate what is important from what is not important. We rely on an array of symbols to help us determine that importance. Slang words like fun and cool are part of that symbolic ordering system. Laughter, too, has such symbolic importance as do clichés like “Have a nice day” or “Be happy.” Even the symbolic “happy face” attempts to bridge the gap between our real and ideal experiences, between the real and the illusory. To understand this new environment, we need to be symbolically involved with it. Our sense of morale and well-being depend on it. It is important to accept the cultural illusions as real and play with them in terms of everyday life. In a secular world, fun becomes a form of faith that relates us to the unreal, even the transcendent. In that world, fun is essential if we are to experience more ease than dis-ease. Put more simply, in our postmodern world, fun is both fundamental and functional.

FUNCTIONAL FUN When we think about it, Hobbes’ comment makes a lot of sense. If we don’t laugh at the foolishness of a complex world, we aren’t involved in it. Without laughter, we aren’t part of that world; we don’t share it with others. In fact, that world of reality and illusion becomes unreal as it slips from our experience. We become sheltered, even isolated, from the culture of fun about us. Indeed, the nerds of this world are deemed to be, culturally, weird. And yet Calvin, with his own brand of wisdom raises an essential question. What if laughing at things that don’t make sense is more scary than funny? Should we be more serious about the ambiguities found in everyday life? Should we, perhaps, respond to life with logic rather than laughter? In sociological terms, is fun more dysfunctional than functional? Calvin is not alone in his concern. Reﬂecting on post-Watergate journalism, Carl Bernstein refers to “the idiot culture” which has emerged in America.9 He attributes much of the blame for irresponsible cultural sensationalism to journalists who are more inclined to amuse people than to challenge them. In his opinion, “the lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and con- tempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism.”10 Bernstein claims this trend to idiocy is not a subculture

9. Bernstein, “The Idiot Culture,” 22, 24–25, 28. 10. Ibid., p. 25.

 From Faith to Fun within our society. “For the ﬁrst time in our history the weird and the stupid and the coarse are becoming our cultural norm, even our cultural ideal.”11 Moynihan would certainly agree. Another noted journalist, Norman Corwin, refers to the triumph of mediocrity which has trivialized American values.12 Much of this trivialization occurs without our awareness. In the interest of personal and social well-being, we’re inclined to “get along by going along.” Even smil- ing, he claims, has its erosive eﬀects when it is integral to advertising cam- paigns. As a corporate logo, a smile distorts the meaning a smile should have. Commercials trivialize life when smiles are used to sell cereal or soft drinks. “When material things, soups and soaps and automobiles, are equated with happiness-makers, then we are sending a very, very garbled, if not misleading message.”13 And it is this message, McLuhan would claim, that massages the culture.

Fun as Commodity Corwin’s point is crucial. In our culture, happiness is considered to be an essential personal quality to be stimulated in the consumer. We’re more interested in what happiness might do for us than what it might do to us. In our thinking, distortions of the real are not as important as aspirations for the ideal. We’re less concerned about how a bowl of cereal is presented in a commercial than we are about the implied benefits the cereal might provide for us. Advertising understands that principle very well. And for that reason, humor, and especially fun, is functional; it sells. Modern advertising knows that commodities are bought because they meet contradictory needs, not logical needs. If a hamburger provides pleasure along with the pain of paying a high price for it, then it appears sensible to buy. People buy things they can’t afford because such purchases provide some risk or excitement. And if those qualities are not readily apparent in the purchase, then advertising will create the illusion that those cool qualities are found in the product. Consequently, advertisements aren’t expected “to be taken literally, or even all that seriously . . . [Ads promise] intense ‘real life’ to their clientele and [implicitly define] ‘real life’

11. Ibid. 12. An interview with Corwin in USA Today, August 18, 1986, 9a. See also his book, Trivializing America. 13. Ibid.

 Secular Fun as something outside the individual’s everyday experience.”14 And that experience offers a promise of coolness and fun. Studies of humor in advertising all point to its benefits. One study reports that as much as 42 percent of all advertising center messages about humor.15 When asked whether humor in advertising “creates a good feel,” 98 percent of the advertising professionals surveyed agreed. What is striking in this study is the fact that not all audiences seemed equally responsive to humor in advertising. Those persons considered most suitable for humorous advertising were generally professional, well-educated, and younger males with an upscale lifestyle, exactly the person thought to be rational and objective in decision-making. And yet, humor helped this audience to focus its attention on a product and even encourage it to switch products quite likely because it offered “something outside the individual’s everyday experience.” This idea that humor replaces logic in advertising was supported by a cross-cultural study of advertising in Britain and the United States. “In both countries, humor is a device to deliver serious product messages in most instances, particularly for products . . . where one might expect a greater need to convey factual information.” 16 When researchers evaluated the types of humor used in these ads, it was found that ludicrous humorous devices were used at least three times more frequently than other devices in the U.S. and nearly twice as much in Britain. These findings leave two impressions about the functionality of humor in advertising. First, humor, paradoxically, is more useful in ads which seem least appropriate for the use of humor, and second, the type of humor most often used is at the ludicrous or fun end of the scale. This fact seems especially incongruous since such humor seems least appropriate for the targeted audience. Fun seems to be functional because it deals with broader problems of decision-making than those needed to purchase a product. It deals with everyday problems of happiness and daily pleasure. Advertising gives the impression that products provide a balance in life’s relationships and good humor in situations too often experienced as difficult and problematic. Indeed, it could be said that humor in advertising is functional because it is therapeutic.

14. Fox and Lears, 28. 15. Madden and Weinberger, “Humor in Advertising: A Practitioner View,” 23–29. 16. Weinberger and Spotts, “Humor in U. S. versus U. K. TV Commercials,” 43. (emphasis added)

 From Faith to Fun Another study of cross-cultural use of humor in advertising seems to clarify the process of advertising’s effect on the consumer. Basing their study on the importance of incongruity in humor, the researchers studied the possibility that an audience would be rewarded by the process of resolving some incongruity in an ad regardless of the product being advertised.17 They found that, indeed, incongruent contrasts were used in humorous situations to sell products in a variety of cultural contexts. The situations involved three different sets of contrasts; actual/not actual, expected/not expected, and possible/impossible. They conclude that the incongruity principle in humor is a basic feature of humorous devices used in cross-cultural advertising. These studies seem to suggest that humor in advertising has more indirect than direct value. Humor seems to tap into a “comic view of life” that people use when making purchases as mundane as household goods.18 This view of life stresses optimism in the face of disturbance. It interprets those events which fall on the line “where the ludicrous and the serious meet.” Advertising seems to understand that line well and appeals, consciously or unconsciously, to this comic view of life in its approach to selling. In this context, the decision to buy a product is not simply an economic decision. Rather, it implies a larger cultural decision is being made, one which, when made, affirms the position of the buyer in that culture. Quite likely, the consumer has a sense of coolness when the purchase is made. In any case, fun is a commodity that sells well.

Fun as Entertainment We miss the point of fun as a commodity if we limit it to the world of hard goods. Fun, remember, implies an attitude of coolness that is readily transferred to a variety of cultural values and perceived needs. If humor in advertising has value for the mass of mainstream consumers, then it could have similar value for society’s minorities, those without power or purpose. Teenagers, of course, make up much of that market. But they have little immediate interest in middle class lifestyle packages. They need to escape, not conform. They are more interested in the marginal, the forbidden; what they want, not what they need. And, as we have seen,

17. Alden, et al., “Identifying Global and Culture-Speciﬁc Dimensions of Humor in Advertising,” 65. 18. See, for example, Robert W. Corrigan, (ed.), Comedy: Meaning and Form, 1–11.

 Secular Fun what they want is experience, cool experience that involves them in the ambiguities and contradictions of life. Entertainment implies a diversion, some form of amusement or spectacle that distracts attention from a major interest. For those in the mainstream of life, entertainment functions in this way. It provides a breathing space, some release from the real stuff of life. But those outside the mainstream find purpose, even power, in entertainment. Instead of finding humor in the serious, marginal persons stress the serious in humor. Topics which might be taboo in a serious context are acceptable in a humorous one. Consequently, the person is not held responsible for discussions of taboo topics if they are couched in terms of humor.19 For the marginal person, the serious implications of humor become more important than the humor itself. “Having fun” means experimenting with the forbidden, even the grotesque. Such experiences shape opinions and impressions of the unreal safely, without commitment or responsibility. Horror humor is a case in point. Jokes about serial murderers, theory claims, allow people to cope with horrors in real life situations. Halloween is an example of the way our culture provides a time to mock taboo topics and frightening experiences. Teenagers, especially, are a major market for horror movies with 89 percent of adolescents aged 10–13 viewing major films in this genre once, and up to 62 percent seeing them at least four times.20 Such films are cool because they meet a paradoxical need to laugh at what is scary. If the unpredictable is threatening, then watching a horror film repeatedly removes that threat as the unpredictable becomes predictable. Multiple viewings change an experience of the unknown into an expression of the known. The frightening becomes friendly and the unreal becomes real. As a major critic of violence in movies, Michael Medved is disturbed by the tendency to legitimate violence in modern films. Thirty years ago screen violence was often muted by some act of goodness or virtue, perhaps even redemption. Today, he claims, scenes of violence are meant to be enjoyed by the audience. Laughter at violence now “suggests that mil- lions of Americans have been influenced by this hideous new concept of fun.” 21 Images of sadistic murderers combining a humorous one-liner

19. See, for example, Emerson, “Negotiating the Serious Import of Humor,” 169–181. 20. Article, “Fright Can Be Good for What Ails Us,” in The Chattanooga Times, January, 21, 1993, p. D1. 21. Medved, Hollywood vs. America, 191.

 From Faith to Fun with a deadly twist of a knife are contradictory but laughable. The paradox is contrived and then resolved with laughter. But in the context of entertainment, the effect is always humorous. For that reason Medved claims “today’s movies advance the . . . appalling idea that the most appropriate response to the suffering of others is sadistic laughter.”22 It would be naive to point an accusing finger at horror movies alone. Referring to “media as epistemology,” Neil Postman argues that the idea of truth has been influenced by the mass media.23 How we think and what we believe are influenced by the kind of message received. In such an environment, fun is ubiquitous and shapes our response to all images. America’s Funniest Home Videos, for example, has been rated one of the ten most violent shows on TV, along with Tales from the Crypt and Walker, Texas Ranger.24 In a context of entertainment, people laugh at children falling from swings, women being thrown from horses, and men being hit by falling timbers. In such a context, we are de-sensitized to the meanings of violence or horror. In a culture of fun, humor becomes the universal language used to interpret the world and its meaning for us. The common assumption today is that all humor is good. The idea that we might be “amusing ourselves to death” is neither popular nor understood by the majority of people.25 We continue to support the belief that laughter reflects a spirit of well-being and consensus. However, humor no longer functions as it had. As a technique, humor may be put to a variety of uses to meet new needs and expectations. Advertising creates a spirit of fun to help a consumer decide to buy a product which, otherwise, might not be bought. The media send a message of fun to anyone seeking entertainment, regardless of the moral impact it might have. By erasing moral distinctions, fun encourages people to suspend their traditional values and assume new viewpoints which appear less negative than they really are.

22. Ibid., 192. 23. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Ch. 2. 24. Reported by The UCLA Television Violence Monitoring Report in The Chattanooga Times, (September 20, 1995). 25. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Foreword.

 Secular Fun Fun as Work Humor has generally functioned to support orderliness in the world. In the workplace, humor provides such support by reducing stress that often leads to unproductive emotions and loss of control. Humor offers the opportunity to step away from a stressful situation and see it from a different perspective. John Morreall describes this ability to take a fresh point of view as “mental flexibility.”26 In the workplace, mental flexibility encourages tolerance for ambiguity and risk-taking. It provides the emotional distance needed to be objective about a problem. Humor also acts as a social lubricant in a work setting and contributes to teamwork and good morale. Laughter among workers implies a degree of intimacy that improves job satisfaction. Humor, then, is functional when it softens the hard edges of a work environment. But humor is also functional when it contributes more directly to organizational purposes. Attempting to learn why humor is pervasive in business settings, Carmine Consalvo studied laughter in task-oriented managerial meetings.27 In the first stage of the meeting, humor, when it occurred, tended to be negative and critical. Most humor occurred in a brief period following the initial stage of tension. In this transitional stage, all participated in the humor that led to group consensus. Humor, apparently, functioned to reduce tension produced by the problems and the initial period of criticism. This transitional phase led to a problem-solving phase which used humor to create a spirit of playfulness and unified decision-making. Most humor was positive or neutral and contributed to the resolution of the problem. Such humor is “sensible foolishness” as it raises play to the status of reason and encourages consensus in task-oriented meetings. Traditionally, then, humor has contributed to the therapeutic and decision-making needs of the organization. But as the workplace has become a more complex and paradoxical environment, new needs have developed. Specifically, a new way of thinking is needed to make sense of chaos. Indeed, “chaotics” is the name given to a new discipline that claims the world can no longer be understood in terms of conventional deter- ministic philosophies.28 The impact of ambiguity and contradiction on

26. Morreall, “Humor and Work,” 359–373. 27. Consalvo, “Humor in Management,” 285–297. 28. See for example, Anderla, et al., Chaotics.

