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Uplifting Laughter

by J.W. Phillips
05/20/25
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Uplifting Laughter 

Have you ever noticed that when looking at pictures of the great men and women of God they’re never laughing? In fact, it’s rare they’re even smiling.

What do you make of this? Did they not know joy?

Their biographies indicate they knew deep joy, abiding joy, and knew it better than most of us do.

Consider also the Lord Jesus. There were no belly busters from him! No head thrown back in laughter! No back-slapping, joke-swapping, rollicking humor!

Harry Emerson Fosdick tells us that Jesus “let the ripple of a happy breeze play over the surface of his mighty deep.”

He was never yucking it up with the disciples, or trading jokes with rowdier ones in the crowd. Though Jesus frequently asked questions, he never asked one beginning, “Did you hear the one about …?”

As with Jesus, it is also difficult to imagine God grinning—Buddha, maybe, but not God.

Guffaws from God? Not likely.

Chuckles from Christ? Won’t happen.

Hilarity from the Holy Spirit? Don’t count on it.

I can imagine each person of the Godhead appearing before a vast throng in Heaven, but not to do a comedy routine!

So is there a place for laughter in Kingdom life?

Sure, there is. According to the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus prophesied, “They shall laugh.”

Once the great battle with Satan is over and none of his work is left on the scene, the impulse of laughter will find its place and need no imposed restraints.

In his book, The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth, D.E. Harding said that “… heaven is lighthearted and merry … the skies are one broad smile, and the galaxies are even now shaking their fiery manes with laughter ….”¹

Thomas Carlyle noted that often: “True humor … issues not in laughter, but in still smiles which lie far deeper.” According to Louis Sabatier, the nineteenth-century French theologian, in Jesus alone “optimism is without frivolity, and seriousness without despair.”²

This is not the same story with Satan. G.D. Watson observed: “… Scripture never reveals Satan as a being of levity in himself. The starless gloom of eternal night is fastened upon his awful malignant nature, and his very laugh would indicate a fiendish misery.”³

It seems ironic that with many comedians, the longer their routine goes, the greater this sense of a descending darkness. For all their jokes, they’re not happy. A fact their biographies later confirm.

Perhaps this is because they crossed the line into flippancy. Flippancy is the ability to see the funny side when there isn’t a funny side.

The cartoons, the comics, the comedians may tickle and tease. Their humor and jokes may divert and distract. They may bring a momentary crease to the face, but none to the brain. The word amuse, after all, literally means without thought.

The Bible cautions us to avoid jesting. One of the reasons for this being: Jesting makes a play on words, and in so doing disinvests belief in our words. When making a faith transaction with God, however, it is critical that we believe the words we speak! The more jesting occurs, the more belief gets eroded.

Charles Kingsley spoke of “the sacred duty of being happy.”⁴ Not a shallow happiness that has more to do with favorable circumstances. What Kingsley encouraged is a radiance emanating from a transformed life.

Can a Christian enjoy a joke just because it’s funny? Sure, there are some good jokes like that.

I don’t have a formula for funny. Nor am I making any attempt to catalogue the types of humor in the Bible, or even cite the virtues of humor itself.

Laughter has its place! Ecclesiastes reminds us there is a time to laugh. But that time is not every time. And what we think is funny may not be funny to God. Those who would devote themselves to drivel find more pleasure in foolishness than faith.

“Oh, don’t be a kill joy,” some people will say.

Yet much laughter does precisely that! It numbs the mind, dulls the soul, and deadens our capacity to experience real joy.

One could slap the knee and say, “Oh, that’s a good one!” But have you ever noticed how quickly we forget the jokes we hear?

There may be a reason for that. We forget because it wasn’t important enough to remember. So how good was it, really?

It is uplifting laughter we want, not a laughter that degrades others, blurs truth, trivializes life, and desensitizes the soul.

The laughter that friends share, drawing them closer together is uplifting.

The laughter that shrinks ego and keeps us from taking ourselves too seriously is uplifting.

The laughter that flows from a godly gladness is uplifting.

It isn’t that difficult to distinguish uplifting humor from the sinister satire that stabs, the jocular jabs that jolt, the ruthless ridicule that reduces, or even the empty humor that vaporizes value, evaporates purpose, and diminishes destiny.

Notes:

1. D.E. Harding, The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth, (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1952), p.128.
2. The Speaker’s Bible, The Gospel According to St. John, Volume 1, Edward Hastings, ed., (Aberdeen, Scotland, Turnbull & Spear, 1931), p.77.
3. G.D. Watson, Spiritual Feasts, (Salem, Ohio, Schmul Publishing Company, 1991), p.37.
4. The Speaker’s Bible, The Epistle to the Philippians, The Epistle to the Colossians, ed., Edward Hastings, (Aberdeen, Scotland, Turnbull & Spear, 1931), p.106.