Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I said to myself, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.” But that also proved to be meaningless. “Laughter,” I said, “is madness. And what does pleasure accomplish?” I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly—my mind still guiding me with wisdom. I wanted to see what was good for people to do under the heavens during the few days of their lives.

• Ecclesiastes 2:1-3

A good name is better than fine perfume,
    and the day of death better than the day of birth.
It is better to go to a house of mourning
    than to go to a house of feasting,
for death is the destiny of everyone;
    the living should take this to heart.
Frustration is better than laughter,
    because a sad face is good for the heart.
The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,
    but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure.
It is better to heed the rebuke of a wise person
    than to listen to the song of fools.
Like the crackling of thorns under the pot,
    so is the laughter of fools.
    This too is meaningless.

• Ecclesiastes 7:1-6

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

• James 4:7-10

“[Speaking of Jane Austen] The hard core of morality and even of religion seems to me to be just what makes good comedy possible. …
“Where there is no norm, nothing can be ridiculous, except for a brief moment of unbalanced provincialism in which we may laugh at the merely unfamiliar. Unless there is something about which the author is never ironical, there can be no true irony in the work.”

• C. S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essay (A Note on Jane Austen)

In a recent Quantum podcast, maybe 2-3 weeks ago, Rev. David Robertson had an audio clip of Jerry Seinfeld who said in a recent interview that comedy is dead with the control exerted by the Woke Agenda.  You cannot simply write the script of a sitcom these days.  It does not go through one, but several committees.  Each committee cuts one part of the script and then another cuts another part of the script.  Each committee is there to represent a special interest group that could be offended.  And Seinfeld’s conclusion is that what is left after the censorship is finished is hardly even amusing.  Rev. Robertson echoed his sentiments with the few British sitcoms that he watches.

As for me, I have removed all sitcoms from my watch list.  In her last couple of years, my wife watched no currently running shows.  She binge-watched old episodes of Third Rock from the Sun and a few old seasons of police procedurals.

But in reading the C. S. Lewis quote, I concur.

When you look at the Scriptures above, God is not telling us that laughter is bad.  Comedy is not sin, but there can be a lot of sin in modern comedy.  I have been watching Dry Bar Comedy from Provo, Utah, where dark comedy, blue comedy, and crude comedy are not permitted, or so it seems.  It may not be totally void of offensive language, but there are a lot of comedians that try hard to keep it clean.  But that does not mean they avoid all topics that might offend “someone” in the universe.

I have performed a comedy routine at church, where I also gave my testimony.  Comedy has been important to me over my life.  I need laughter.

The Scripture above from Ecclesiastes is Solomon trying to make sense of this world.  Sense in this world can only be found in God.  But when he says laughter and pleasure are meaningless, he does not say that they are sin.  Overindulgence is sinful.  Burying yourself in laughter and pleasure to fill a void that only God can fill is indeed meaningless and fruitless.  But once Jesus is in your heart, the Joy will overflow, and you can find yourself laughing at the oddest of moments.

I laughed inwardly as I waited to report to the gazebo for my wife’s grave side ceremony. In every discussion, I had requested that we be interred side-by-side in the Columbarium.  That way, anyone visiting could walk to where our ashes were kept on a concrete walkway, rather than walking through the snow and muddy ground to a burial site.  But she was buried right at the entrance to the National Cemetery.  I laughed in that both her career and mine were marked with constant times of ignoring our wishes and desires.  We were constantly being challenged to do more and be disrespected at every turn.  That being said, one colonel made sure I received an Army Commendation Award, mostly by fighting everyone trying to work against me, with notable success.

I also laughed in that in their ignoring my request, they put my wife in the best place possible, at the entrance where she could greet everybody.  Of course, it is just her ashes, who will not smile at everyone as they enter, but I will always think of her hospitality when I visit that spot, several rows up, but the best place to park is the first spot inside the entrance.

There is laughter and comedy in life, and when we have censorship, we are taught that it is wrong to laugh at ourselves.

Comedy is dead, only if we let it die.  My wife married me because she said I was funny.  My jokes might not be funny, but I could trip, tumble across a room, and then stand up and bow, making it look like I meant to do that.  The censors would remove all that.  It might offend clumsy people, but then I was laughing at myself.  Should I have been offended?

No.

So, maybe I should follow my wife’s lead and watch an old show that the modern cancellers deem offensive.  That is, when I really need a good laugh.

Thinking of the James Scripture above, it is summed up by humbling ourselves before God, mourning that we have sinned against God.  But then in Christ entering our lives when we have this surrender, it could just be that Jesus helps us to our feet, and as He does so, He is laughing, for our sins have been washed away.

And all the while, I will glorify God.  He gave us laughter for a purpose, and when we lose it, this world might just become unbearable to live in.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.