 From Faith to Fun the business world has been so great that it appears to be out of control. In many businesses, no attempt is made to regain control. Chaos is often defined as normal and must be accepted as such by the workforce. As Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, has stated: “If you’re in an absurd situation and you’re not changing it, then you define it as being OK.”29 Chaos may even dismiss the idea that logic and rational thought should be taken seriously. “Ambiguity defines the market. So doesn’t it follow, as day follows night, that ambiguity must be—or ‘ be’—the organization?”30 Can such an organization be taken seriously? Is it possible to work in such a setting without playing? What factors—if any—hold the marketplace and the workplace together under these circumstances? These questions suggest the world, increasingly, is influenced by divergent and unpredictable forces, all held together by a way of thinking rooted in fun. We can understand now that order and chaos may be thought of as mirror images of each other. If order can lead to chaos, then chaos can lead to order and order may be completed in disorder. There are profound questions here that beg for discussion. At one time, such questions would have been considered by philosophers and theologians. Now they are the concern of humor consultants who, indeed, might have answers for many of the implicit questions. Fun is functional when mental blocks are treated as toy blocks in a playpen which welcomes creativity and spontaneity. People can probe new depths of an organization when they don’t have to take their findings seriously. Encouraged to be participants and not just observers, they gradually accept problems as non-problematic. All of that may be to the good. At the same time, an atmosphere of fun affects our conceptions of work and what it should mean to us. Old definitions of productivity and work schedules may become obsolete. In many cases, they should be replaced by new ideas of work. But the meaning of work is also increasingly phrased in terms of the self, not the organization. Problem-solving often takes second place to the enjoyment one finds in a congenial work setting. Once the workplace is defined in terms of ambiguity, managers become “facilitators of disorder”; they “challenge and disrupt until, finally, things become so jumbled that [they] reorganize work at a new level of efficacy.”31

29. Levy, “Working in Dilbert’s World,” 55. 30. Peters, Liberation Management, 379. 31. Wheatley, Leadership and the New Science, 116.

 Secular Fun As deviance is deﬁned down, radically new ways of thinking are needed by management and workers alike. This mode of thinking is facilitated by broader changes occurring globally as well as nationally. These changes complement well the changes in the workplace and support the idea of good humor found there.

Fun as Leisure A major global trend in this century has been the increase in free time. Therapeutic thinking during this period did much to stimulate the value of discretionary use of time. As a result, the emphasis on restrictive behavior was balanced by permissive thinking until, gradually, the permissive became dominant. The well-being of the person was now of primary importance as a variety of new industries centered on the use of leisure had grown to meet the demand. As the world leader in this trend, our society produces more forms of leisure time entertainment than any other country. If the boundaries of the American entertainment industry were drawn widely enough, it is believed that it could be credited with generating more than $300 billion in annual sales. By the year 2000, it was expected that half of the revenue earned from American movies and records alone would come from foreign countries.32 The primary target of this industry will be the pleasure-seeking individual wherever that person might be found. Traditionally, leisure time activities were centered in the home and the community. Work and leisure often merged in time and place and were available to all. The result was a communal sense of well-being that all could experience. Much of this changed with increased industrialization and specialization of leisure time activities. In the workplace, workers experienced no free time and demanding production schedules left little time for leisure after work. As leisure became a commodity at the beginning of the twentieth century, some balance was restored. Gradually, the lower class was included in the market targeted for entertainment and its opportunities for leisure time activities expanded. In this process, traditional notions of morality changed; vaudeville became more profane, and women were liberated in their use of leisure time. Increased commodi- ﬁcation of entertainment required a larger market that would include the family and children. The quest for a middle class market gradually

32. Bernstein, “The Leisure Empire,” 56.

 From Faith to Fun absorbed lower class audiences into the modern notion of leisure time. The concept of fun became a common denominator for the definition of such activities.33 That claim needs some clarification. In the kind of hot culture described by McLuhan, the meaning of entertainment is packaged in the medium and the audience passively accepts that meaning. Ice skating, for example, is a hot sport because its skills are not meant to be abused in activities best described as fun. In a cool culture, meaning is built in by the audience as it participates in the interpretation of it. In the terminology of postmodernity, the activity is a text which is open for readers to create their own meanings. This cool approach to entertainment is dominant today and is largely responsible for its global appeal. The universal attrac- tion of the soap opera Dallas, for instance, is explained in this way: Dallas may, in part, be pleasurable to watch not because [of] the fantasy it engenders . . . but rather because it allows us to make fun of [it] . . . Most of the mass popular narrative made today for an international viewing or reading audience has a deliberately ambiguous, even unstable, tone. Enjoy it as melodrama or as satire, or both . . . only enjoy.34 The traditional notion of leisure as free time has increasingly led to its definition as fun time. The permissiveness implied in the first definition has been broadened to include a freedom in the interpretation of the meaning of that time. “Freedom from” has been expanded to include “freedom to.” The traditional notion of the Sabbath as freedom from work, for example, was hedged by boundaries which defined how time was to be used. With increased opportunities to define Sabbath time in new and creative ways, thinking shifted from an emphasis on restriction to one of permissiveness. Contemporary interpretations of the Sabbath concentrate on the “freedom to,” with scarcely any consideration to the idea of “freedom from” work. This latter notion is now taken for granted in modern society. Put another way, the religious basis for defining freedom has given way to the secular basis for defending it. Definitions of leisure vary on the question of freedom. While some argue for a normative dimension in leisure, others define it in terms of

33. See, for example, Butsch, ed., For Fun and Proﬁt. 34. Ibid., 35.

 Secular Fun complete freedom.35 Culturally, the trend is certainly toward complete freedom. In the workplace this freedom is being translated into two major trends. One is the integration of work and leisure as lines between them are blurred. New forms of technology have given employees increased opportunity to deﬁne where and when they will work. Flexibility in work schedules is now recognized as a crucial element in the well-being of the organization and its employees. A second trend recognizes the importance of relationships in leisure time activities. As work is increasingly automated, it is believed workers will seek leisure activities that are more active, social, and participatory. Such activities are inclined to be cool and directed toward fun. When “work is seen as a means rather than an end in itself, leisure is less likely to represent freedom from involvement than it is freedom to become involved.”36 In the ﬁnal analysis, leisure is becoming more rewarding than work. The traditional work ethic was rewarding because of the satisfaction found in the work and the relationships with other workers. Leisure offered a break from that work and an opportunity to rest. The integration of work and leisure has given new meaning to the workplace. The old restrictive atmosphere, heavy with routine and predictability, has provided greater freedom. The new work environment is more permissive, especially in relationships across traditional status and gender lines. The new work ethic—if one could call it that—takes the workplace less seriously. It encourages the “freedom to become involved” in new and creative ways with associates. This freedom is cool; an atmosphere of play facilitates relationships needed to interpret work in its new setting. It is this sense of freedom and everything associated with it that symbolizes leisure and the place it has in this new ethic.

Fun as Relationships For the past few chapters, we have been concerned with a major cultural shift that has been occurring in modern times. One dimension of this shift has been from restrictive to permissive patterns of behavior. Another dimension has been from hot to cool media, as McLuhan described them. Together these changes have led to an enormous increase in the

35. For an excellent discussion of these questions, see Kando, Leisure and Popular Culture in Transition, ch. 2. 36. Ibid., 94.

 From Faith to Fun unpredictability of social relationships. Traditional notions of trust and responsibility, for example, can no longer be assumed. Men and women relate to each other in new and challenging ways in work and leisure settings. The media, especially, have popularized a variety of new lifestyle relationships. Many of these, formerly considered deviant, have now been introduced into the cultural mainstream. Relationships among the divorced or homosexually inclined most readily come to mind. Some of these changes have taken place in the interest of fun and with a playful attitude. The result has produced a culture cluttered with relationships that seem ambiguous and even contradictory, though often approved and even encouraged by peers. The problem we now face is to make some sense of such relationships, to understand whether we are seen as cool or strange when involved in them. In our interactions with others, we want to avoid oﬀending them while also being taken seriously. We need a new sense of propriety—some way to make sense out of nonsense—if that is possible. And if not, we have to agree that the nonsensical is acceptable and not weird. How do we respond, for example, when our best friends announce their coming divorce? What do we say in a group when we learn that a member is ho- mosexual? How do family members who are in fundamental disagree- ment about the use of “call waiting” on the phone gain some consensus on the option? At one time these situations would not have been problematic because they would not have been. Now we have to make sense of them and keep good social relationships in the process. Some years ago the concept of “aligning actions” was developed to explain how people may negotiate problematic situations so interaction is facilitated and identities protected.37 When culture is unable to prescribe some behavior for a problematic situation, aligning actions provide an explanation participants may agree upon. It is convenient, for example, to explain a problematic situation as a misunderstanding.38 Since no one is seen as directly responsible for the situation, blame is mitigated and all are expected to share some responsibility for a problem interpreted as a misunderstanding. Another common aligning action is the disclaimer which allows a person to be dissociated from speciﬁc content of words or

37. Stokes and Hewitt, “Aligning Actions.” 38. Young, “Misunderstanding as Accounts.”

 Secular Fun deeds.39 Using a disclaimer, a person may be critical of an ethnic group while claiming some reason why he or she isn’t. Used in these ways, aligning actions interpret ambiguous and contradictory situations so they become acceptable, even normative. In any case, they are not interpreted as serious as they might have been. Some situations may be so paradoxical there is little hope they may be redeemed. There is no way to align them with conventional interpretations. As Michael Mulkay explains, such situations might benefit most from humor. “Highly structured situations restrict and confine humour, both in scope and quantity. Humour blossoms, it seems, when the course of social interaction is neither prescribed by conventions nor regulated from above.”40 In such settings there is freedom to define a relationship as one wants. Humor and laughter are encouraged to align any uncertainty that might not be taken seriously. In addition, humor allows persons the freedom to play with other explanations for behavior that might be questionable, or even bizarre. When we interpret a problematic situation with laughter, it provides some basis for fun and sociability. Laughter is the symbol that triggers consensus and removes the vagueness and unpredictability found in human interaction. To gain some perspective on paradoxical relationships we could return to Abraham and Sarah and their reaction to God’s promise. Faith, not laughter, was expected. This was before the Mosaic Law, which built much predictability into human relationships. In McLuhan’s terms, the law is hot since it has high definition and will only continue to be important in a hot culture. In our cool culture, however, laws and other forms of normative expectations are not well received. Relationships are based on low definition symbols that require much personal interpretation and involvement; we need to be involved with others to provide that interpretation. Our culture encourages such involvement and offers laughter as the means for interpretation. The idea that some situation is funny or that we are having fun goes a long way toward gaining consensus despite underlying and implicit problems. In a context of humor, serious matters need not be taken seriously. In a cool culture, this kind of paradox offers a richness and texture to relationships which finds agreement in humor. The traditional mean-

39. Hewitt and Stokes, “Disclaimers.” 40. Mulkay, On Humor, 173.

 From Faith to Fun ing of language may not be adequate for interpreting such paradox. New forms of language are needed as people negotiate meanings of relationships. A smile, for example, has a variety of meanings as an aligning action that reduces ambiguity in social situations.41 However, it needs to be interpreted correctly and that interpretation only comes with experience in the culture. Like laughter, a smile is a cool symbol that invites interpretation. Once agreed upon in a relationship, fun provides a context for that interpretation.

DYSFUNCTIONAL FUN Jules Henry described fun as a unique American form of humor that gives life much of its purpose and direction. This is the natural fun which is spontaneous and highly valued in our culture. It is sought for its own value and not as a means to some other end. Fun becomes functional when, masked as something else, it helps the culture to attain some objective in, for example, business, entertainment, work, leisure, or relationships. In this form, fun is a technique used by culture to motivate actions needed by society: to buy a new type of car or to spend leisure time at some resort. Fun is functional because it is cool and smoothes the transition to a changing culture. At the same time, fun is dysfunctional when it is subversive of traditional culture and its values. It seeks freedom from boundaries which now seem restrictive. Fun then contributes to the deconstruction of the culture and its language. Symbolically, it distorts traditional meanings and constructs new meaning with metaphors and images. Paradoxically, its call to freedom leaves us bound to the demands of the emerging culture and its expectation that it will be taken seriously. It is this “grim resolve” referred to by Henry that changes the natural fun into its cultural and more secularized forms. Culture re-packages the spontaneity of our fun and makes it social. And because it is self-oriented as well as social, fun does not necessarily contribute to the well-being of the group. Since personal deﬁnitions of fun proliferate, what is fun for you might not be fun for me. But committed to the value of fun in a cool culture, we aﬃrm it even when we don’t have it. Indeed, fun is often more illusory than real.

41. See, for example, Erving Goﬀman’s brilliant analysis of smiles in Relations in Public, 160.

 Secular Fun Paradoxically, then, fun must be taken seriously. It must be understood how fun structures the secular world. It’s important to consider the broader implications of fun, to see it as dysfunctional when it has harmful effects on others or on cultural values. This dysfunctionality can only be seen when a series of questions are asked of fun: who may profit from fun at my expense? How does fun erode important cultural values? Are some forms of fun detrimental to health or safety? And if they are, why are they described and accepted as fun? Why do people want to define fun for us if it should be a spontaneous act of freedom? The dysfunctionality of fun becomes apparent when such questions are asked with seriousness, perception, and the realization that fun is not always funny.

CONCLUSION As a worldview, fun is at the polar extreme from faith. Where faith sees order, fun wants disorder. When faith focuses on the transcendent, fun focuses on the imminent. What faith reveals, fun masks. Faith accepts paradox and brings it to God. Fun denies paradox and resolves it for man. Faith provides a tangible sense of well-being with the divine. Fun provokes an illusory sense of good humor with others. Faith defines and sustains eternal values. Fun defies and subverts moral boundaries. Faith builds on past experiences. Fun bargains for immediate experiences. Faith is first religious, then cultural. Fun is first cultural, then religious. This last point will be developed in a later chapter. It is noted here as a reminder that worldviews have a religious as well as a cultural dimension. Remember Wittgenstein’s observation that humor is not just a mood but a way of looking at the world. Despite our desire to have fun as we want it— to be free from constraints and expectations—it will always be influenced by our worldview, whether religious or cultural. In either case, we are less free than we would like to think we are. As a religious worldview, humor looks at the world as God does. As a cultural worldview, humor looks at the world as fun does. The difference is crucial. What is not apparent is the contribution made by each worldview to the sense of well-being found in a society. Does faith provide a better sense of corporate good humor than fun? In our daily routines of life, that might not appear to be the case. There’s an exhilaration and joie de vivre in fun-loving groups that is hard to beat. But if the question is phrased in terms of paradox, the basis of all humor, the answer gains some focus.

