A visiting speaker at a church was impressed by the enthusiasm of the students in the church school's physical education class. 'I exercise, too,' he sighed, faintly smiling at the pastor. 'Every morning I awaken to the alarm, jump from bed and run around the block six times.' As the pastor offered hearty praise, the man continued, 'Then I kick the block under the bed and go back to sleep.'

Here's another: At his new pastorate, Bob requested $20 (U.S.) per month from the board to pay someone to mow the lawn and care for the flowers on the church's property. 'The former pastor did that himself,' the oldest board member quickly pointed out. 'I know,' Bob replied, 'but he doesn't want to do it any more.'

Maybe you didn't chuckle at any of these jokes. A person never knows what is amusing to others. Our funny bones are located in different places. Some laugh uproariously at slapstick comedy, while others enjoy more cerebral humor.

When it comes to humor in the church, I sometimes wonder if we laugh much. After all, church life is often devoted to the most serious aspects of living. Maybe that's why Barna researchers report that full-time church ministry shows one of the highest burnout rates among careers. Yet life in the church is not meant to be exclusively somber. In fact, the Bible reminds us again and again of the 'sounds of joy and gladness' (Jeremiah 33:11).

The book of Proverbs says, 'The cheerful heart has a continual feast' (15:15). The psalmist sings, 'Our mouths were filled with laughter' (126:2). Isaiah exults, 'Shout for joy, O heavens| rejoice, O earth' (49:13). Jesus tells His disciples, 'Your grief will turn to joy . . . and no one will take away your joy' (John 16:20, 22).

The apostle Peter confirms that the Christians to whom he is writing 'are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy' (I Peter 1:8). That is precisely why some of us need to learn to laugh a little more-if for no other reason than the fact that humor helps us cope and helps us heal.

Humor Helps Us Cope
Humor helps us cope-not just with the trivial events but even with the tragic.

Psychoanalyst Martin Grotjahn, author of Beyond Laughter, notes that 'to have a sense of humor is to have an understanding of human suffering.' Charlie Chaplin could have said the same thing. Chaplin grew up in the poorest section of London. His mother suffered from serious mental illness and his father died of alcoholism when Charlie was just five. Laughter was Chaplin's tool to cope with life's losses. When he eats a boiled leather shoe for dinner in his classic film, Gold Rush, it's more than a humorous scene. It is an act of human triumph, a monument to the coping power of humor.

A person does not need to be a professional comedian to benefit from comedy. Viktor Frankl's experience is another example of how humor can empower a person to contend with horrendous circumstances. In Frankl's book, Man's Search for Meaning, he speaks of using humor to survive imprisonment during World War II. Frankl and another inmate would invent at least one amusing story daily to help them cope with their horrors.'If you can find humor in anything,' Bill Cosby says, 'you can survive it.' Researchers agree.

Studies reveal that people who have a strong sense of humor are less likely to experience burnout and depression and are more likely to enjoy life in general-even when they're carrying heavy burdens.
 

Humor Helps Us Heal
Laughter has important physiological effects. The French philosopher Voltaire wrote, 'The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.'

Laughter is good medicine. Modern research indicates that people with a sense of humor have fewer symptoms of physical illness than those who are less humorous. This idea, however, is not new. Since King Solomon's time, people have known about and applied the healing benefits of humor. Proverbs 17:22 tells us, 'A cheerful heart is good medicine.'

In spite of its historical legacy, the healing power of laughter was not taken seriously by the scientific world until Norman Cousins, former editor of Saturday Review and subsequently professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine, wrote about his life-changing experience with humor. As he reported in his book, Anatomy of an Illness, laughter helped turn the tide of a serious collagen disease.

'I made the joyous discovery,' Cousins reported, 'that ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain-free sleep.' He surrounded himself with Marx Brothers films and Candid Camera videos. He also checked out of the hospital and moved into a hotel where he could 'laugh twice as hard at half the price.'Cousins called laughter 'inner jogging' because every system in our body gets a workout when we have a hearty laugh.

Laboratory studies support Cousin's hunches. Our cardiovascular and respiratory systems, for example, benefit more from twenty seconds of robust laughter than from three minutes of exercise on a rowing machine. Through laughter, muscles release tension and neurochemicals are released into the blood stream, creating the same feelings that long-distance joggers experience as a 'runner's high.'

So, maybe it's time to lighten up a little. Learning to laugh more just may save your life, and it will certainly make your family life easier-as well as life within the church. To paraphrase Pastor Henry Ward Beecher, 'A parishoner without a sense of humor is like a wagon without springs-jolted by every pebble in the road.'

Les Parrott III, founder of the Center for Relationship Development at Seattle Pacific University, is the award winning author of Love Talk and many other books. |

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HUMOR LAB
Most theories of humor can be categorized into three historically recognized types: incongruity, superiority, and tension relief. Let's look at some examples.

• Incongruity: Blaise Pascal, a physicist, mathematician, and publicist from the 1600s, and Immanuel Kant, a philosopher from the 1700s, were two of the first people to publicly regard humor as essentially a sudden unrelated shift in our thinking. Mark Twain provided an example when he said, 'Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.' The incongruity of a vegetable being educated is humorous. Dick Van Dyke falling over an ottoman in his living room is funny because our momentary confusion is transformed into an appreciation for the joke. We laugh when the unstable structure in the humor becomes stable and we 'get the point.'
• Superiority: Greek philosophy viewed humor as being primarily associated with cruelty and the disparagement of people. Thomas Hobbes, a seventeenth century philosopher, later espoused this view believing laughter was an activity of the weak, not the strong. Those who have the greatest need to build up their self-esteem, according to this theory, make light of others' weaknesses. The emphasis here is on the aggressive aspects of humor and strands of this ancient theory are seen today. Don Rickles built a lucrative career on put-downs, and many situational comedies on television center around making fun of others' shortcomings.
• Tension Relief: At one point during the Cuban missile crisis, Soviet and U.S. negotiators became deadlocked. They sat in silence until one of the Russians told a riddle: 'What is the difference between capitalism and communism?' The answer? 'In capitalism, people exploit people. In communism, it's the other way around.? Humor relieves stress. Sigmund Freud, who described humor as a 'rare and precious gift,' postulated the tension relief theory. He saw humor as an opportunity to release stress built up in our overly rational and demanding lives.

Please note: All facts, figures, and titles were accurate to the best of our knowledge at the time of original publication but may have since changed.