![]() ![]() ![]() Since a fox is cunning, this may appear to be a compliment, but it certainly wouldn’t have been lost on the crowd that those pointy-eared varmints were nuisances, not terrors. Jesus referred to the shrewd and ruthless political leader Herod as “that fox” (Luke 13:32). Then think of the approving smiles of the poor and oppressed in the crowds who finally saw someone unafraid to confront these pseudospiritual false shepherds. Think of the religious leaders’ outrage when Jesus said, “The harlots go into the kingdom of God before you” (Matthew 21:31, KJV). These self-congratulatory actions, which Jesus characterized as “sounding a trumpet,” undoubtedly produced numerous smiles, smirks, and chuckles.Ĭan’t you imagine folks looking at each other with amazement and nervous glee when Jesus said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness” (Matthew 23:27)? Jesus was not telling jokes but painting mental pictures with a humorous, satirical sting. ![]() Instead, they’d draw attention to themselves by walking slowly and piously, making their money clearly visible. ![]() No one would do anything so obviously self-promoting. Jesus told people, “When you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others” (Matthew 6:2). But that’s the whole point-no sane person would! Therefore, Jesus was saying, don’t do the spiritual equivalent of that ridiculously stupid thing. When encountering a verse such as this one, which instructs us not to “cast your pearls before swine” (Matthew 7:6, NKJV), a modern reader might wonder why anyone would even think to do such an outlandish thing. People who worked the ground in that culture surely smiled at the self-evident answers. “Are grapes gathered from thornbushes?” He asks, “or figs from thistles?” (Matthew 7:16). The Dictionary of Biblical Imagery says, “Jesus was a master of wordplay, irony and satire, often with an element of humor intermixed.” Jesus makes many serious points in humorous ways. As I share in my book Happiness, we have a sense of humor because as His image bearers, we are similar to God, who enjoys laughter. Once we realize that Christ was not always engaged in pious talk, we have made an enormous step on the road to understanding ĭid humor come into the universe as the result of sin? No. which are practically incomprehensible when regarded as sober prose, but which are luminous once we become liberated from the gratuitous assumption that Christ never joked. In The Humor of Christ, Elton Trueblood argued, But He did make hypocrites in positions of power the brunt of his wit. Jesus certainly never employed the caustic humor of late-night comedians who ridicule the weak minded or the unfortunate. Though some comedians today do this and we laugh, when we see Jesus use the technique in the Gospels, we usually don’t get it. Jewish humor often employed witty hyperbole-clever, startling, over-the-top statements-to get a laugh. In our culture, most humor is based on joke telling, verbal ambiguities, and physical comedy. Few of us are familiar with the culture Jesus lived in. ![]()
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