 From Faith to Fun Niebuhr, remember, made the distinction between ultimate and immediate incongruities. Faith is the natural response to the ultimate incongruities; laughter is the response to the immediate. Together, they complement each other in a worldview that is both religious and cultural. But there is a tension there to be maintained. Without that tension and the paradox it suggests, our humor may revert to faith or fun. We might also say that the religious may become cultural or the cultural may become religious.

 

Sacred Fun

I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether. —Neil Postman

More fun than sleeping in. —Church ad for Sunday worship

n his study of students at nine Christian colleges, James Davison IHunter describes the changes in American evangelicalism during the twentieth century.1 He ﬁnds a gradual retreat from the orthodox questions held at the turn of the century which is comparable to, but not as pronounced as, that experienced by liberal Christianity during this period. This shift is primarily “from other-worldly interests to inner-worldly interests; from the transcendent to the imminent.”2 Accommodating itself to the forces of the modern world in this way, evangelicalism has moved from its experience of marginality at the beginning of the century to a place of legitimacy and respectability in society. Although evangelicalism has learned to survive, and even thrive, in the modern world, it may have jeopardized its traditional theological orthodoxy. The issue seems precari- ously balanced on the underlying problems of survival and revival.

FAITH AND SECULARIZATION Whether the condition described by Hunter could be deﬁned as secularization is not of concern at this time. What is important is to consider whether this balance between traditional orthodoxy and modern episte-

1. Hunter, Evangelicalism. 2. Ibid., 48.

 From Faith to Fun mology can be maintained. Hunter claims it can’t. “As religious traditions and the sociocultural realities of the modern world order confront each other, there is little question as to which of the two gives way to the other. Almost invariably the former yields to the latter.”3 Implicit in this shift is some acceptance of the therapeutic trend of the time, an acceptance which results in the different kind of religion referred to by Postman. This is not merely a philosophical or implicit accommodation to modernity. There is, instead, a fundamental change in thinking and behaving that accepts and even approves of “the sociocultural realities of the modern world.” This new generation of students feels comfortable with a tolerance for views which would have been unacceptable in the past. Their religious convictions are less firm and their opinions on questions of orthodoxy are more open to acceptance of these views. In general, what had been accepted as true in the past is now accepted as a belief. Bluntly, much of the shift in thinking was from fact to feeling. Hunter notes that the criteria for orthodoxy are not changing. These remain firmly entrenched in the institutional bases of the faith and, usually, in individual consciousness. What is changing is the cultural meaning of orthodoxy as well as specific criteria for evaluating it.4 Basic lifestyle questions concerning use of alcohol or gambling, for example, have been opened to broader interpretation and have been legitimated as Christian liberty. And yet the symbolic boundaries of orthodoxy which outlined the normative standards for acceptable behavior remain firm. What changed was their application. Traditionally, evangelicals would have scrupulously applied the norms of orthodoxy to themselves as well as to the culture. Now, the application is primarily to the culture and not to themselves. In Hunter’s opinion, “Evangelicalism participates in precisely the same changes that it decries in the larger society.”5 There is irony here but not the kind of irony found in Jewish joy. There is no awareness of the dichotomy in thinking, no apparent sense of confession or remorse. There is a numbing quality to the irony that leaves the student with little personal conviction. Unlike the Jew, who understands the irony of life and brings it to God, the student described by Hunter remains largely unresponsive and guilt-free. The Jew recognizes

3. Ibid. 4. Ibid., 162. 5. Ibid., 164.

 Sacred Fun the corporate nature of the irony and struggles with it while the student remains isolated and complacent. For the Jew, there is good humor in the irony, an acceptance of the way God works with his people. Student well- being, apparently, depends on the culture and selective participation in its values. And, perhaps, there is also a sense of confidence in the orthodox tradition which, once accepted, sets students off from the cultural mass and allows them to be critical of it. In such a separated enclave, a sense of personal well-being may seem to flourish. Traditional evangelicalism found its sense of well-being in the symbolic boundaries which defined its place in the culture. These boundaries formed the basis for its orthodoxy and its sense of truth. With the on- set of modernity at the beginning of the century, these boundaries were threatened by a new worldview. In such circumstances, people experience cultural stress and seek “‘some understanding of their own identity and place in the universe.’”6 Some clarification of the symbolic boundaries is needed to resolve, or at least reduce, the experienced sense of social alien- ation. Since there is a felt need to remove the experience of ghettoization, to feel accepted in the wider culture, the symbolic boundaries need to be merged; the symbols of orthodoxy must find some common ground with the symbols of modernity. To put it differently, the sacred and the social must be sanctified. Since Hunter focuses on orthodoxy as the key element in the tension of religion and modernity, we should return briefly to Judaism and its attempts to deal with this tension. As a minority group among the world’s cultures, Jews have accepted the experience of ghettoization.7 Their symbolic boundaries serve to protect them from the modern world rather than to promote them in it. Consequently, they can turn away from the temporal and toward the transcendent. Symbolically, their orthodoxy draws them closer to God and clarifies, with faith, their relationship with Him. It is this relationship which provides their sense of corporate well- being and good humor.8

6. Quoted from McLoughlin by Gordon-McCutchan, “The Irony of Evangelical History,” 310. Gordon-McCutchan uses the notion of cultural stress to explain why people seek new religious answers while the term is used here to explain a turn to new cultural answers. In the next chapter, however, it is apparent that the diﬀerence between these types of answers is not always great. 7. Hunter, Evangelicalism, 220–227. 8. In passing, it should be noted that these comments do not imply that orthodoxy

 From Faith to Fun

The evangelical experience, however, has been quite diﬀerent.9 As a leading force in the rise of modernity and as a dominant majority in the societies experiencing it, orthodox Protestantism has traditionally enjoyed a cultural hegemony. This cultural dominance was threatened at the turn of the century as traditional orthodoxy was questioned and the church experienced criticism and some marginalization. Maintaining the symbolic boundaries of a traditional lifestyle would only intensify that sense of cultural isolation and impose an unfamiliar and unwanted minority status on the evangelical.10 To maintain personal and corporate well-being in the midst of modernity, evangelicals opened the symbolic boundaries to accept those of the culture. This accommodation, of course, was selective, always with an eye to the maintenance of traditional orthodoxy. Nevertheless, this merger served to promote, consciously or unconsciously, evangelicalism in the world rather than to protect it from the world. Unlike the Jew who turned from the temporal to the transcendent to experience the joy of well-being, the evangelical turned from the transcendent to the temporal.

RELIGION AS SACRED FUN Before continuing with the major thrust of the book, we should consider an important notion discussed earlier. Jules Henry made a distinction between the morality of fun, which had a paramount value “more important even than being human,” and the metaphysic of fun, which gives reality to the world.11 It is this metaphysic of fun which has been referred to as a secularized form of cultural fun. The morality of fun has been described as natural fun which is non-cultural. There is spontaneity to such fun that seems to promote human fulﬁllment and success. Without it, life seems incomplete. And yet, fun also implies a sense of ignorance or ineptitude. (Fun, remember, is derived from the word fool or foolishness.) We appear funny to those who understand proper social behavior and observe it. To

is a constant in the Jewish faith. They are reﬂective of the more orthodox communities than the less orthodox. 9. Hunter, Evangelicalism, Ch. 7. 10 The question of how traditional lifestyle symbolic boundaries are to be interpreted is a key diﬀerence between fundamentalism and evangelicalism. 11. Henry, Culture Against Man, 168.

 Sacred Fun have fun, then, suggests a natural human response which has social or moral implications for our place in the world. Much of the shift in thinking described by Hunter could be understood as a shift from the morality of fun to the metaphysic of fun. For believers, there was a spiritual quality to this morality of fun that set them apart from non-believers. They understood the importance of being “fools for Christ”;12 at the same time, they recognized their foolishness set them apart in the modern world as an ignorant minority group. This produced a tension that evangelicals needed to shed if they were to maintain some of the majority status they enjoyed in an earlier day. And, as Hunter suggests, much of the traditional sacred fun gave way to their contemporary secular fun. Scripture has much to say about fools and foolishness and some of that is pertinent here. In Psalm 14:1, the fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” This sinful quality of the fool is developed in Proverbs where the fool “spreads slander,” “ﬁnds pleasure in evil conduct,” and is ignorant of his foolishness.13 The fool, apparently, has some of the childlike qualities described by Henry in the morality of fun. There is innocence in the fool, a naïveté, that doesn’t understand the ways of the world. And yet Paul encourages this innocence in the believer “so that he may become wise” while also recognizing that those who know God may have “their foolish hearts . . . darkened.”14 Indeed, God has “made foolish the wisdom of the world” and Paul himself is willing to identify with foolishness.15 The fun of foolishness, it would seem, is not quickly separated from the sacred.

Holy Folly Peter Berger makes the point more clearly with his reference to “a holy folly” in the Bible, notably David, when he danced before the ark and various acts of the prophets.16 He also refers to Jesus’ teaching that the disciples should become like little children as an example of holy folly. For Berger, an act of folly “constitutes a magical transformation of the world or, more precisely, an act of magic by which a counterworld is made to

12. I Corinthians 4:10. 13. Proverbs 10:18, 23; 12:15. 14. I Corinthians 3:18, Romans 1:21. 15. I Corinthians 1:20; II Corinthians 11:16, 12:6, 11. 16. Berger, Redeeming Laughter, 187–188.

 From Faith to Fun appear.”17 This other world is a reflection of the divine reality in which everyday reality is rejected and its rules ignored. “Folly is now seen as a prelude to the overcoming of the empirical world.”18 That which is believing faith to the fool, is fantasy to the world, while in the eyes of faith, the reality of everyday life is merely fantasy. Ultimately, folly leads to redemption and the fool is vindicated. Andrew Greeley follows much of this same train of thought in his discussion of “a theology of religious imagination.”19 It is this imagination which allows for the creation of culture as well as its consumption. Instead of merely seeing what is in a work of art, we try to see what is not there but is intended. This imagination is more fundamental to cognition, preceding but also completing it. In the Catholic understanding, religious imagination was not limited to the sacred but it readily moved between the sacred and the secular, even the pagan and the Christian. There seems to be inconsistency and contradiction here and Greeley understands that. But this ambiguity is not unlike the world of folly described by Berger. The ambiguity is affirmed not avoided because in Greeley’s opinion, religion and culture both seek meaning, and in that search common ground may be found. Without doubt, caution is needed. It is always necessary to step back and with a quizzical eye, ask some questions. Paradoxically, imagination, like folly, must be taken seriously. Sacred fun implies a lifestyle not unlike that of the prophet who always stands between two realities, one ordained by God, the other ordered by man. It relies on imagination to play with circumstances in everyday life, creating scenarios outside the mundane. Playfully, it rearranges daily expectations, manipulating social trivialities like putty. Sacred fun always asks questions. Should I invite that leper home for supper? Should I change the water into wine? These questions are paradoxical because they place two realities against each other. One image is placed in opposition to another. The desirable is opposed to the undesirable. When taken seriously the paradox leads to something different or unexpected, something foolish. This is the stuff of humor.

17. Ibid., 193. 18. Ibid., 194. 19. Greeley, God in Popular Culture, Ch. 2.

 Sacred Fun This holy folly, as Berger calls it, “could be called an epistemological reversal: The status of the counterworld comes to be radically redefined.”20 Our foolishness is no longer a distortion of the world as we know it. It now becomes a view of another world, a reality that is still incomplete. In Berger’s view, holy folly then leads to redemption as folly plays with the possibility of another reality, much as Don Quixote did. One might even employ that counterworld in daily living, combining this world and that, imagining life in the merger. Playing with the paradox may be serious or not. As one observer put it, laughter would “adjust ‘incompatible standards without resolving the clash between them.’”21 But if laughter is the tool of folly, then faith is the tool of holy folly. “If one then takes on the attitude of faith, which does indeed assume the existence of God, folly is also something else—namely, an uncertain reflection of what lies beyond or behind the world, a shadow play of divine reality.”22 Stated differently, faith adjusts the paradox, bringing it into focus before the reflection dark- ens again. Faith, then, is essential for holy folly. Without it, fun cannot be sacred; it becomes something else. Berger might call it “benign humor,” merely a form of “pleasure, relaxation, and good will . . . [that] enhances rather than disrupts the flow of everyday life.”23 It is more concerned with the temporal than the transcendent. There is a neutral quality to fun without faith as it rests somewhere between the sacred and the secular. Such fun is essential as it smoothes the ripples of life. But it lacks a sense of ultimate- ness, of another reality beyond us. While benign, it could betray. Playing with mundane life alone, fun may turn to the culture for meaning. Fun then becomes secularized when it accepts that meaning and plays with it, either by using the culture for its own ends or by allowing itself to be used by the culture. In either case, fun becomes a part of our technical world. Hunter, remember, believed the drift toward accommodation to the world was inevitable. Indeed, sacred fun may become useful as a commodity. As a diversion, Christian recreation may sell and reshape the evangelical lifestyle. Often the line between worship and entertainment is blurred, as we see in the movie theater ad by an evangelical church which

20. Berger, Redeeming Laughter, 193. 21. Quoted in Kennedy, ed., Laughter in the Wilderness, 18. 22. Berger, Redeeming Laughter, 194. 23. Ibid., 99.

 From Faith to Fun implies a worship service is “more fun than sleeping in.” Even those who condemn the entertainment media may employ forms of it as a means toward evangelization, as ambiguous as those means might be. In this way, sacred fun may mask its other meaning as a cultural commodity. When sacred, fun creates another culture with transcendent visions of playfulness and freedom of imagination. Through it, we come to experience the ultimate and rise to it. When secular, fun takes its images from the popular culture, from that which is often condemned by the faithful. Sacred fun becomes secular as it consumes its culture of origin by using it for another purpose. Through such fun, the believer comes to experience the world and is lowered into it.

