A few days ago, provoked by the reaction to my latest irreverence, I shared a few odd thoughts on playfulness and holy silliness. I quoted, in passing, a line from a favorite Rahner essay. As usual, what he says is too good not to share at length—so here’s a taste. As I have time in the coming days, I’ll share some other favorite selections on these themes, and perhaps one or two other of my similarly irreverent prayers and poems, as well.1
Before he begins in earnest, Rahner insists that we keep in mind the fact that he’s thinking of real laughter—nothing polite, nothing pious:
By “laughter” we do not mean the sublime heavenly joy that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, nor the joy that “spiritual persons” like to talk about in soft, gentle terms (a joy that can easily produce a somewhat insipid and sour effect, like the euphoria of a harmless, balanced, but essentially stunted person). No, we mean real laughter, resounding laughter, the kind that makes a person double over and slap his thigh, the kind that brings tears to the eyes; the laughter that accompanies spicy jokes, the laughter that reflects the fact that a human being is no doubt somewhat childlike and childish. We mean the laughter that is not very pensive, the laughter that ceremonious people (passionately keen on their dignity) righteously take amiss in themselves and in others. This is the laughter we mean.
Once that’s clear, he begins to lay out his theological account:
In the most pessimistic book of the Bible we read: "There is a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance" (Eccl. 3:4). This is what laughter tells us first of all: there is a time for everything. The human being has no fixed dwelling place on this earth, not even in the inner life of the heart and mind… Life means change. Laughter tells us that if as people of the earth we wanted to be always in the same fixed state of mind and heart, if we wanted always to brew a uniform mixture out of every virtue and disposition of the soul (a mixture that would always and everywhere be just right), laughter tells us that fundamentally this would be a denial of the fact that we are created beings…
There are, of course, times in which it is bad to laugh, and not all laughter is good. “There is a laughter of fools and of sinners,” Rahner reminds us, “a laughter which the Lord cursed in his woes.” Cursed laughter emerges from despair—the refusal to accept life as “a divine comedy,” reducing human experience to “a cruel, silly trick.” But blessed laughter, the laughter of children and saints, is praise of God, an outburst of idol-shattering gratitude.
God laughs, the Scriptures say. And God’s laugh is pure, Rahner concludes, because God is always at peace. God’s is “the laughter of the carefree, the confident, the unthreatened... the laughter that pronounces judgment on all history.” That is the laughter that Jesus has promised to share with us: “Blessed are you who weep now, you shall laugh!”
Rahner presses the point:
Laughter is promised, not merely a gentle blessedness; an exultation or a joy that wrings from the heart tears of a surprising happiness. All this, too. But also laughter. Not only will our tears be dried up; not only will the great joy of our poor heart, which can hardly believe in eternal joy, overflow even to intoxication; no, not only this—we shall laugh! Laugh almost like the thrones; laugh, as was predicted of the righteous (Ps. 51:8)…
*
Laughter, for Rahner, is an eschatological sign; to laugh is to announce the secret of secrets: death is not the all-powerful force we’ve been made to fear that it is. In his words, real laughter “announces and shows that one is on good terms with reality, even in advance of that all-powerful and eternal consent in which the saved will one day say their “Amen” to everything that he has done and allowed to happen.”
So, we can and should laugh—unashamedly, unapologetically.
Laugh. For this laughter is an acknowledgment that you are a human being, an acknowledgment that is itself the beginning of an acknowledgment of God. For how else is a person to acknowledge God except through admitting in his life and by means of his life that he himself is not God but a creature that has his times—a time to weep and a time to laugh, and the one is not the other? A praising of God is what laughter is, because it lets a human being be human.
*
Rahner concludes with something so obvious that it’s hard to notice at all: laughter is one of God’s creatures, made as a gift of the Father for the Son: “I, laughter, this little childish simpleton who turns somersaults and laughs tears, I am created by God…”
Thinking of laughter as a creature allows us to see ourselves in a clearer light, because unlike us, laughter never forgets that it’s a creature, never takes itself too seriously, and like its creator, whose will it does so effortlessly, laughter wants self-forgetting freedom for us, as well.
Finally, once we’ve heard in our heart of hearts that God is the God of laughter, we can see why it is so good for us to laugh—even “a little stupidly and a little superficially.” As Rahner insists, sometimes—indeed, perhaps more often than not—this seemingly superficial laughter is deeper far than all our “toiling thoughtfulness.” When all is said and done, therefore, real laugher, stupid and silly laughter, laughter born of irreverence, is perhaps the best witness we can offer to the effortless and unthreatened goodness of the God whose life is pure joy.
If you’re interested, you can read the whole of Rahner’s essay in The Eternal Year.
I love this Chris. Thanks for this. This past week, i was ministering in a church where it seemed there was no joy, only stiffness. I have a story of silliness that ensued that I think you’d enjoy hearing about.
This piece made my laugh. A Jungian Analyst told me once that a lack of humour and laughter is generally a sign of a hugely suppressed shadow (which means the ego taking itself too seriously). I think that may be true. People in my country (Australia) tend to be very irreverent which means we frequently fail to take seriously what we need to, but it is also frequently hilarious. I love it. I understand it is a practice in some Orthodox churches to tell jokes on Easter Day.