Q: Seriously, is sex funny?

A: Only if they laugh

Q: Why don’t some people laugh?

A: Socialization or association or…

Q: Huh?

A: Socialization: an authority-figure or two (parents, pastors) told you sex – or some aspects of sex – are not funny. (For Gnostics ancient and modern, the body and its functions are evil; the soul alone is pure).

Q: ‘No sex please we’re pastors’ sort of thing?

A: Yes. And association: some experiences involving sex were painful.

Q: And/or…?

A: The ‘Huh?’ factor: they don’t get it.

Q: Why don’t they get it?

A: Socialization or association or…

Q: The ‘Huh? Factor’

A: I think you’ve got it!

Q: Some examples of the ‘Huh? Factor’?

A: Easy. According to Fundamentalists sex is bad ‘cos it might lead to dancing. (Methodists: ‘Huh?’) Westerners don’t know any Muslim/Arab humour…

Q: Like?

A: Two young Arabs go for a walk in the country and watch a couple of sheep mating. One asks the other ‘Are you a virgin?’ They both – and every Arab who hears it – crack up!’

Q: Huh?

A: Exactly.

Q: Back to socialization: why do pastors sometimes object to laughing about sex?

A: Some might think the Bible is ‘prudish’ and not at all funny…

Q: Really? Is it?

A: Well, try telling some pompous ass that he swallows camels, or see if your pastor refers to males as those who ‘piss against the wall’, or preaches about those who eat their own faeces and drink their own piss (Isaiah 36:12). The ancient near-eastern culture of the Bible was quite earthy: no pastor I know uses imagery like Ezekiel’s about eating barley cakes made with “the dung that cometh out of man” (4:12).

Q: But you don’t think the angels mind us laughing about sex (they see it all the time eh?)

A: They do mind, in three broad areas: demeaning others, or insensitivity to some people’s unresolved pain, or simple bad taste.

Q: Eg.?

A: Racist humour gets boring when it’s incessant or over the top, unless members of a particular group/race laugh against themselves (the Jews are good at that: but when a Jew, Borat, gets us laughing about Kazaks they don’t like it). Blonde jokes aren’t funny in quantity either… So jokes sending up stupidity ought to be rationed (unless the range is so great that you offend just about everybody :-)!

Q: Insensitivity?

A: My homosexual friend who’s had anonymous sex with over 1,000 other males doesn’t want us laughing about his problem with lust. Nor does the ten-year-old who’s taunted by the school-yard bully that he’s gay. Nor the girl who’s been sexually abused…

Q: Is there a time when you say to someone who’s being too ‘precious’ ‘Just get over it’?

A: Only (a) if they know for certain that they are loved unconditionally and that you’ve suffered with them in their pain, and (b) they’re ready to laugh… Like the women my wife talks to in prison each week – most of whom have been sexually abused – who when asked ‘What was your job before you came in here?’ reply ‘Ceiling inspectors’. (Conrad Hyers: ‘Humor is not the opposite of seriousness. Humor is the opposite of despair.’). Some topics, I reckon, are never appropriate for humour – eg. anything to do with priests and small boys…

Q: And ‘bad taste’?

A: This is fairly complex. What is meant to be an experience of God’s gift of joyful, uninhibited sex between committed partners is cheapened by Paris Hilton or full-frontal nudity on payTV as early as 10 pm.; or programs like ‘The Man Show’ which glorify beer-drinking, boorish frat-boy humor, while making no apologies for objectifying women; or M-rated movies with over 200+ ‘f’ words… Ours is an over-sexed culture: it’s very rare for stand-up comics not to include bawdy/dirty jokes… And there’s so much misinformation on the information superhighway about sex…

Q: But it’s all still pretty subjective eh?

A: Yep, but this doesn’t mean we can’t make some aspects of sex funny, but let’s be generous in allowing different folks to ‘draw the line’ at different places. Some of the more puritanical friends of C S Lewis didn’t laugh at his bawdy jokes. John Stott shocked some of his younger friends by describing the sex in John Fowles’ The Magus as erotic rather than pornographic.

Q: Back to a generic question: so for Christians, with the foregoing caveats in mind, it’s OK to laugh sometimes about serious stuff?

A: Yes. Charlie Schultz (Peanuts) says ‘Humor is a proof of faith, proof that everything is going to be all right with God… those who find no humor in faith are probably those who find the church a refuge for their own black way of looking at life’. And Martin Luther: ‘If they don’t allow laughter in heaven, then I don’t want to go there’. Reinhold Niebuhr: ‘Laughter is the beginning of prayer’. And G K Chesterton: ‘The laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear… joy, which was the small publicity of the pagans, is the gigantic secret of the Christians’.

Q: What about laughing at doctrines – what we believe?

A: OK too, with some reservations similar to the above. Paul wished that false teachers would ‘mutilate’ (castrate) themselves (Galatians 5:12 – a pun about circumcision). The satirical/irreverent ‘Wittenburg Door’ is dedicated to ‘sending up’ religious people and ideas taken too seriously. (Eg. their ‘Shopping for Doctrines’ article: ‘You can evaluate doctrines for a full 30 days. If it doesn’t fit your personal style, or you’re dissatisfied for any reason, just return it for a full refund, no questions asked… Our most popular doctrine is the Tenfold Promise—item DOC-1040. It’s a universal spiritual law, which decrees that anything you give, God will return to you tenfold’ http://www.wittenburgdoor.com/archives/doctrineshopping.html )

Q: Back to sex: can satirical sex be a useful ploy to send up hypocrisy?

A: Certainly. And prophets through the ages have been satirists. Take this for a recent example:

‘There once was a Congressman Foley,/ Who acted all pious and holy. /Helping kids was his cause,/ But he broke his own laws,/ Sending sleaze through the net. Holy Moley!’ (Foley’s Folly by Madeleine Begun Kane)

Q: So, finally, there are worse sins than laughing at sex?

A: Yes, and one of them is making the Gospel boring.

Rowland Croucher

November 2006.