RELIGION AS SECULAR FUN Fun does not need to be secularized. Sacred fun should resist culture not resonate with it. In this sense, sacred fun is subversive of the modern world and mocks the triviality of it. It provides another sense of well- being, one rooted in hope rather than happiness. It is more inclined to spiritual rather than social bases for humor. Sacred fun always involves a response to the transcendent which may cause it to appear foolish. It stands in awe without trivializing the awesome. Such trivialization may lead to entertainment but not to enlightenment, to amusement but not to amazement. Postman makes the point well: “The spectacle we find in true religions has as its purpose enchantment, not entertainment.”24 But the vision of sacred fun is demanding and the idea of being a fool in the world is not a popular one. In a climate of permissiveness, the sacred slips into the secular. What had been prohibited is now permitted. Traditional religion may keep its theology intact, but the unquestioning acceptance of secular fun makes that religion, in Postman’s words, “another kind of religion altogether.”25 Much of that traditional religion, as Hunter described it, portrayed separation from worldliness in traditional ways; worldly evils were clearly defined and described. All of that has changed in a world of cool media which has expanded the options for permissiveness. Fun is no longer an experience defined by the few nor a casual deviation from the norm. Culture itself has become a form of medium and a way to communicate

24. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, 122. 25. Ibid., 121.

 Sacred Fun basic lifestyle messages. Radical new images skip from one area of life to another, creating a cultural network of coolness and fun. Sports afford new opportunities for a spectacle of logos, body paint, and signs to enhance the game itself. The stadium has now become a place for fan participation, for the use of imagination and fun, much as the cathedral had been a place of awe and worship. Fast food displays employ images from films to help the customer think of eating as a fun experience. Auto ads encourage driving in a cool world of lush images where cars acquire magical qualities. In rich and diverse ways, culture packages for our imagination a lifestyle that offers escape, deviance, and fun.

Religion as Image McLuhan describes how modern images are used in advertising to seduce the consumer.26 A baby’s rattle, for example, is displayed in an ad for an upscale car with the suggestion that the rattle may be removed as easily as a baby’s. The image of the rattle, he would suggest, has nothing to do with the quality of the car. It is merely intended to distract the critical faculties while the image of the car inﬂuences the hypnotized viewer. The modern use of the image, then, is not intended to portray reality. Like fun, an image masks its true intentions. It frees the viewer from logical thought and responsibility for it. The interchangeability of two realities, that of the baby and that of the auto, is opened to the imagination. The rattle is an amusing and somewhat contradictory link between these realities. A smile or chuckle identiﬁes that link and is shared by others. There is consensus that the ad is funny. More than that, the ad is received with a general sense of good humor that is shared by all viewing it. It is this shared perception of the meaning of a complex world that is fundamental to humor today. Images conveyed by the media do much to establish that sense of well-being that is needed in an economy, that sense that a complex, even contradictory, world is trustworthy and true. Advertising does much to control that sense of trust through images that establish some pattern of buying habits. Like consumers, producers want some predictability in the market, some assurance that it is reliable and predictable. In the same way, TV images of crowds at sports events establish the acceptability of behavior which, at one time, would have been bizarre. Through such images, a worldview is established and reinforced.

26. McLuhan, Understanding Media, 231.

 From Faith to Fun As consumers, we are freed from serious concerns about the quality of a product or its usefulness. We learn to associate products with positive, not negative feelings. In a variety of ways, images shape our perception of the world and our response to it. Similarly, the church has always used images to shape its Christian worldview, largely for the purpose of educating the believer in acceptable theology. While still used for this purpose today, Christian images are also used in witnessing to the unsaved. The symbolic boundaries of the church have gone beyond the walls of cathedrals and monasteries to include bumper stickers and T-shirts that present a gospel message. “God is like Coca-Cola—He’s the real thing.” “God is like Scotch Tape—you can’t see Him, but you know He’s there.” “God is like Hallmark cards—He cares enough to send the very best.”27 As metaphors for God, these similes bridge the familiar with the unfamiliar, the temporal with the transcendent. They resolve an apparent contradiction with humor and religious meaning. The non-believer is more likely to remember the humor of the message than the hope implied. Indeed, the metaphor is probably not an eﬀective way to present the gospel to a non-believer. It is more likely to provide a positive sense of well-being for believers who agree, with a smile, that the metaphors are cool. They also provide a corporate sense of well-being. But the metaphor masks the purpose of the T-shirt to develop a sense of group morale and identity by suggesting it is a useful tool for evangelization. Indeed, the nature of God is often distorted as we interpret it for social purposes.28 A massive business has grown around the production of what has been wryly called “Jesus Junk.” “Today entire industries are devoted to providing Christian ‘forms of fun.’”29 These “forms of fun” convey religious meaning symbolically on angel lapel pins and book ends as well as fac- similes of the Ten Commandments and Holy Land trinkets. This religious industry “reproduces the sacred” for consumption by believers who seek some tangible certiﬁcation for their faith.30 Like Catholic relics and medi-

27. I am indebted to Jody Barrett, a former student, for these metaphors and her insight on the implications they have for church youth. 28. Wuthnow reports data suggesting that despite the persistence of images of God as judge and king, many Americans lean toward more intimate images such as lover and spouse. Rediscovering the Sacred, 104. 29. Sheler, “Is God Lost as Sales Rise?” 63. 30. Wuthnow does not believe the growth of this religious industry means a pattern

 Sacred Fun eval statuary, these products provide a sense of well-being and corporate identity. Unlike sacred fun which resists the culture and its influence, religion, as secular fun, accepts prevailing cultural images. Paradoxically, purveyors of Christian images, seeking to be prophets, are just as likely to be profiteers. Whether the sacred is reproduced through images for the believer or the unbeliever, the ultimate effect is the same; the temporal gradually replaces the transcendent. As one observer has noted, “In the beginning was the Word, but in the end it will be the Image.”31

Religion as Leisure The original notion of leisure was summed up in the Sabbath as a day of rest from work. Leisure was a part of man’s culture that was set aside to model God’s creative work. The Puritans, especially, faithfully ordered their world to maintain this notion of leisure in the Sabbath. But this institutionalization of the Sabbath appeared restrictive and became the object of criticism from later generations. What Puritans took with deadly seriousness, non-Puritans might interpret as ridiculous or comical. Over time, the Puritan worldview became dysfunctional for many who considered it outmoded. Gradually, the Sabbath was seen as special, though not necessarily as sanctified. Depending on one’s viewpoint it could be a day of rest, a holy day, a tabooed day, or some combination of all three. Some consensus developed at the beginning of the eighteenth century with the commercialization of leisure. At the same time, the modern idea of personal leisure emerged. Together, the business of leisure and the desire for personal leisure reinforced latent desires for freedom in use of leisure time.32 With the increase of immigration toward the end of the nineteenth century, keeping the Sabbath became an issue for Protestants who saw its defense as a necessary bulwark for what was considered to be Christian civilization. The use of leisure, as defined by the Sabbath, became a crucial element in a lifestyle designed for social well-being. Increasingly, however, it became difficult to maintain the Sabbath. For many, Sabbath laws were seen as an infringement against religious freedom. For others, new modes of transportation allowed travel away from church and traditional of secularization. 31. Twitchell, Carnival Culture, 3. 32. Rybczynski, Waiting for the Weekend, especially chapters 3 and 4.

 From Faith to Fun practices on Sunday. In the 1830s, transportation was “made so attractive, by cheapness of fare, by crowds, and by every species of public allurement, in their Sabbatical excursions, that their gains are far greater on that day, than on any other day of the week.”33 A century later, it was estimated that “10,000 persons leave Middletown by automobile for other towns and resorts every fine Sunday.”34 Despite resistance from evangelical leadership, Sunday observances gradually declined, especially in the North. Changing attitudes among parishioners accommodated new definitions of the Sabbath and its ob- servance. In 1888, the following list of complaints was given: The indifferences of multitudes of the professed friends of the Sabbath; . . . the facility of guilty compromises; . . . the needless and thoughtless Sunday travel; . . . the Sunday pleasure seeking; the feeble excuses offered for voluntary absence from the house of God; the social visiting; the open profanation of the Lord’s day by excursion-trains to camp-meetings and advertised preaching in places of irreligious resort; . . . these are counts in an indictment of many church members and some ministers.35 Although church dogma on the Sabbath and the definition of leisure remained, Sunday practices were changing. Almost a century later, remember, Hunter found the same form of inconsistency changing the thinking of students in Christian colleges. By 1900, it was apparent that the battle to keep the Puritan Sabbath was being lost. As Sunday was increasingly used for new leisure activities, church leaders feared the decay of religion and the erosion of moral values. In the opinion of the Methodist Episcopal Church, “without Sabbath sanctity our people will suffer moral loss, our sanctuaries will be deserted, and our ministries will be ineffective.”36 While this opinion was not always shared by other church leaders, the anxiety this trend caused in the church was apparent. The changing definition of leisure and the Sabbath had consequences that reached beyond the theological implications and threatened the social order of the churches. The vision of a “Christian America” in the twentieth century that would Christianize the world and

33. Quoted from Samuel Miller in Handy, A Christian America, 51. 34. Lynd and Lynd, Middletown in Transition, 307. 35. Handy, A Christian America, 88. 36. Ibid., 145.

 Sacred Fun hasten the coming of the Kingdom was gradually being compromised. Secularization of the Sabbath fragmented Protestant unity and contributed to some sense of disorder in the churches. In response, Protestant forces rallied to attack a variety of problems centered in the use of leisure which were seen as moral issues. The Anti- Saloon League, for example, was formed in 1895 by Protestant groups as part of the temperance movement. Leisure was to be spent at home with the family, not in commercial enterprises. Urban centers were the focus of attention largely because of factory working conditions and the rise of new leisure activities, such as vaudeville and the movies. In response to these problems, the Social Gospel became the most conspicuous form of Protestant concern for society. The immediate consequence, in the opinion of many, was a redefinition of Christian orthodoxy and the biblical understanding of the Kingdom of God. The long term effects were of a different sort. Gradually, religious leaders lost their perspective and became supporters of what they had opposed. Martin Marty sums up the problem well: Being born again and turning the back on the world once meant leaving hedonism behind. Now [as Christian booksellers and broadcasters] . . . make apparent, religion justified self-centered leisure. Not only has the church begun to understand this shift; it is a major legitimator of it.37

Religion as Entertainment Entertainment implies some form of behavior that diverts attention from more serious matters. As a diversion, entertainment may create a world of fantasy and enchantment separate from the mundane world. It may encounter this world in playful fashion with no intent to subvert the mundane. In this sense, entertainment comes close to the natural fun described by Henry; it is a highly-valued, spontaneous expression of the lighter side of life that balances some of the more serious and challenging aspects of everyday life. In this ideal form, entertainment makes a major contribution to social-wellness by balancing the serious against the non-serious. It provides pleasure and contentment, often when such qualities are sorely needed. But Neil Postman points to another side of entertainment, one that is less

37. Quoted in Jorstad, Popular Religion in America, 64.

 From Faith to Fun benign than the usual understanding of it. Referring to Aldous Huxley’s version of societal development in Brave New World, Postman agrees with his contention “that what we love will ruin us.”38 People would become so infatuated with being entertained that they would accept a trivial culture in which “the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.” In Brave New World, people “are controlled by inflicting pleasure.” Ultimately, “people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.”39 In this view, “culture becomes a burlesque” in which people “did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.”40 Postman’s description of forms of entertainment in our culture suggests that its benign qualities may have malignant effects. And while evangelicals might like to think they are immune to such effects, this is not clearly the case. Indeed, as David Wells has suggested, the church has bought into the culture of entertainment and the values it espouses. When Christianity is psychologized, the longing for righteousness is reduced to the search for happiness . . . Truth is no longer as important as, for example, personal well-being . . . Perhaps it is one of the great casualties that modernity has inflicted is that we have lost our capacity for thought.41 Focused on amusement and the diversion it offers, we are not likely to take seriously even that which is serious. An advertisement for a leading evangelical publication seeking an intellectual audience makes the point well. In the statement, “Don’t miss out on all the insights in . . . ,” the word “insights” is crossed out and replaced with the word “fun.”42 There is a seductive quality to entertainment when, as a diversion, it is not taken seriously. All forms of amusement are part of a larger worldview that encourages the values of self-gratification and personal pleasure. When such values are kept in tension with opposing values, the balance provides a sense of personal health and well-being. But as a worldview, entertainment is more likely to direct us than divert us. Its influence becomes ubiquitous as well as under-girding. Postman makes

38. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, viii. 39. Ibid., vii and viii. 40. Ibid., 155 and 163. 41. Wells, “Christianity Lite?” 1, 7–9. 42. Advertisement for another publication in Christianity Today, (October 7, 1996), 61.

 Sacred Fun the point more emphatically: “Entertainment is the supra-ideology of all discourse on television.”43 Even serious programming may be nothing more than a format for entertainment which becomes the basis for public discourse. Leaders in all walks of life may be just as motivated to amuse as to inform. Consequently, modern forms of entertainment blur the traditionally sharp distinction between the serious and the humorous, even between the sacred and the secular. In traditional culture, entertainment was a diversion and nothing more. But in our modern society, entertainment has masked its meanings as commodity and worldview. As diversion, entertainment was casual and often private with little cultural meaning. As commodity, entertainment moves onto culture’s center stage and becomes public and intentional. It is more likely to become a means to some social end rather than an end in itself. And it is as a means that entertainment has its greatest inﬂuence on the contemporary religious scene. Granted, technology, especially in the form of television, enhances the capacity of religious programs to entertain. But it is the entertainment value in religious programs that too often makes them acceptable as a ministry to the faithful, as well as to a larger unbelieving audience. In the authoritative words of Pat Robertson: “Only a masochist would want to watch religious shows all day long.”44 Clearly, entertainment is seen as the means to enlightenment in much contemporary ministry. In a culture dominated by a worldview of fun, the desire to be entertained becomes the rule rather than the exception. Paradoxically, we believe the serious needs to be amusing and the important needs to be entertaining. In such a culture, what is most important is often trivialized and what is trivial is given the appearance of importance. Indeed, we may even come to believe there is religious meaning in entertainment and that religious meaning should be amusing.

