Does God have a sense of humor?

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the Holy Spirit has a broad sense of humor, he really makes me wonder sometimes. He uses it to good effect.
At a point in my life where I was trying to discern a spiritual direction, and had been praying for the Holy Spirit to guide me, I felt my prayers were not being answered.
I went on a retreat run by a charismatic group, held in a retreat center that was in an old mansion, donated by some rich guy. while we were in a large room praying for healing, a light fixture over my head exploded. Lots of broken glass but nobody hurt.
I went back there a few months later for another retreat, and the lightbulb in the hall outside my room exploded when I came out. The lights had been turned out at bedtime, but when I came out in the middle of the night only this one bulb was on, and that’s the one that got me, again no injuries. I was too embarrassed to ever go back there.

I continued to resist the proddings of the Holy Spirit toward a certain course of action, and we moved to Texas shortly after. Someone invited me to a women’s retreat in my new parish (which has a strong charismatic prayer group remnant from past years) and as I entered the retreat place, the fire department came up. A candle in the make-shift chapel had fallen over and started a small fire, no injuries, no damage.

At that retreat I committed myself entirely to obeying the Holy Spirit, and although I am outspoken in my skepticism toward the manifestations of the charismatic gifts, I was slain in the spirit (for the first and only time) and have taken this as an acknowledgement of my willingness to be guided. He is stronger than I am, thank goodness.
 
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quintessential5:
For instance, a great deal of humor comes from irony. God as the omniscient being would know everything ironic that is going on. How many times in movies do we laugh at something that is ironic because the characters don’t know the full story. If anyone knows the full story, it’s God.
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A joke that we already heard before and has often been repeated in our ears, eventually ceases to be funny.

Well, If God is omniscient, he already knows in a very high degree all the comical foibles of humanity, and all jokes, hence the question is, will He still laugh at a joke He already knew beforehand for an eternity?

Gerry 🙂
 
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Beaver:
I have heard God laugh at me, as I attempt to place worldly thing in to His way. That that is more important!!! He has a way of showing me how ridiculous these efforts are.
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I have heard God laugh also as he delivered a solution to my prayer. The solution was a funny one - something I would never have dreamed up on my own. I could actually sense Jesus laughing as He instructed me in what to do.

When I look at the things God has done in my life, some of them are awfully funny and ironic. Things that only God could do. That is why I believe He has an amazing sense of humor.

As for judgment time? There is a place and time for humor. I do not believe that will be the time. We may very well experience a somber and strict God, when that time comes. No parent can discipline adequately with a smile on his face ( at least it does not work for me).
 
C.S Lewis, in his wonderful book The Screwtape Letters, has some interesting things to say about joy, laughter and humor. He has the main character, Screwtape, a senior devil tutoring a young nephew, giving the following lesson on what constitutes joy in humans:
I divide the causes of human laughter into joy, fun, the joke proper and flippancy. You will see the first among friends and lovers reuniting on the eve of a holiday. Among adults some pretext in the way of jokes is usually provided, but the facility with which the smallest witticism produces laughter at such a time, shows that that’s not the real cause. What the real cause is we do not know. Something like it is expressed in much of that detestable art which the humans call music, and something like it occurs in heaven.
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Screwtape goes on to say:
*The real use of Jokes or Humour is in quite a different direction, and it is specially promising among the English, who take their “sense of humour” so seriously that a deficiency in this sense is almost the only deficiency at which they feel shame. Humour is for them the all-consoling and (mark this) the all-excusing, grace of life. Hence it is invaluable as a means of destroying shame. If a man simply lets others pay for him, he is “mean”; if he boasts of it in a jocular manner and twists his fellows with having been scored off, he is no longer “mean” but a comical fellow. Mere cowardice is shameful; cowardice boasted of with humorous exaggerations and grotesque gestures can be passed off as funny. Cruelty is shameful–unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man’s damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke. And this temptation can be almost entirely hidden from your patient by that English seriousness about Humour. Any suggestion that there might be too much of it can be represented to him as “Puritanical” or as betraying a “lack of humour.”
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But flippancy is the best of all. In the first place it is very economical. Only a clever human can make a real Joke about virtue, or indeed about anything else; any of them can be trained to talk as if virtue were funny. Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it. If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from joy; it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practise it.
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–C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, Chapter XI
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I invite you to read the whole chapter on this–in fact the whole book, if you’ve never read it is delightful and thought-provoking.
 
Jesus:
Got angry at the moneychangers

Got sorrowful and wept for Lazarus

Got irritated and showed patience with the
Apostles when they didn’t quite understand or believed.

So did he laugh? I am sure he did…at least in the movies when he is portrayed. I am sure Jesus did laugh (in a loving way) when he was presented to the children. The children may have laughed and had smiles on their faces and doesn’t that reciprocate?
I am sure it is in the New Testament somewhere.

Go with God!
Edwin
P.S. Why is there no laughing smiley face? 🙂
 
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Madaglan:
In reading the New Testament I don’t see much humor. There are incidences in the Old Testament which might be considered humourous, however dark. Children mocking a prophet and then being eaten by two bears is somewhat humorous, albeit darkly, as is when King David collecting the foreskins of dead enemy soldiers. But where is God the omni-humorous?

