Humans, Humor and God - A Christian Perspective on Humor

 Hello!

I previously made "Humans, Boredom and God", about boredom and its relationship with God. Today, we are covering almost the opposite of boredom - humor and a sense of humor, that is the quality of being amsuing, or informally "funny".

Our main questions are: 1) is humor a byproduct of sin? 2) what is humor? We will also think about the "goodness" of humor. Humor is a distinctly human characteristics and these distinct human  characteristics are very interesting to think about. 

1) Is humor a byproduct of sin, and what is humor?

Humor is the sense of being amusing. What is the purpose of humor? Generally, its purpose is to amuse people. Is the need for amusement a byproduct of sin? This is a rather challenging question. Before sin, humans were happy in a perfect, godly way. However, when humans sinned, there came deficiencies like sadness, boredom, and insatisfaction. Amusement's purpose is to mainly relieve humans from defiencies of boredom and distract humans from sadness. Thus, humor is a byproduct of sin to relieve humans from deficiencies. Again, something being a byproduct of sin doesn't mean it is inherently sinful. 

Humor, thus was a relief to amuse humans from emotional deficiencies in the form of social interactions and jokes. 

2) Is humor good?

 What I mean by good is godly. First, does God have a sense of humor? Since humor is not a deficiency (while its existence is due to the existence of deficiencies), God definitely does have a sense of humor, but does not exercise his sense of humor and does not engage in humor, because he has no deficiencies. However, humor is also not sinful, but more of a neutral thing. I think a good sense of humor at the right hands can point people to God, but humor can also be something that is inappropriate, leading people further from God, and other consequences. For example, many sermons have some jokes. I think it is okay to have some short jokes that are related to the topic to immerse the congregation so they listen better, but definitely jokes shouldn't become the sermon, like some pastors in some churches have done. This is an example of how humor can be good - and bad.  

This is my conclusion in some short bullet points:

  • Humor is a byproduct of sin.
  • Humor is an amusement to distract humans from emotional deficiencies. 
  • Humor being a byproduct of sin doesn't mean it is sinful (inherently).
  • God has a sense of humor but will not exercise it.
  • Humor can be good and bad, thus it is inherently neutral . 

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