Religion as Pop Culture Andrew Greeley stretches his orthodox views of God in what might seem to be unorthodox ways. God may be found in culture, he claims, including popular culture which

43. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death, 87. 44. Quoted in “Redeeming the Wasteland?” in Christianity Today, (October 2, 1995), 94.

 From Faith to Fun

is a locus theologicus; a theological place—the locale in which one may encounter God. Popular culture provides an opportunity to experience God and to tell stories of God or, to put the matter more abstractly, to learn about God and to teach about God.45 In pop culture, this imagination provides meaning and purpose in life to a reader. In high culture, life is presented as meaningless and absurd. In contrast to pop culture, which provides happy endings in plots, high culture presents life as ambiguous; there is little order or symmetry in it. In its search for meaning and order, pop culture may come to resemble a religion. Greeley claims there are paradigms of meaning in pop culture that might provide hope and understanding of the religious life. The theological task is to understand how God might be found in orderliness, as trivial as it might appear in pop culture to the casual reader.46 This task is facilitated by the view that “people are sacraments of God” through whom God discloses Himself. Creative imagination understands God’s work as it moves back and forth among cultural and religious paradigms. Greeley likens this imagination to “fantasia” which is responsible to “describe the world which is to come.”47 Intuitively, the imagination unveils the truth to be found in ambiguity and uncertainty. Much like humor, imagination understands paradox and makes sense of the nonsensical. Unlike rational knowledge which works best when there is continuity and wholeness, creative imagination ﬂourishes with discontinuity and fragmentation. A more familiar, and perhaps more comfortable, view of popular culture is given by Allene Phy who tries to understand the relationship of the Bible to it.48 Especially in the South, which is the center of so much traditional Protestantism and popular culture, she ﬁnds a merger of the religious and the cultural. From the display of bumper stickers and televangelism to Nashville country music and Hollywood movie-making, believers in orthodox Christianity have tried to express their faith. It is not surprising, then, that American pop culture presents religious images that are stylized to accommodate our pluralistic culture. In an environment that encourages the development of a civil religion, “popular culture

45. Greeley, God in Popular Culture, 9. 46. Ibid., 14. 47. Ibid., 22. 48. Phy, ed., The Bible and Popular Culture in America.

 Sacred Fun is an Americanizing, unifying influence, helping to bring together peoples of different ethnic traditions and religious histories, thus providing all with some meeting ground.”49 One might say that pop culture interprets orthodox religion in unorthodox groups. Greeley’s view of popular culture suggests we look at it to find the orthodox Christian meaning in it. Phy has a different approach. She suggests we look to popular culture as a means of expressing orthodox religious meaning for the masses who, looking at it, might find a different meaning. A third view, and perhaps the most familiar religious response, is offered by William Romanowski who is concerned about the entertainment factor in popular culture and the church’s response to it.50 While religion and popular culture have usually been hostile to the role played by the other in society, there have been times when some common bond has been found. In general, however, religious conservatives have aggressively attacked popular culture as entertainment which has an adverse influence on the population. Young people, especially, are susceptible to the sensationalism found there. In this view, we look through popular culture which acts as a filter that hides traditional meaning from view. In its place, popular culture substitutes another, more secular and immoral way of life. Romanowski’s major concern seems to be with the conflict between religion and popular culture as entertainment. Too often, he feels, “religious reformers . . . did not take entertainment seriously enough: their rhetoric overstated the problem on the one hand, while their response underplayed it on the other.”51 The problem, as they saw it, was a moral one and not a structural one. Rather than being concerned about the developing influence of popular culture as entertainment, religious leaders focused on the spiritual implications of practices considered to be immoral. Consequently, some forms of culture, usually considered to be high were acceptable for consumption while the popular forms of culture, traditionally considered to be low, were unacceptable. Instead of trying to influence popular culture, the church attempted to regulate it, or when that failed, to encourage abstinence from it. But the church never considered the effect technology would have on pop culture. It couldn’t understand the transforming power of the

49. Ibid., 217. 50. Romanowski, Pop Culture Wars, 19. 51. Ibid., p. 47.

 From Faith to Fun mass media. Nor could it imagine the economic importance pop culture would have for the nation. As a technique and a commodity, the entertainment value of popular culture increased immensely. Traditional lines of entertainment blur as TV is watched in restaurants, movies are made into videos, and seasons of professional sports merge together. Add the compelling power of the internet and all of its entertainment value to this mix and pop culture scarcely resembles anything which had been of concern to religion in the past. In time and space, entertainment becomes a ubiquitous, pervasive cultural force for the attainment of a sense of personal and social well-being—however that might be defined by the person. As such, entertainment, entrenched in popular culture, has become an integral part of the social structure. The traditional religious notion that one might readily separate oneself from the world is now unrealistic. Indeed, the world is often in the church as much as the church is in the world. This is not to say that traditional concerns about popular culture are dead; immorality in the media remains a problem for the church. But the church has not understood that popular culture is a major vehicle for the expression of fun and that fun, with its permissive values, represents a different kind of threat to a traditional, restrictive lifestyle. Indeed, personal happiness remains a major goal of the believer as well as the non-believer, largely because it is assumed that happiness, however defined, is the clear- est expression of personal and social well-being. And the church supports that assumption because of the traditional responsibility it has had for maintaining the good humor of its people. What is often forgotten is that faith had been the major basis for that good humor. Fun is now thought to be therapeutic and a manifestation of personal happiness. This notion assumes that fun is natural and not a cultural construct. Consequently, the church too often fails to understand the subversive qualities of secular fun and, paradoxically, often supports behavior which erodes the lifestyle it encourages. Hunter is right when he claims that religious traditions will lose out to modernity. Without concern for a cultural critique, the church is vulnerable to the corrupting influence of culture in all of its aspects. It fails to understand how culture supports a worldview which opposes Christian doctrine. Assuming all fun to be natural and spontaneous, the church often overlooks the cultural dimensions of fun used in its programs. Consequently, fun becomes the vehicle by which cultural values, despite doctrinal opposition, may be brought into the church. As a technique,

 Sacred Fun fun is eﬀective for teaching and stimulating fellowship. But fun is not joy. It may promote deviance, not devotion; confusion, not commitment. Secular fun, then, cannot be put to sacred purposes without the danger of changing the nature of the sacred and the apprehension of it.

CONCLUSION This chapter has explored the question of fun as both a natural and a cultural phenomenon. It was argued that fun may remain outside cultural influence, questioning the social and cultural questions linked to it. It is more likely that fun, because of its high value as an element in personal and social well-being will accept cultural values and be co-opted for its own purposes. In this case, we may speak of secular fun, especially as it masks cultural interests such as commodification and social change. In the modern world, this is a majority position which supports cultural values and benefits from the sense of well-being gained from such support. But fun is also escapist and deviant. As such, it tends to be more subversive of culture and represents a minority position. Fun of this sort becomes sacred when motivated by religious convictions. Following Hunter’s lead, the trend in modern society is always from the restrictive to the permissive, from the orthodox to the unorthodox. It may also be seen as a shift from the sacred to the secular. Postman reminds us that this trend results in a new kind of religion, a syncretistic religion which, uncritically, reconciles two conflicting worldviews. The result is a paradox, an uneasy blend of the orthodox and the unorthodox. But this paradox doesn’t originate in creation. There is little to draw us in faith to God or to find spiritual well-being there. Instead, this religion is a product of our age, a paradox constructed by accommodation to the culture. It is filled with inconsistencies which point us not to faith in God but to fun in laughter. It is a religion which, too often, is not taken seriously. It is also a religion which often is found within the church as well as in the wider culture. As Hunter suggests, orthodoxy in its doctrinal form is, indeed, taken seriously. But orthodoxy mixed with unorthodox cultural components is a new form of religion which is not taken seriously. Nor is there always a serious attempt to interpret culture in the light of that doctrine. Little in orthodox religion prepares the believer to be discerning when experiencing popular culture. There is even less understanding of the forms of fun or the guises they present to us. In Romanowski’s

 From Faith to Fun opinion, this failure is the result of the traditional line drawn between the secular and the sacred and the fact that believers were prohibited “from distinguishing redemptive aspects [in popular culture] and establishing appropriate Christian participation.”52 In orthodox religion, it appears, doctrine will usually supersede discernment. That is not to say that doctrine cannot be an important therapeutic inﬂuence in the church. In a traditional cultural context, it may provide considerable social support for the believer as well as a personal and corporate sense of well-being. In such a setting, fun is more inclined to be sacred than secular. Indeed, faith may even lead to sacred fun. But this is largely a minority tradition, one that holds its orthodoxy tightly on the margins of the world’s boundaries. On the other side, the lines are less clearly drawn. For the majority, discernment is not always apparent. For them, it is not always clear how faith might lead to fun. In fact, it may be that fun will lead to faith.

52. Ibid.

 

From Fun to Faith

To become holy is rather like joining a secret society. To put it at the very lowest, it must be great fun. —C. S. Lewis

Yes, a sense of humour, a weird and delicate sense of humour, is the new religion of mankind. —G. K. Chesterton

n her study of Southside Gospel Church, Nancy Ammerman de- Iscribes the lifestyle of its members who find the church to be the dominant institution in their lives. Every week offers a round of activities from Sunday Worship services and meetings to week day practices, times of fellowship, visitation sessions, and committee meetings.1 These are times when members come together to worship and to express their faith in various forms of service. For many, the church’s cycle of activities orders their lives in a predictable and reliable fashion. From the church’s rituals, members find a lifestyle and worldview that guides them in decision- making and provides a sense of identity. In addition, a network of relationships is formed to support them in daily life and to replace more worldly activities and relationships. Commitment to the church is largely measured in terms of involvement in church activities. A core of “highly committed” members makes up more than half the church membership. These “core members build their world around the church. It helps to shape almost every decision they make.”2 The “moderately committed” also maintain a high level of involvement in participation and giving. Together, these two groups com-

1. Ammerman, Bible Believers. 2. Ibid., 105.

 From Faith to Fun prise about two-thirds of the church membership. The remaining group of those who are relatively inactive are marginal to the church membership itself or inactive. It is the rare person who claims membership and is inactive.

RELIGION AS HAPPINESS Much of life at Southside involves a critical blending of contrasts. Church music centers about a balance “between spontaneity and formality, between head and heart.”3 On one hand, there is faith and on the other, rational study of scripture. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is balanced against biblical principles which contribute to the believer’s edification. Feeling and fact work together in the life of the church and its members. The same balance is found in preaching and the pastor’s concern for spiritual truth and secular practice. Biblical lessons should be applied to daily living. Consequently, there is an integration of learning as it is given from various parts of scripture and blended in sermons to present a unified sense of practical wisdom. Theologically and practically, there is little room for doubt and uncertainty at Southside. The result is a religious community in which people “have learned both the right questions to ask about life and the right answers.”4 Since life is not random, one seeks to understand God’s will in it and to interpret how that will is being fulfilled. Faith results in assurance that the world is orderly and the believer is at the center of that world. Outside that world, there is chaos and unpredictability. Life appears to be arbitrary, imperfect and changing. There is no stability or structure in a world that lacks obedience to God’s Word. It is meaningless and without purpose. Assuming orderliness and direction in the world, believers affirm those qualities as they share life with each other. Together, they find “the church is a safe shelter in a stormy world.”5 As a shelter, the church provides the believer with a sense of well- being. First, it provides a worldview of orderliness that is balanced against worldly chaos. Second, it integrates the dis-parities and inconsistencies of life into a meaningful and reasonable lifestyle. Third, this lifestyle is structured through church activities to support the believer in the routines of

3. Ibid., 131. 4. Ibid., 40. 5. Ibid., 133.

 From Fun to Faith life. Finally, this structure goes beyond the church to an extended network of friends and organizational bodies that strengthen the sense of shared meaning experienced in the church. Gradually, believers “become connected to a variety of institutions that offer alternatives to secular media, recreation, and services.”6 Relying on these alternatives, believers come to experience much of the good humor which sets them off from non- believers. Members of Southside Gospel Church experience a seamless web of security and peace in daily life. The result is a religion that shapes the church and every member in it. But as C. S. Lewis suggests, such holiness may be wanting. While there may be fun in the social life of the church, a huge leap is still needed to reach the heights of faith alone. As a sign of the sacred, fun may still lack the presence of the transcendent in the daily life of the church. Even though the church provides social distinction, it still needs to provide spiritual discernment. When this sense of religious order and meaningfulness is compared with life outside the church, the faith is justified. The orderliness of life in the church is set off against the disorderliness of life in the world. Outside the church, decision-making appears arbitrary. Why should one set of friends be chosen over another? Where is the best place to spend a vacation? How does one make sense of life’s inconsistencies? These questions are resolved in the believer’s church and through the relationships it provides. But in the unbeliever’s world, there is little to structure a lifestyle in a rapidly changing world and even less to offer some stability to that structure. What the non-believer needs is a new form of religion. Religions formed in the present are likely to be quite different from those brought from the past. For one thing, they lack traditional theological or doctrinal bases that could be applied to contemporary needs; faith cannot be brought down to everyday life. Consequently, modern religions often start in the secular world and work up to the development of a faith which provides mundane rewards. Robert Wuthnow claims: As societies modernize, doctrine is expected to focus more on happiness in this life than on other-worldly compensations . . . The gods themselves may undergo a transformation . . . [as people view]

6. Ibid., 129.

 From Faith to Fun

them instead as symbolizing love and redemption or sanctioning ethical systems.7 The unbeliever, then, needs the kind of order and well-being experienced by the believer. Some worldview must structure life in predictable and comfortable ways. Daily routines should be endowed with purpose and meaning. A value system should guide decision-making. In a secularized world a new kind of believer needs a new kind of religion, and in Chesterton’s opinion, this religion will be based on humor.

