Laugh out loud... or not? Thought 1

Q: Why does the bride wear white on her wedding day?
A: So that she can match all the other kitchen appliances.

Laughing is fun, tension-relieving, endorphin-releasing, friendship-building, enjoyable, a gracious gift from God. But at the same time, like all good things in this fallen world, it can also be used so harmfully.

Luckily, God's been teaching me a lot about the way I use my humour over the past year. I'm one of those who appear not to take that much seriously as I'm forever giggling at something or seeing the ridiculous side of something. However, I've been more and more rebuked about how often i use mean humour to get laughs. You all know what I mean: we call it 'ripping off' and under the disguise of it all being 'in good fun', we use words to break others down.

However, why do we distinguish between the way we speak when we joke from the way we usually talk about stuff. What makes it acceptable that we joke about coarse things or that we joke ungraciously when God commands us to be pure and gracious in all things? When we wouldn't even think about being ungracious or impure when we're being serious? I don't think this means the end to all joking. I think this means we must learn to use joking in a way that DOES build up and that perhaps will be much harder work cause it'll need to be more creative and different from the way the world usually works..