Laughter is War

By Matt Watson

The diagnosis. The pink slip. The eviction notice. The cultural cancelation. The unjust accusations from family and friends. The late-night phone call, or the knock on the door from the police while your child is out. All of us at some point will face dark times, for we live in a fallen world, marred and broken by sin. Right now cancer still happens. Getting fired still happens. And public disgrace for speaking the truth still happens. These and many other worse evils will happen. But it won’t always. We live in the tension of already but not yet, the Kingdom of God has been inaugurated, but it won’t be consummated until Christ’s return.

There is a secret weapon God gives us for dark times, for the depths of depression or despair that we sometimes find ourselves in: Laughter.

• “He will yet fill your mouth with laughter, and your lips with shouting,” Job 8:21

• “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh,” Luke 6:21

• “He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision,” Psalm 2:4

• “The joy of the Lord is your strength,” Nehemiah 8:10

It’s impossible to manufacture in ourselves true joy or to genuinely laugh at calamity when it comes. That would simply be a boot-strapped gospel of works. Similarly, when walking in the valley of the shadow of death, sometimes all we can do is weep rather than laugh. We only have the ability to wield laughter in this way through Christ, because he is superior to all things, and he wins for us all things. Laughter is a sign of faith and security when facing something insecure. Therefore, laughter in the face of adversity, of a greater threat, both disarms the threat and declares a greater power that stands with you. Psalm 16:8-11 says, “I have set the Lord always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure. For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption. You make known to me the path of life; in your presence, there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

A Christ-centered, Christ-exalting response of laughter to the world’s threats is warfare, because it declares, “I am not afraid of you. You can do nothing to me. For I am more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:37). In The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis, the character King Lune chastises his son for mocking their humiliated enemy, saying, “Never taunt a man save when he is stronger than you: then, as you please.” Later, he gives his son a set of rules for kings and boys alike: “For this is what it means to be a king: to be the first in every desperate attack, and last in every desperate retreat, and when there is hunger in the land (as must be now and then in bad years) to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land” (Ch. 15).

How do you defeat the despair of hunger, loss, and poverty? Faithful laughter. How do you withstand the devil’s onslaught of fiery arrows? The shield of faith (Eph 6:10-20), behind which we can and should laugh. In so doing we throw counter-taunts at the enemy because we have the divine confidence of a victorious king.

When the army of the Philistines gathered against Saul and the people of Israel, the giant Goliath mocked and defied Israel’s God. David alone, the least and youngest of his brothers living in their shadow, the emotional poet, was willing to stand against him, and he was mocked too, called a dog shaking a stick. David’s reply was thus:

“You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. 46 This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, 47 and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord's, and he will give you into our hand” (1 Sam 17:45-47).

David’s trust in the God of Israel was absolute. As was Christ’s when he said, “not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). And because Jesus defeated the giants of sin, death, and that foul dragon Satan, we can stand just as securely.

Depressed Elijah was the lone prophet of the one true God surrounded by 400 of Baal’s prophets on the mountainside. During the divine contest to show whose deity was really God, Baal never answered his prophets, and never could answer because he wasn’t real. At this silence and at the hysterical actions of his priests, Elijah taunted them, asking if perhaps Baal was on the toilet (1 Kgs 18: 16-45). He was able to laugh and mock them, though he was the lone voice for God, for Baal is nothing and God is everything, and this taunt before a force of superior numbers is right warfare.

Sometimes we have to laugh in order to show how ridiculous a thing is. This is even a grace, for laughter is sometimes better than the sword, for instead of killing it might shame into repentance. That is why satire is so effective because it highlights the ridiculousness of folly, defeating everything from Harry Potter’s bogarts to the claims from the far-left that real socialism has never been tried. Doug Wilson says, “From Elijah taunting the priests of Baal to Jesus roasting the Pharisees, and from Jesus roasting the Pharisees to Luther backhanding the papacy, we see the potency of righteous ridicule.”

If your heart is secure in Christ Jesus, if you have put your faith in him, if he has regenerated you and you are his, then you have the confidence of an already victorious king. So when you see that one friend on social media make an outrageous claim against God’s creation of biology, science, and reason, you can laugh. When you see the riots that terrorize your city, or the jackboots of tyranny at your door, you can laugh. And when Satan once again throws in your face the half-truth accusations of your sin, you can laugh, because your king is the dragon slayer.