I’m really concerned because I like humor a lot, and I employ it as much as I can. I’m just really afraid that when I go before God in judgment I will find him serious, lackluster and harsh–like some judge. I’m afraid that he’ll find most of the humour that comes out of my lips as obscene, blasphemous and damning. :crying:

Can anyone give me some reasons to believe why God is really funny in a pleasant, chummy way, and why I shouldn’t be so worried about offending God with my humor and lack of seriousness? Thanks! :yup:
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MADS…sure God has a sense of humor…consider the way Jesus nicknamed the sons of Zebedee the “Sons of Thunder”…I’d say they were a rowdy pair… 😉
Besides… I think our sense of humor is a gift of God to help us handle the insanity of life around us.

Jimmy Buffett (A Catholic) put this quote in his book “Tales from Margaritaville” . "When asked why he laughed when someone used the term "H-bomb’ , Lord Buckley replied.“Humor is the absence of terror and terror is the absence of humor”. I think I heartily agree.

The OT is full of humor…especially King David, like when he sort smarts off to his brother when he’s asking what the king will do for the man who knocks off Goliath. There’s more ofcourse…the way Balaam’s mule rebukes him after he saves the prophet’s life and gets beaten for it.

It’s there… I promis.
 
the more i try to ‘think like God’ - that is, get ‘on the same page’ as He is, or let this mind be in me which was also in Christ Jesus, however you want to put it - the more i try that, the more i see life as being full of humor and cleverness.

when i pray, and i see the solution He gives me, it’s often (not always) amusing. it’s like ‘betcha never thought of THAT one, didja?’ it’s the kind of delightful humor that we find when we teach things to children. when THEY get it, and their face lights up, it brings joy, and often laughter, to us as well.

this seems, from my experience, to be what it’s like when i interact with God. that He chuckles when i finally FINALLY figure out what was really pretty obvious all along…
 
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Edwin1961:
Jesus:
Got angry at the moneychangers

Got sorrowful and wept for Lazarus

Got irritated and showed patience with the
Apostles when they didn’t quite understand or believed.

So did he laugh? I am sure he did…at least in the movies when he is portrayed. I am sure Jesus did laugh (in a loving way) when he was presented to the children. The children may have laughed and had smiles on their faces and doesn’t that reciprocate?
I am sure it is in the New Testament somewhere.
🙂
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He may have. It reminds me of that flashback scene between Jesus and Mary in the* Passion of the Christ, *which eloquently suggests His true humanity.

Of course, what it definitely shows is that Jesus has really become like us in all things except sin.

Gerry 🙂
 
I would have to say that God does have a sense of humor. I mean, just look at ostriches.
 
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Madaglan:
In reading the New Testament I don’t see much humor. There are incidences in the Old Testament which might be considered humourous, however dark. Children mocking a prophet and then being eaten by two bears is somewhat humorous, albeit darkly, as is when King David collecting the foreskins of dead enemy soldiers. But where is God the omni-humorous?

I’m really concerned because I like humor a lot, and I employ it as much as I can. I’m just really afraid that when I go before God in judgment I will find him serious, lackluster and harsh–like some judge. I’m afraid that he’ll find most of the humour that comes out of my lips as obscene, blasphemous and damning. :crying:

Can anyone give me some reasons to believe why God is really funny in a pleasant, chummy way, and why I shouldn’t be so worried about offending God with my humor and lack of seriousness? Thanks! :yup:
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Hi Madaglan! 👋

All good things are a gift from God, that would include laughter. If God never laughed, neither would we. Not everything is truly funny though. If your sense of humor is obscene, blasphemous and damning you’re right, God won’t find that to be very funny. But if your sense of humor is uplifting and light He will.

Someone here has the sig. line “If you don’t think God has a sense of humor look at the platypus”. God’s humor is all over the place. I think he must have the best sense of humor there is!!

In Christ,
Nancy 🙂
 
rayne89 said:
:rotfl: Uhh, your using one as part of your signature.😃
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I didn’t think it was a laughing face, because there is no animantion to state this.
 
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GOOSEofGOD:
I would have to say that God does have a sense of humor. I mean, just look at ostriches.
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A huge, heavy body with small, useless wings. 😃

Gerry 🙂
 
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SocaliCatholic:
I have thought about this also, but the most important conclusion that I came to was that while God may or may not have a sense of humor, He definitely gave us the ability to have one.
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God absolutely DOES have a sense of humor!

An all-perfect sense of humor!

After all, each one of us IS made in HIS image.

Jesus when he took on human-ness was the perfect human (of course!)

So, absolutely, Jesus DID have a sense of humor! And still does!

Lookit… if I didn’t have a God who had a sense of humor, I don’t know if I could even relate to Him.

What do you think?
 
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Catholic4aReasn:
Hi Madaglan! 👋

If God never laughed, neither would we. 🙂
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I’m really not certain if that is accurate. God never coughed, but we certainly can and do cough, especially when we catch a cold. :hmmm:

Gerry 🙂
 
Veronica Anne:
Jesus when he took on human-ness was the perfect human (of course!)

So, absolutely, Jesus DID have a sense of humor! And still does!

What do you think?
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Of course, what that suggests is Jesus’ humanity, rather than His divinity, that is, being one with us in all things except sin.

Gerry 🙂
 
Veronica Anne:
God absolutely DOES have a sense of humor!

An all-perfect sense of humor!
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If His sense of humor is all-perfect, perhaps we will literally die of laughter if He tells a us joke. Our limited minds might not be able to withstand or survive an infinitely funny joke. If He had such a sense of humor, He would find it prudent not to let us “know” about it.

Gerry 🙂
 
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