A short time ago I was sitting in a meeting room with several other Christians listening to a man speak. He was presenting information as a dignified elder of his local church who has garnered due respect down through the years and is held in some esteem by those who know him. While lecturing about a man in the community who had a tendency to get himself into questionable situations but always emerge from them unscathed, this distinguished fellow stated emphatically, "He always seems to come out of a bad situation smelling like a bandit!" For a brief moment, I thought I might need to be strapped to my folding chair to prevent falling onto the floor in riotous laughter. (Although I do suspect if I had pointed the error out to this man, he most probably would have chuckled at it, too. I think others take him far more seriously than he does himself.) All I could think was that I was immensely glad my cousin, Katherine, was not present in the room. Had she and I been there together, surely we would have been summarily dismissed from the room in disgust for the appalling lack of respect our chortles would have shown. To this day, I remember the time the two of us rode in the nine-passenger station wagon my parents owned to deliver Memorial Day wreaths to the cemetery where our grandparents and several other family members were interred. Bear in mind we were about 13 years old then, and certainly did not see this as a desirable way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Nevertheless, there we stood at the foot of Grandma's grave when my mother turned to my father and asked, "Where is the bouquet for your mother's grave?" My father snarled a retort. "I thought you picked it up. I left it on the back porch." (It would appear that a 20+ mile ride in a 9-passenger station wagon holding 10 passengers has a tendency to create a bad mood in some people. I can't imagine why. The rest of us were having a blast.) When the determination had been made that Mother was entirely at fault in leaving the bouquet behind (that's just the way things were back then-- as Mick Jagger was prancing across the worldwide stage belting out "Under My Thumb" and Gloria Steinem was still referred to as the "nice young girl down the street" by her neighbors), Father stated emphatically, "Well, I guess I'll just have to drive back over here later tonight and bring it." Without a moment's thought, I turned to Katherine and whispered, "Oh my gosh, you wouldn't catch me dead in a cemetery at night!" With an instantaneous mutual recognition of what I had just said, the two of us burst into uncontrollable laughter. Despite the stern looks and even sterner admonitions of my father, we simply could not help ourselves. The harder we tried not to laugh, the more we guffawed... until eventually we were sent to the car with instructions not to show our faces until we could learn to be more respectful of the dearly departed. We never did make it back to the graveside that day.
As the years have passed, Katherine and I have shared more than one venture into the land of out-of-control with laughter that has brought tears to our eyes and healing to our souls. We have been able to laugh in situations that might have driven others to deep despair, all the while understanding and accepting that laughter is often a healthy release of tension that should be interpreted as nothing more than what it is. How sad it is that many Christians have somehow adopted the belief that laughing at ourselves or at the ridiculous situations that life often presents to us is akin to sacrilege. The Bible is filled with scriptures that extol the virtues of laughter and a joyful heart:
- "A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones." (Psalms 17:22)
- "A glad heart makes a cheerful face, but by sorrow of heart the spirit is crushed." (Proverbs 15:13)
- "A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;" (Ecclesiastes 3:4)
I'm all for showing due respect. I really am. I'm also all for learning not to think too highly of myself or others. Learning to laugh at ourselves can save us a lot of pain in life. Even now I remember the year I worked at the local J.C. Penney store during the Christmas holiday season. I arrived at work early one morning, still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, and took up my station at the busiest cash register in the store. I must have waited on well over a hundred customers that morning, hustling around the department showing them various sale items, packaging up purchases, and straightening shelves. By lunch time I was bushed and headed for the break room for some well-earned respite. Once there, I moved to two or three different tables to share in conversations with other employees and purchased a soda and snack from a couple of machines. Toward the end of my break, I made a quick trip to the ladies' room to freshen up for the afternoon. Then and only then did I discover that I had been wearing my slacks backwards all morning long. I knew this because they were the kind that had the sewn-in pleat down the center of each leg. When I emerged from the restroom, slightly embarrassed but unable to keep myself from chuckling, I asked my fellow workers, "Didn't any of you notice that I had my pants on backwards?!" Several of them replied, "Yes." "Well," I responded, "why then didn't you tell me?" Their answer? "We thought we might embarrass you if we did." So let me get this straight-- they thought I would be less embarrassed to find out I'd been parading all over J.C. Penney with seams running down the back of my slacks? Go figure.
The point of this blog post is pretty simple: Don't take yourself or others too seriously. Life is short and is filled with more than enough opportunities to mourn and wail. Laugh when you can. Laugh 'til tears run down your face. Laugh 'til your sides hurt. Believe me, you'll feel so much better afterwards. Who knows, in a tough situation you may just come out smelling like a bandit!
"For by the grace given to me I warn everyone among you not to estimate and think of himself more highly than he ought..." (Romans 12:3a)
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