GroshLink

More from Tim Keller, thank-you to my friend Kevin for bringing this piece from the Redeemer Report to my attention!  I find Tim's brief thoughts regarding humor particularly helpful in self-examination.  How easily I'm influenced by the nod, nod, wink, wink era/culture in which we live.  No doubt this has been accentuated by my time in campus ministry, with the issues being present both with students and the academic guild. ....

Father, set my compass for the summer season of extended times with those close to me ... Ellen and Hayley being home from school, gatherings of extended family, various summer social events at our local congregation and in the community.  Fill my life and our family's life with the fruit of the Spirit in all our interactions and grant us the grace to love one-another as we laugh and play together!  In the name of your Son Jesus, Amen. 

Below is the conclusion of The Gospel and Humor:

In gospel-shaped humor we don’t only poke fun at ourselves, we also can gently poke fun at others, especially our friends. But it is always humor that takes the other seriously and ultimately builds them up as a show of affection.

“We are not to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously -— no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption.” (C.S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory”)

So how do we get such a sense of humor? That’s the wrong question. The gospel doesn’t change us in a mechanical way. To give the gospel primacy in our lives is not always to logically infer a series of principles from it that we then ‘apply’ to our lives. Recently I heard a sociologist say that, for the most part, the frameworks of meaning by which we navigate our lives are so deeply embedded in us that they operate ‘pre-reflectively.’ They don’t exist only as a list of propositions and formulations, but also as themes, motives, attitudes, and values that are as affective and emotional as they are cognitive and intellectual. When we listen to the gospel preached, or meditate on it in the Scripture, we are driving it so deeply into our hearts, imaginations, and thinking, that we begin to instinctively “live out” the gospel. I have definitely seen the gospel transform a person’s sense of humor, but it would be artificial to say that there are ‘gospel-principles of humor’ that we must apply to our lives. It just happens as we believe the gospel more and more.