Thus, for this Zen master at least, the way the world is at the moment in question is raining. Whether the rain is Christian or Buddhist rain is irrelevant. In this understanding, being is an elusive universal category which all of us have. Subsequent investigations actually become CONCLUDED ON PAGE 19 LAUGH ALONG WITH JESUS Charles Ward All human beings have an innate propensity for seeing the funny side of things. True, there are many in whom it barely surfaces at all. And a great many more who think they have a sense of humour but draw the line where their own firmly held opinions are concerned.
Laughter, it has to be said, has frequently little to do with humour. Involuntary laughter, like weeping, is a discharge of built-up emotion when other outlets are blocked or unavailable. (Forced or simulated laughter is merely a social habit). Humour, when it occurs, largely depends on a sudden change in the direction of one's thoughts. Unable to proceed in orderly fashion, the "pressure" is relieved in mirth.
Due to the fact that emotional tension is commonly the result of fear and aggression, the most primitive forms of laughter (still with us) involve malice, contempt, derision, brutal triumph - all of them being ways of trying to give an impression of superiority. Examining the part these have played in religion and also among those whose stance is non-religious can be instructive.
For instance, at least half of the allusions to laughter in the Old Testament fall into this category. In the New Testament, while there are about sixty references to joy, there are none to laughter. The nearest we get is the mockery of Jesus and his followers.
But I can't believe they never tittered, let alone guffawed.
The suppression, or at any rate the avoidance, by Christians of the real and lively humanity of Jesus has all but prevented us from recognising his amiable sense of humour. Pedestrian translation and wearisome, over-pious repetition are also to blame.
A hypocrite wanted to remove a speck of dust from someone's eye, though a plank was sticking out of his own. "If someone takes the shirt off your back, give him your trousers too!" Critics of Christianity are not always blameless either. Jesus is still accused of telling his followers to hate their parents, tear out (their own) offending eyes, and so on. "It's in the Bible!" critics of this sort keep on repeating, imitating, in a mirror-image sort of way, the bibliolatry from which many Christians have long since escaped.
Believers are not alone in often failing to take account of the Aramaic idioms that Jesus, as a popular teacher, used. Literal interpretations of metaphorical sayings, such as those to do with "hell", may be accepted by the superstitious and encouraged by those who exploit them, but there is no justification for educated people to attribute a view of this kind to a spiritual man whose theme and practice was compassionate love.
Those who feel superior to the gullible devout may split their sides at the folly of the latter, but whom are they helping by their ridicule? Not the religious, who will be likely to resent it. And not themselves either.
I'm not for censorship. The childish, the thoughtless and the vulgar have simply to be endured, within reason. And we cannot, even when we are at our most diplomatic, always avoid offending the unduly sensitive.
But it is hardly to be doubted that we need more self-discipline. Balloons of pomposity do ask to be pricked, but to what profit if this only brings smirks of satisfaction to those who prick them? Might we not elicit genuine, if rueful, laughter from present as well as from past victims?
That is why I think that the humour of Jesus has `I can't believe Jesus and his followers never tittered, let alone guffawed...' some significance. Far removed from the category of brutal triumph already mentioned, it reflects a perceptive yet charitable spirit able to see the funny side of human folly and misguided behaviour.
Considering how awful that can be in our violent world, there has to be a much more sophisticated approach today than the gentle irony we are able to detect in the Gospels.
Nevertheless the principle is there, suggesting the direction that truly humane beings should take.
Malignity of any sort is out. As a person develops in humanity, the cruel is sublimated into the comic, which is also constructive and kind in intention. To laugh is human. Laughter infused with magnanimous goodwill is surely a goal for Humanists.
This is an edited version of an article first published in Humanist News, one of the publications with which we have an exchange arrangement.