FUN AS INVISIBLE RELIGION Earlier in this book, we discussed secularization and some of the meaning it has in sociology. It was suggested that the traditional notion of secularization, a process that shows a decrease in orthodox religion and the role it plays in people’s lives, would be the major view taken here. But secularization may also imply a change in religious meaning and not just a decrease in traditional religious meaning. In this view, the transformation of religious meaning may have more importance in the culture than its decrease. As Wuthnow states above, this transformation may involve a change in gods as well as the symbols representing them. In this conception of secularization, the supernatural is not as important as some notion of the sacred, however that might be defined. What is important is that the sacred be defined first as separate from everyday life and then as a cosmic element that organizes the confusion, even chaos, of daily living.8 This balance of the sacred and secular would go far to produce a sense of well-being and good humor in society. Cultures define the sacred in different ways at different times. Indeed, in modern times, something as secular as science may be given sacred meaning to counteract the apparent meaninglessness of a world without it. What is important is that this meaning be established by people in some social interaction. Together, they must define the sacred in Berger’s terms “as ‘sticking out’ from the normal routines of everyday life, as something extraordinary and potentially dangerous, though its dangers can be domesticated and its potency harnessed to the needs of everyday life.”9 As Wuthnow suggests, the value of “happiness in this life” may be raised to

7. Wuthnow, Rediscovering the Sacred, 134. (emphasis added) 8. Much of this discussion is based on Berger, The Sacred Canopy, especially Chapter 1. 9. Ibid., 26.

 From Fun to Faith sacred status. If orthodox doctrine focuses on happiness, then happiness may also acquire sacred meaning for new, unorthodox religions. When happiness is defined in ways that are more rewarding than daily routine, it may attain some sacred status by ordering life in pleasurable, satisfying ways. Outside that state of happiness, life may appear quite hopeless, indeed. The idea of a therapeutic culture, developed earlier in this book, would seem to be in agreement with Wuthnow’s notion of “happiness in this life.” It conveys a positive attitude that is benign yet constructive. Berger’s definition of the sacred includes “something extraordinary and potentially dangerous,” some sense of uncertainty or threat. This notion of the sacred seems less consistent with therapy and more with the idea of fun which suggests excitement, escape from the mundane and even deviance. While the therapeutic encouraged happiness in daily life through adjustment to it, fun implies happiness is found by escaping from it. There is enough unpredictability in fun to provide a thrill and often a sense of awe. As an expression of the sacred, fun is on the edge of everyday life, not completely in it and certainly not of it. Since the sacred as described here is found outside orthodox theology and doctrine, it is not readily discernible. There is nothing about it that suggests, immediately, it is awesome or fantastic. It is only through social interaction with the sacred that it may, in this sense, be defined. The idea of fun and how it is to be experienced comes only when two people agree that some activity is, indeed, fun. When defined in this way, the activity makes sense and is accepted as a suitable way to spend time or money, even to risk a friendship, sharing that activity. Certainly a rock concert could be defined that way by two teenagers who decide to attend one. The Super Bowl or the World Series could be defined as fun by two adult males, while two married women might define a shopping spree in the same way. In each case, there is some uncertainty: Will we like the concert? Will our team win? Will we find what we’re shopping for? And in each case, there is some distance from daily life as well as potential escape from it with, perhaps, an opportunity for dallying deviance. By such means, sacred meaning is bestowed on secular life which, for some, may be defined as awesome. But fun may be a commodity as well as a social experience. Society needs some predictability in the definition of fun, some assurance that fun will be found if we seek it. For this reason, society relies on symbols

 From Faith to Fun of sacredness to sell the secular as sacred. Laughter, of course, is a reliable, universal sacred symbol. It defines an activity as fun while encouraging participation in it. According to one authority: “The fact is that laughter is indivisible from the most sacred notions created by man. The laughing, humorous element is sometimes even called the echo of the sacred.”10 This echo may be derived from the orthodox, or more likely, the unorthodox. In either case, it is an echo heard by others. Fun is often defined through symbols which are associated with happy, escapist experiences; rock climbing and surf boarding, for example, or dining out. These are events that assure a fun filled experience when symbolized as thrilling or exciting. A match-up of certain teams in football may become such an event or a concert by an established rock group. There is a ritual quality in such events when repeated over time; the Olympics, Super Bowls, or deer hunts on every Monday after Thanksgiving. In Berger’s words, such rituals restore “the continuity between the present moment and the societal tradition, placing the experiences of the individual and the various groups of the society in the context of a history . . . that transcends them all.”11 The sacred gains power in our personal lives because it relates to us in immediate, practical ways, while at the same time, moving us out of our lives. Replays of World Series’s games provide some transcendent quality that helps us to experience the larger history of the game. We find ourselves in the presence of baseball’s immortals, those “gods” who share some broader meaning of life with us through their words or deeds. There is authority in such persons and events that influence our values and goals. Even a tennis match may combine fun with powerful moral lessons that teach us something about the meaning of life. The lessons learned are rich and compelling largely because they are associated with fun and its implicit religious meaning, which encourages our response. Consequently, there is little desire or even reason to question such lessons or the experiences associated with them. They become authoritative and compelling. In the manner of holy texts, they add purpose and direction to our lives and are accepted on faith.

10. Zelvys, “Obscene Humor,” 326. 11. Berger, The Sacred Canopy, 41.

 From Fun to Faith Once the sacred quality of fun is established, it becomes part of the invisible religion of humor in our society.12 Thomas Luckmann describes such an invisible religion as an emerging worldview; “it performs an essentially religious function . . . that . . . is part of socially objectivated reality.”13 Since language is basic for the establishment of a worldview, this elementary form of religion is being formed whenever symbols are used to convey meaning about everyday life. If we laugh at some situation conveyed by a joke, we give assent to an implicit worldview and the values it represents. As life changes, new worldviews may be needed to interpret those changes if old ones no longer provide satisfying answers. If orthodox religions fail to deal with the complexities of modern life, then unorthodox religions will take their place. As a worldview, an invisible religion offers an ultimate response to an emerging reality of life. One of these realities is the development of new complex and paradoxical meanings in life. Why should bad things happen to good people? How can wealthy people justify their place in a world of poverty? These are fundamentally religious questions which, in a modern society, may demand new religious responses. Andrew Weigert defines religion as “those institutionalized modes of behavior, feeling rules, and sets of intentionalities by which humans contain ambivalence within a symbolic order that ultimately reconciles opposites.”14 When science offers no reasonable explanation, people turn to some religion for an answer. For the believer, paradox is best understood and resolved by faith which precedes the resolution of the paradox. For the unbeliever, paradox may be interpreted with the laughter of disbelief. Religion and humor, then, overlap as worldviews. Both deal with paradox, but in different ways. Both imply some moral values in the perspective they take. Each, in its own way, interprets the reality of daily life. Religion relies on faith and humor on fantasy. But each performs important functions for society. Gordon Allport summarizes the point well: Humor in one respect . . . is like religion. By setting up a frame of reference that is at variance with the ordinary mundane frame of reference, both have the peculiar ability of precipitating the ordinary worries and mischances of life into new and sure patterns.

12. The term invisible religion is associated with the work of Luckmann, The Invisible Religion. 13. Ibid., 55. 14. Weigert, Mixed Emotions, 127.

 From Faith to Fun

Humor, like religion, shatters the rigidity of literal mindedness . . . In humor things are not all earnest and purposive, but pompous and out of step; in religion there is no such thing as incongruity. Thus, in setting up novel standards, both religion and humor, albeit in diﬀerent ways, bring perspective.15

Comedy as Faith As a worldview, humor brings a perspective that complements, while often competing with, religion. Humor tells us life should not be taken seriously; there is important meaning in the light, even trivial side of life. Humor opens up “a different world, the world of the comic, which is counter-factual and meta-empirical.”16 At first, this world may seem only an escape, but, ultimately, it becomes a different reality, one that may then be taken seriously. In this sense, it becomes the kind of religion Paul Tillich referred to: “religion . . . is whatever people take seriously.”17 Skydiving, for example, may be fun to the person who likes to free- fall 1,000 feet before opening the chute. There is a sense of excitement and thrill with just enough uncertainty to push the experience outside the routine of daily sky-diving practice. But faith is also needed to trust the chute will open. In that sense, the chute becomes a savior, a sacred object in which faith is put. Of course, the jumper will not take chances by assuming that someone else has packed the chute correctly. If he is serious, he will take the necessary care to make sure it is safely packed. To have fun, then, the skydiver must be serious about his faith. Berger suggests that in the modern world, humor does, indeed, encourage us to take escape from daily life seriously.18 We enjoy humor’s mocking attitude toward the world, the way it allows us to stand outside life with its mundane predictability and laugh at it. Humor helps us to believe that something else does exist outside our everyday world, something that transcends it and gives it new meaning. We might even come to see the “empirical world in its entirety . . . as full of holes, precarious, ultimately implausible.”19 Berger suggests that this comic view of the world

15. Quoted in Context, (December 1, 1991), vol. 23, #21, 3. 16. Berger, “Humor as a Religious Phenomenon,” 2. 17. Quoted in Fishwick, Great Awakenings, 1. 18. Berger, “Humor as a Religious Phenomenon,” 11 ﬀ. 19. Ibid., 13.

 From Fun to Faith implies another world, one that is sacred, that “is more real than anything in the empirical world.”20 All that is experienced in the empirical world now appears reversed and insigniﬁcant. In this sense, the comic signals the transcendent and may become a “preamble to faith.” Robert Polhemus takes a similar position on comedy and faith in his study of nineteenth-century comic novels.21 At that time in Britain, some form of faith was needed to question and supplement orthodox faith and the culture it had established. Fiction could provide religious functions through the use of comedy. Consequently, novelists used various forms of humor to assure these functions: “to honor creation; to provide hope; to reconcile people to their harsh facts; to smooth over social enmity; . . . to make people feel that they are important; . . . to allow people to identify with righteousness.”22 Polhemus goes so far as to suggest that prayer and laughter might be equated, that such expressions of faith also suggest the directions of people’s lives. Prayer and laughter could even be regarded as symbols of a religious worldview. Ultimately, Polhemus claims “the comic imagination can change reality.”23 It mocks the world about us with negation and builds its own world upon the remains. A character like Don Quixote provides the reader with a world of fantasy that may be believed in, a world that transcends the mundane and gives hope to all those dreamers who need an object for their belief, something to have faith in. It is Polhemus’ opinion that “Shakespearean comedy blends comic and religious experience.”24 Paradox and fantasy are the stuﬀ of destiny, of changed lives and cataclys- mic events. It is the supernatural that resolves the comic situation in so many of Shakespeare’s plays as reality itself is questioned. Consequently, we’re left with a new awareness of theuncertainties of life and their place in routine circumstances. Although the comic spirit may lead to religious faith, it is not necessarily faith as we generally understand it. Indeed, much of New Testament faith, in its time, was not orthodox. Nor was the comic spirit accompanying it. The parables and other teachings of Jesus mocked the Pharisees

20. Ibid., 17. 21. Polhemus, Comic Faith. 22. Ibid., 5. 23. Ibid., 15. 24. Ibid., 11.

 From Faith to Fun and the Law. At the time, any religious faith appeared syncretistic at best. Orthodoxy comes only when there is a predictable response to some object of faith. Comedy, by itself, provides no such object for faith. Hope remains unfocused, incomplete. Ultimately, comedy remains centered on self. “All comedy celebrates humankind’s capacity to endure . . . it reveals the unquenchable vitality of our impulse to survive.”25 Ultimately, a comic faith remains a faith in the comic.

Sport as Faith In a cartoon, a group of people kneel on a living room ﬂoor, heads bowed, eyes closed, hands clasped reverently in prayer, while a voice from the TV in front of them announces, “In the beginning, there was Super Bowl I.”26 Sally is watching TV when her brother, Charlie Brown, enters the room. Sally says, “I’ve been watching an exciting football game. The congregation is going wild.” Charlie says, “Football games have fans, churches have congregations, concerts have audiences, courtrooms have spectators, riots have mobs, and accidents have onlookers.” Sally repeats herself, “The congregation just tore down the goal posts.”27 A husband, reading a newspa- per in an air terminal, says to his wife, “Our friends back in London will be fascinated by the huge headlines about Mr. Bear Bryant’s funeral. If he wasn’t an ex-president, what was he? An American religious leader?” His wife’s response: “In some parts of America.”28 These comics present a clear case for sports as a religion. As good humor should, they expose another side of sports, one which we don’t usually see, or perhaps, care to see. In one sense, that side of sports has always been there simply because religion and sports tap into similar expressions of the unknown and the uncertain. Michael Novak is quite clear on his view of sports as a religion. Sports is, somehow, a religion . . . sports ﬂow outward into action from a deep, natural impulse that is radically religious: an impulse for freedom, respect for ritual limits, a zest for symbolic meaning,

25. Corrigan, Comedy, 8. 26. Berry’s World, Jim Berry, NEA, Inc., January 31, 1988. 27. Peanuts, Charles Schulz, United Features Syndicate, November 17, 1983. 28. Tank McNamara, Jeﬀ Millar and Bill Hinds, Universal Press Syndicate, February 15, 1983.

