PULPIT HUMOR — DEFENDING THE INDEFENSIBLE

One of the things I’ve learned in life is that many people, some more than others, have a propensity and knack for rationalizing the irrational and justifying the unjustifiable when it’s in their interests to do so. Some are ready to defend inappropriate humor in the pulpit no matter how biblically and patently indefensible it may be.

Until relatively recent times, most humor in the pulpit was considered unacceptable, out of place, an aberration and offensive. Today generally speaking, the opposite is true. Many Bible colleges and seminaries consider humor to be as integral and important to ministerial training as the study of homiletics or hermeneutics. Humor is now considered to be part of the “sugar” needed to “help the medicine go down.” The Word of God needs no such "sugar" when preached. Nevertheless, preachers are now sought after, applauded and rewarded based upon how good they are at “warming up” people to, and entertaining them during, the delivery of their messages.

Preachers who take a kind of slapstick approach to the pulpit, professional “Christian comedians” and other like-minded folk will assert that God “has a sense of humor,” and that He “enjoys a good laugh,” The response to this of course is, “Chapter and verse please?” At this point, passages such as Psalm 2:4; 37:13; 59:8 and Proverbs 1:25, 26 will be cited as proof texts, which is an example of the capacity some men have for “handling the word of God deceitfully” in order to make a bogus point (2 Cor. 4:2).

Another go-to verse in defense of humor in the pulpit Is Proverbs 17:20 which says, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine,” the implication being that the practitioner of pulpit humor is a sort of pharmacist for God dispensing medicine to those who might need a good belly laugh to fix them up spiritually. References in defense of pulpit humor are also made to Elijah’s mocking of the prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel, Jesus’ ridicule of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, and to the sarcasm Paul employed in denouncing idolatry on Mars’ Hill (1 Kings 18:25-27; Matt. 23:24, 27; Luke 11:11, 12; Acts 17:22-24). It has been correctly observed that “Jesus wept” (John 11:35) but nothing is recorded of His ever smiling. It was prophesied 700 years before His birth that He would be “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3).

Jesus said in the second of His Beatitudes, “Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted”  (Matt. 5:4). This refers to those who have a capacity and a disposition to grieve over sin that they are conscious of within themselves and in the world around them. This is in complete contradistinction to those called “fools” in the Bible who “make a mock at sin” (Ps. 14:9), and those guilty of “foolish talking,” and “jesting,” “which are not convenient” (Eph. 5:4-6) — sin undoubtedly compounded when it's committed while proclaiming the Word of God.

All of the examples in defense of pulpit humor cited here amount to nothing more than a “private interpretation of scripture” and a shameless wresting of it (2 Pet. 1:20; 3:16) that involves huge stretches of the imagination and a lot of wishful thinking. An honest and cursory examination of Scripture makes it clear that references to God laughing in the Bible are always in the context of His scorn and mockery of the absurdness of sin and rebellion.  Furthermore, there’s a big difference between the use of sanctified sarcasm by our Lord or one of His prophets or apostles and the fleshly efforts of a preacher to be funny.

People can hold their noses so long against something that doesn’t pass the “smell test” of Truth that they become lightheaded and addled-minded; they can live next door to a hog farm or chemical plant until the stench, once unbearable to them, becomes something to which they are accustomed and oblivious. People can be overcome by an inordinate spirit of tolerance that causes them to lose their ability to think straight. Just so, people can be in a church atmosphere where a spirit of levity relative to spiritual things is generated from and sustained by a pastor who is allowed to go rogue where overmuch and out-of-place humor in the pulpit is concerned.

People who know better can be brought to a place where the indefensible is thought defendable. If only temporarily, they  can become people who “call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter” (Isa. 5:20). There is no excuse for this, but there are explanations for it. A list of explanations would begin with the apostasy now rampannt and growing in churches due to the disinformation, scripturally-speaking, and the dumbing down spiritually speaking, that they have expeienced complements of unqualified pastors that they have set over themselves to their own peril. A "little leaven" where the pulpit is concerned will in time, definitely "leaveneth the the whole lump" where a church is concerned (Gal. 5:9).

Humor, such as joke telling and jesting from the pulpit, is never referred to, much less recommended in the Bible, in connection with a man's being a "good minister of Jesus Christ" (1 Tim. 4:6). Sober-mindedness and seriousness of demeanor, on the other hand, is specifically required of ministers of the Gospel. There are no examples in the Scriptures of God being “tickled” about anything. I'm pretty sure He is unamused by inappropriate humor—especially in connection with the preaching of His Word. "Behold, I am against them that prophesy false dreams, saith the Lord, and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies, and by their lightness; yet I sent them not, nor commanded them: therefore they shall not profit this people at all, saith the Lord" (Jer. 23:32).