 From Fun to Faith

and a longing for perfection. The athlete may of course be pagan, but sports are, as it were, natural religions.29 It is this sense of spontaneity, this sense of permissiveness which first set sports off from the rest of social life. From the beginning, sports were “natural” because they were not cultural as they are today, they were mere diversions intended to fill in the spare time after work and little more. In this sense, they were fun. By the 1970s, this playful approach to sports was changing. Television showed the cultural potential in sports which enhanced its religious qualities; its symbolic richness, cultural rituals, and its display of hero gods. In 1973, sport sociologist Harry Edwards could say, “If there is a universal popular religion in America it is to be found within the institution of sport.”30 Sport was now a cultural product and no longer a natural religion. Edwards suggested the parallels between religion and sport were beginning to merge. Superstars became saint-like and team mergers were likened to ecumenical movements. Sport, as religion, was expanding beyond the field to include congregations of the faithful. Teams and their players were worshipped for qualities that seemed supernatural. As rituals, games acquired mythical proportions. Today, one observer claims, the parallels have merged to provide a complete identity of sport and religion: “Sport is religion.”31 One way to measure this identity is to understand the effect sport has had on religion. By 1976, it was apparent “that something had hap- pened to Sunday.” Churches, aware of the competition they were receiv- ing, gradually succumbed and adjusted their services to accommodate scheduled games. As the myth of Super Bowl Sunday developed, the domination of the Sabbath by sports became apparent. Some believed the decline in church attendance could be attributed to the influence of sports. Others went farther and suggested that this influence was not restricted to Sunday. As the presence of sports became ubiquitous, especially on TV, it could be said: “In sport religion, the sabbath is Everyday.”32 Sport, then, has transcended its traditional tensions with religion. It has developed its own sense of religious meaning and multimodality.

29. Quoted in Prebish, “Heavenly Father, Divine Goalie,” 309. 30. Ibid., 312. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., 306.

 From Faith to Fun Mountain climbers establish compulsive goals which demand strong faith and hope. Runners experience spiritual highs. Superstition plays a prominent role in sports as players perform ritual acts before events; touching first base when going on field, wearing a particular item of clothing when winning or changing to rally caps when runs are needed in late innings. Player skills are never enough to explain significant team achievements. There is always something transcendent that makes a team of destiny. Indeed, for many—athlete or observer—sport is an idol. But sport has importance as a public, as well as a private, religion. It organizes life for its followers much as Southside Gospel Church organizes life for its members. Fans make a variety of important decisions because of sports. They become committed to schedules which organize the weekends of the faithful. Friendships are determined by the common ties binding them to teams. In some families, large sums of budgets are given to sports. Like fun, sport is a commodity, regulated by the culture for its economic value. It also teaches moral qualities to youth. Indeed, stadiums today play a role in the cultural life of a city, not unlike that performed by cathedrals in the Middle Ages, and a major league franchise unifies a city and gives it an identity and a national status. “Religion’s job is to ‘re-legare.’ Legare means to bind together or unite. A religion should reunite us with reality, making it palatable and acceptable, with all its contradictions.”33 This statement is a reminder of the common functions performed by religion, humor and sports. Each, in its own way, provides a sense of cultural well-being, balancing the real with the less real and the ordinary with the extraordinary. In a secularized society, there is a religious vacuum to be filled by other gods which emerge from the sacred soils of society. These are gods rich with imagination that need to be surrounded by the mysterious and the awesome. Sport provides these qualities for the fan with statistics and athletes with star status. It creates a world of tape measure home runs and “immaculate receptions.” This is a world to capture the fan’s imagination when nothing else might. It takes the unreal and makes it real and gives significance to trivia. Sport gives the fan something to believe in. Indeed, sport is presented as fun and accepted as faith.

33. Stanley Myron Handelman, “From the Sublime to the Ridiculous—The Religion of Humor” in McGhee and Goldstein, Handbook of Humor Research, 26.

 From Fun to Faith Cinema as Faith At the opening of the twentieth century, film was little more than a cultural toy. What spurred its growth as a prominent form of mass entertainment was the modern industrial city and its emergence as a critical element in American life. Immigration and industrialization fragmented the familiar ties found in older cities and left the new urban areas with neighborhoods separated by customs and often religions. The dominant fact of life in these neighborhoods was work. Any remaining leisure time was usually spent by men in taverns and local sports programs. No form of entertainment crossed the various ethnic and class lines to provide a sense of common identity or cultural awareness until the improvement of film allowed for its presentation to the mass. This also was the form of entertainment in which women could participate and experience urban life. For some, the original goal was “‘the myth of total cinema’—the quest for a medium that could recreate the world in its own image, record and preserve human lives and events in as realistic a manner as possible.” In short, it was hoped film could “overcome the fact of death in the same way that the Egyptians embalmed their dead.”34 Such pretensions were never realized, largely because of early technical limitations. Some visionaries like Edison saw in film a larger potential as a form of amusement. Their hopes were realized largely by working class people who popularized the nickelodeons and made the movies the first mass entertainment medium. Young women, especially, found a form of escape in the movies, a place outside traditional moral authority where fantasies could be fostered. Film content often centered about daily life experiences, comic scenes with which viewers could identify. What gave such scenes excitement was the way they could be portrayed on film in unorthodox ways. Film allowed for the imposition of the dangerous or the fantastic on the familiar experiences of life. Viewers could experience the impossible and the mystical, the dangerous and the threatening, but always from the safety of a theater seat. As Stanley Cavell expressed it, film allowed “for the magical reproduction of the world by enabling us to view it unseen.”35 There was a surreal quality to early film that made it quite unorthodox by traditional standards of morality. Worse, the nickelodeons were

34. Sklar, Movie-Made America, 12. 35. Ibid., 21.

 From Faith to Fun suspect in the eyes of moral control agencies and were often labeled as questionable or even illegal. Like other forms of fun emerging at the time, the movies cut across the grain of traditional values with their portrayal of daily life. The humor displayed in most films at this time parodied acceptable social behavior. Social chaos was clearly implied in the work of Mack Sennett, for example, who popularized the Keystone Kops. It was all in fun, of course, to those who saw it as fun. Others took it more seriously and saw a cultural potential in films that would be attractive to the middle classes. They proved to be right as movies became a unifying force in America that transcended earlier class distinctions. Somewhere in the 1930s, the potential for myth-making in the movies became apparent. The loss of national pride caused by the Depression coupled with the threat of war in Europe caused eyes to turn to “Hollywood: The Dream Factory.”36 Movies were then seen in a more positive role for the nation, one that could provide hope and confidence in the future. Like religion, film could define the elements of social life that provide significance and worth for people. Escapism now was purposeful and directed toward positive goals presented in films. Events portrayed in film stretched the imagination, not in fanciful ways, but more in the direction of moral values, always ready to employ laughter that mocked the immoral or wayward characters on screen. As such events “transcend mundane life for a prescribed period of time, we are part of a sacred space, a sacred time, and transfixed by the experience, we are confronted by an alternative reality, a ‘not me,’ an otherness.”37 It is this sense of “otherness” that film making has fostered, if not exploited, in recent years. Films increasingly rely on excess to help the viewer escape the routines of life. The extraordinary and the extreme present us with another reality, one that is often deviant and contradictory to the one we know. At one time, the presentation of a sense of otherness would have been the sole responsibility of religion. Now, film assumes much of this responsibility for myth-making and the development of a collective awareness of the supernatural. In the process a collective humor is defined. We learn to laugh at the unreal even if it is fearful. We learn to judge the limits of reality, those points of tension between the real and the unreal. Gradually, film turns our thinking from orthodox views of

36. The title of a book by Hortense Powdermaker, an anthropologist who interviewed noted movie ﬁgures in 1946–1947. 37. Martin and Ostwalt, Jr., eds., Screening the Sacred, 155.

 From Fun to Faith life to the unorthodox. To state it more simply, film provides us with an epistemology. But modern film also describes a realistic picture of life’s complexities today. It avoids any simplistic and unreal portrayals of modern di- lemmas and deals with the hypocrisy and contradictions found there. It understands paradox and accepts it as a characteristic of our social condition, often more effectively than contemporary religion does. Too often, however, it doesn’t take paradox seriously. Modern film would have us laugh at paradox, not understand it; Cary Grant in a woman’s negligee, for example, or Harold Lloyd climbing the exterior of an office building. Movie making is, after all, an entertainment industry, not an educational enterprise. It seeks our laughter, not our questions. Movies want to encourage a sense of well-being in the audience, some cultural meaning we can share with others. Like religion, it wants to give us something to believe in, some lifestyle we can accept. Ultimately, the movie industry wants to shape our thinking while entertaining us. Once film producers established credibility with audiences, it was important to gain predictability as well. Box office receipts suggested audience tastes which shaped the direction of film plots and action. The Academy Awards became a seasonal event, a ritual which gained the support of the faithful. Holiday seasons offered an opportunity for the opening of blockbuster films. Gradually, these openings competed with religious events for the loyalty of the public. Films became a celebration to be understood and shared, much as sermons had been shared by the Puritans. Indeed, for many, films have become sermons on life. They “function in the same way traditional religion has always functioned: to provide ways for one to make sense of one’s world and life.”38

Pop Culture as Faith Speaking for the Catholic tradition, Andrew Greeley thinks of popular culture as “the work of storytellers, men and women who attempt to order the phenomena of experience.”39 It is in such stories, he believes, that the sacred might be found. With imagination, we learn about God and his works. For this reason, Greeley has a high view of popular culture, higher, perhaps, than most Protestants might have. Indeed, without such a view

38. Ibid., 158. 39. Greeley, God in Popular Culture, 92.

 From Faith to Fun it would not be possible to write novels for mass audiences as he does. Unlike other religions that stress a radical discontinuity between God and this world, Catholicism accepts the continuity that is there, “that God is radically present in the world.” Through the stories of popular culture, we can learn of God’s grace manifested all about us. In this sense, popular culture, as faith, has the capacity to be faithful. Representing the Protestant position, Kenneth Myers takes a very diﬀerent view. As the dominant religious group in America, Protestants looked upon the nation as a “Christian society.” Any form of worldliness “was seen as an aberration in American culture, not its essence.”40 The problem was immoral content, not popular form. Consequently, questionable content was purged and forms of popular culture were used to convey religious content. But Myers is also concerned about culture as form. As an extension of creation, culture is just as likely to be depraved as any other created form. Myers, quite likely, would agree with Greeley that God’s grace may shine through the popular media. But those media must be understood correctly. “You can enjoy popular culture without compro- mising Biblical principles as long as you are not dominated by the sensibil- ity of popular culture, as long as you are not captivated by its idols.”41 Popular culture has at least two separate functions in society. First, it may be an art form that is used to convey some message about life. Greeley evaluates popular culture in this way, arguing that its messages tend to be simplistic, and in the eyes of many critics, unrealistic. With creative imagination, one may evaluate it in terms of one’s life experiences and interpret it correctly. These inﬂuences become the link between the culture and religion since both share a mutual interest in these experiences. For those with simple lives, popular culture, as a religious form, may speak in meaningful ways to them. Life is not necessarily absurd, nor should it be, as some critics would claim. Unlike Myers, Greeley is less concerned about the form of popular culture as long as it has the potential to communicate some sacramental meaning. As an art form, popular culture cannot be agnostic. But popular culture also functions as a form of entertainment in society. Here, it seems, is the locus of Myers’ concern. He is disturbed about children’s commercials, for example, not because they may teach covet-

40. Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes, 18. 41. Ibid., 180.

 From Fun to Faith ousness and greed, but because, aesthetically, they are “deadening.”42 Such commercials, as well as most children’s shows, stifle the creative imagination and present a limited, if not false, view of life. They are entertainment and nothing more. For this reason, the form of popular culture should be just as suspect as the content. Myers accepts McLuhan’s thesis that media are messages and claims that “how one teaches is as significant as what one teaches.”43 If the form and content of popular culture are accepted uncritically, they become only a form of amusement. As entertainment, popular culture “reaches out to us where we are, puts on its show, and then leaves us unchanged, if a bit poorer in time and money.”44 Creative imagination remains untouched and religious meaning is unseen. Although popular culture has bridged the gap between entertainment and art form, it remains, especially in the United States, a way of amusing ourselves. For most of us, popular culture offers some diversion in our lives and nothing more. But diversion that is unexamined and unquestioned may become something else. We fail to see the latent role popular culture plays in shaping a worldview. As a means of having fun, popular culture masks its other side as teacher and moral adviser; it shapes our thinking as well as our lifestyle. Paradoxically, its triviality seems significant. Without critique, popular culture is taken seriously and acquires some religious meaning.

CONCLUSION The members of Southside Gospel Church found much form and freedom in their faith. The church calendar provided them with structure for their lives and organized their time in meaningful ways. At the same time, their faith freed them from involvement with the world. They felt little constraint from society and lived, voluntarily, outside many of its cultural boundaries. In their community, they experienced considerable satisfaction with their relationships which were predictable and consensual. Their faith blended the spiritual and the social into an integrated whole where, presumably, they could ﬁnd something of the joy traditionally experienced in the Jewish community. But if their faith needs fun to make it exciting, their fun needs faith to make it enduring.

42. Ibid., 184. 43. Ibid., 185. 44. Ibid., 81.

 From Faith to Fun The unbeliever finds much of this sense of social well-being and contentment in fun when it functions as a faith. As an expression of natural inclinations, fun frees a person from traditional restraints. It justifies this freedom by the approval gained from others of like mind. Their shared worldview provides consensus concerning the activities they choose. At the same time, this consensus structures their freedom into ways of thinking and behaving the culture supports. In society their fun-filled activities offer a balance to their daily patterns of living that provides a seedbed for their faith and offers some hope for the future. In each case, the worldview provides for the resolution of paradox. Southsiders understand paradox as a divine incongruity and leave, with faith, the solution to God. Without such a view of paradox, unbelievers are more inclined to trivialize immediate incongruities with fun and laughter. Neither group brings rational thought to paradox which remains outside the bounds of reason but open to insight that is divine or comic. Which insight we choose is largely dependent on the kind of incongruity— ultimate or immediate—that is important to us and the worldview which best expresses our faith at that time. We either seek fun which leads to faith in the Father or seek fun which leads to faith in folly.

 

Conclusion

When God enters the picture, He destroys man’s sacred. —Jacques Ellul

e live in a very upbeat world, or try to. We want to feel good about Wourselves and seek the same for others. Casual meetings begin with “How are you?” and end with the hope that the other will “have a good day.” All about us, we’re bombarded with the idea that we should smile and be happy. Then we encourage others to do just that by involving them in activities that seek the frivolous and shirk the necessary. Questions of responsibility or integrity are often shrugged off with a casual “just do it.” There is a way of thinking here which the majority of people share as they routinely make decisions in everyday life. Is there a problem here? In one sense, no. While such a view of life has not always existed in our culture, increasingly many of us have the resources to put this thinking into practice. We have the time and money to spend, guilt-free, on what have come to be known as “fun times.” We believe the therapeutic benefits found in those times of escape are essential, and they are. Who would question the value of laughter in hospital halls or school classrooms? In business, too, office managers who have come to believe that some problems should not be taken too seriously now provide creative, free-wheeling environments to nourish creative efforts. And there is little question that relationships, in general, flourish more when freed by frivolity than forewarned by fact. Indeed, we need the freedom to choose the casual over the serious and the trivial over the important. We’re looking for some balance to a routine of work-day schedules and we often find it in the various forms of humor offered by the culture. But all these efforts to produce a cultural sense of good-humor may also be counter-productive. It was Wittgenstein, remember, who suggest-

 From Faith to Fun ed that our expression of humor is a worldview, a way of looking at the world which shapes our thinking and acting in it. The casual day to day encounters with humor gradually mold our consciousness of life and how we are to relate to it. Instead of being surprised by joy, we’re more likely to search for it with those cultural searchlights offered by the media. As a worldview, humor may become a ubiquitous commodity that suffocates us with its banality. Too often, we look for humor where it shouldn’t exist and find it when least appropriate. It is important, then, to ask how humor should be expressed in the culture. What is its purpose and what form should it take? How can humor be rewarding without being reckless?

RECKLESS HUMOR Good humor flourishes in the context of a dialogue of differences; the comic and the straight man, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy. Good humor plays with differences in a creative way that releases tensions and the imagination. In its richest forms, the “ah-ha” experience in humor reveals new meaning and interpretation that transcends some cultural meaning. Chaplin’s portrayal of a tramp, for instance, lifts us beyond the stereotypical understanding of vagrancy by showing us the paradoxical human qualities below the surface. In its more common forms, good humor releases the pleasure and satisfaction that comes with the resolution of tensions; Dagwood leaving for work or Cathy shopping for fashionable swimwear. There is a richness in this way of thinking that all of us need. But fun is not clearly this kind of humor. Fun is often seen when children want to have fun by teasing another child. If there is no moral constraint, no one to point out why such behavior might be wrong, they just do it. Even if not malicious, fun often lacks responsibility. When children say, “Let’s have some fun” they often have no idea what that might mean. The possibility of fun in any form provides its own justification for the children and often for those responsible for them. When children are laughing we’re more inclined to be pleased they seem happy than to ask why they might be laughing. Not until there is the shattering of glass do we question the nature of the fun. In the adult world, too, fun seeks freedom and lack of restraint. Uninhibited, it wants to be on the outer edge of convention and conformity. Fun is jumping out of planes, scaling mountain peaks and driving trucks on rock-strewn wilderness trails. But even in its mildest forms,

 Conclusion fun distorts our sense of who we are and what we can do. It magnifies our sense of strength rather than the reality of our weakness. It encourages awareness of plenty rather than of poverty. Fun is largely defined in terms of self rather than the other. It offers excitement and release without counting the cost. Ultimately, all fun resists accountability. And yet, accountability is needed. Fun is integral to the therapeutic thinking that encourages permissiveness and facile relationships; one goes along to get along. Although this way of thinking is scarcely 50 years old, it has become one of the most influential worldviews of our time. This dominance has led to an unhealthy imbalance which often makes it difficult to understand or even perceive those serious aspects which could benefit us. Consequently, the enriching experiences offered by seriousness are ignored or misunderstood and we remain impoverished by a worldview of fun. Let me be more specific by pointing to several problem areas of cultural fun. First, fun denies the ordinary by escaping from it and then distorting it, simply because there is no fun in the ordinary or the familiar. Since any serious thought or action threatens fun, those thoughts and actions must be mocked; they can’t be taken seriously. Opposing the serious, fun negates the value of the logical or the moral and seeks to replace the ordinary with the extraordinary. And in the process, fun replaces other traditional values with its own. It elevates all that is laughable and illogical and encourages the immoral and frightening. In short, fun stands in opposition to the way of thinking which produced modern culture. My six year old grandson received for Christmas a set of cardboard dinosaurs to be assembled; A to B to C to D, for example, would make a Triceratops. After several assembly attempts, I noticed he was putting A to 3 to F to 5. When I asked him what he was doing he said he was making “a scary and fun dinosaur.” Apparently, the instructions were too much of a challenge for him and he had laid them aside. For him, the result was an unknown dinosaur randomly made of parts that was as good as any other dinosaur. While I could appreciate his creativity, he hadn’t learned about a Triceratops or how it would be assembled. At six years of age, of course, a child’s attention span is brief and a new and creative experience is rewarding. My grandson’s ego is satisfied when he lays the directions aside and follows his imagination. There may even be a sense of power in having made a scary and fun dinosaur. He has learned there is value in fun experiences especially when the rules are

 From Faith to Fun set aside. I am not especially concerned because I know that since that Christmas, he has experienced the “real world” of dinosaurs in a museum. He has come to appreciate the diﬀerence between fun and fact, though I’m not sure yet which he prefers. A second problem occurs when cultural fun ignores or distorts traditional meanings of language. Since fun is not comfortable with the traditional meanings of things, it develops its own rich and varied language, including smiles and laughter, and pits its values against the traditional. Language which requires logic and orderliness must be replaced by a language of abstraction and creativity. My grandson, for example, couldn’t have fun until he laid aside the instructions for making a Triceratops. By choosing a language, we also show our preference for one type of experience over another; the experience of rock music over classical music or the experience of an amusement park over a walk in the woods. Without clear meaning or order, the language of fun oﬀers a limitless world of new experiences. Words, when used with their traditional meaning, keep the past alive. Change the meaning of words, and the meaning of the past is vulnerable to a new meaning interpreted by fun. In a world freed by technology, we are no longer accountable to the past and its values. Without accountability, the language of fun becomes arbitrary, without clear reference to thing or thought. We communicate with metaphors that expect meaning to be interpreted instead of communicated. Responsibility, for example, is placed on the parent to understand what the teenager means when he says he is driving into town with friends to have some fun. For that reason, the boy will probably ask permission of his father who is more likely than his mother to understand. Fun both relies upon and contributes to a cultural poverty of language. It must rely on such poverty to mask its intentions while manipulating situations to gain the freedom it values. Fun is not possible when restraint and limitation are implied in the traditional meanings of language. Advertising, for example, relies much on humor to allow the viewer to interpret the claims of an ad in a lighthearted manner. Above all, it wants to avoid requirements for truth for which an ad might be held accountable. In the process of advertising, fun creates a world of illusion which, it is assumed, will prove more acceptable than the reality it replaces. If we are fooled by that illusion, isn’t that what fun is all about?

 Conclusion Coupled with the poverty of language is another problem we could call “consensual ignorance”; the tendency to give approval to meaning without understanding. The father shows consensual ignorance when he gives his son keys to the car without clearly understanding how it is to be used. The consumer shows it when she buys the advertised product without reading the label before making the purchase. Consensual ignorance is often the glue that holds a relationship together. Teenagers get friends into cars for a race on the highway truly believing it will be a fun experience and not a deadly one. There is, in fun, a conﬁdence that encourages trust even when there is little basis for that trust. That is why truth is at risk in a culture dominated by fun. What is important about any fun experience is the agreement to be found in it, not the meaning. It is the genius of fun that allows us to agree on something without knowing what we agree on. And it is this ability to gain consensual ignorance that makes fun such a valuable commodity in a world which places little value on truth. In fact, whenever there is a possible crisis of meaning caused by a discrepancy between what we know to be true and what we want to pass on about that truth, it will not be placed in a serious context. Some form of humor will be used to gain a consensus which does not question the meaning of a message. Indeed, at all cultural levels, the political, the economic, the educational, even the religious, a crisis of consensus is resolved by the kind of thinking encouraged by fun.

REWARDING HUMOR I include religion here because it is not insulated from the eﬀects of cultural humor. Questions of theology and doctrine, of course, should rest on faith and must be taken seriously. There is a transcendent quality in faith that sets it apart from the rest of the cultural experiences we know as religion. If faith is a response to God, then religion, without faith, may be a response to whatever idols we want to respond to. Faith is therapeutic when, nourished by hope, it counteracts worldly grief and evil. Without faith, religion is merely another form of cultural therapy; it heals without hope and comforts without challenge. Unquestioned, religion, without faith, accepts the therapeutic tenor of the times and becomes something other than what it was intended to be. Is there an issue here? For those without faith, there probably isn’t. Without the hope of transcendence, humor oﬀers therapy for those who

 From Faith to Fun must cope with the modern world. As a worldview, humor brings a needed balance to the seriousness found there. Indeed, one can often laugh at a culture of fun while also laughing with it. But even with such a worldview, discernment is needed if there is to be a proper understanding of the importance of seriousness in our culture. For those with faith, however, the issue is clearer. Claiming that “the modern world . . . is one of religious uncertainty,” the sociologist David Moberg suggests that “picking and choosing is imperative.”1 The church may too often assume it brings a god’s-eye view to humor as it does to sin and corruption. In fact, the high value attached by religion to joy and happiness may lead to support of humor without questioning the implications of its meaning or use. But such support is often naïve or ignorant in the competitive atmosphere of the religious marketplace, and sensitive questioning is needed. What is the proper role of humor in the pulpit? Is humor appropriate in church advertising? Can we differentiate between Christian kitsch and idolatry? And where is the place of faith in these questions? The issues here are subtlebut significant for the individual believer as well as for the church. James Davison Hunter claims, “the truth or falseness of religion becomes a matter of individual choice.”2 Since fun wears a halo of its own making in a world often considered to be corrupt, its innocence is generally unquestioned. We have noted how fun often masks cultural intentions which would not otherwise be supported by the faithful. As a technique, cultural fun is a means to some cultural objective. And even if that objective should be therapeutic with religious benefits, is fun necessarily the preferred choice to be employed? It was the sociologist Peter Berger who stressed the need of a “debunking motif” in the analysis of modern society.3 When any cultural form is left unquestioned it becomes an ideology; “a certain idea serves a vested interest in society.”4 As an ideology, fun is used to justify a wide variety of activities that seem plausible only because “we are having fun.” Indeed, we often want to experience fun so much that we fool ourselves into believing that we experience it when we don’t. Seriousness is the form of debunking to be used in questioning fun experiences. What was the

1. Moberg, Wholistic Christianity, 28–29. 2. Hunter, American Evangelicalism, 14. 3. Berger, Invitation to Sociology, 38–43. 4. Ibid., 112.

 Conclusion cost of the experience? Was anyone mistreated or emotionally hurt by it? Did our fun break any rules or standards of good behavior? Since seriousness is the opposite of fun and a threat to it, attempts to be serious when we’re having fun are generally trivialized with laughter. And yet debunking is necessary as it leads us to laugh at fun, not with it. Would the debunking of fun result in a humorless society? Not at all. While laughing at fun, we might laugh with faith. Berger believes that such laughter may be redeemed whenever life is made easier to bear.5 While the redemption of laughter may appear to be folly in a secular world, it is a foolishness that is right and necessary. To make his point, Berger quotes Helmut Thielicke: “The absolute is always on the edge of ri- diculousness when it collides with the contingent.” 6 At such times, faith may seem incongruent and out of place. But if the collision leads to victory— even as God’s promise to Abraham and Sarah was fulﬁlled—then laughter is redeemed as a symbol of faith’s conquest of a faithless world. In Berger’s view, the comic is “a signal of transcendence” in the modern world as it implies another reality, one in which the rules of daily living are set aside and others are put in their place. This is not to say that such transcendence necessarily implies religious meaning. But at another level, there are aspects of the comic which do have redeeming qualities when they point beyond the troubles of this world to the hope to be found in another. This transcendence redeems when it shows us “a world that has been made whole and in which the miseries of the human condition have been abolished.”7 It is only by faith, however, that we interpret these two forms of transcendence, the secular and the religious, correctly. This faith assumes an understanding of the mystery of God’s pen- etration of our world. Our understanding “tells us that the God who created the distant nebulae, the God who is other than anything we can imagine, has come to us; that His coming gives redeeming meaning to our ﬁnite existence; and that this meaning may be found in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.”8 Here is the divine paradox where the transcendent and the terrestrial, the eternal and the ephemeral are joined. Here is the basis for understanding all humor. It is on this level of under-

5. Berger, Redeeming Laughter, 205. 6. Ibid., 194. 7. Ibid., 205. 8. Berger, The Noise of Solemn Assemblies, 115.

 From Faith to Fun standing that we can take a god’s-eye view of the human condition and recognize the folly of life without such an understanding. Faith was the basis for Sarah’s laughter at the birth of Isaac. Later, it would provide Abraham an opportunity to laugh at God’s provision of a ram to be sacrificed in place of Isaac. Redeeming laughter reveals God’s redemptive power as it breaks into society to provide a truly comic view of ourselves in the cosmic comedy. In the echoes of such laughter, all other attempts at humor are reduced to trivia. If humor is to be redeemed in a world that prizes the cultural expression of fun, the triviality of that fun must be debunked at the same time the transcendence of faith is defended. Linus is reading to Charlie Brown from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Luke, the second chapter: “And in that region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with fear. And the angel said to them, ‘Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of a great joy which will come to all the people; for to you is born this day in the city of David a savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men with whom He is pleased!’—Sigh. Like I’ve said before, that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.” “You’re right.” “So,” says Linus, “who needs Santa Claus?!” 9

9. Peanuts, Charles Schulz, United Feature Syndicate, December 18, 1966.

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