We Need Humor More Than Ever

     Can we all agree that this world is sick? While we may disagree about the cause of the sickness, we have all heard that laughter is the best medicine. Admittedly, that may be a bit of an overstatement, but the principle is an important one - humor helps the healing process.

     When a person is hurting, it is often a simple spark of joy that can lift their spirits and give them the strength to go on. Laughter is the simplest way to spark that fire. It gives us a strange hope. A reminder that there is some light in the world.

     It is no coincidence that many comedians suffer from depression. Humor is a coping mechanism to help them make light of a dark condition. I know some would say that is a bad way to describe the benefits of humor, but I contend otherwise. It makes it seem like humor is a fleeting escape that cannot possibly heal a person. I agree completely.

    You see, if laughter is medicine, it is only a small part of the healing regimen. There are many other things required to truly heal someone, or something, from sickness. Medicine, though, gives us the perspective we need to know healing is possible.

    This is why I believe we need humor more than ever. We need jokes. We need gifs and memes. We need satire. These things seem trivial, but they remind us that not everything is dark. They give us clarity by revealing the ridiculousness of our world. They show us the error of our ways.

    Without a sense of humor, a person becomes uninspired. When we lose laughter, we lose rationale. Even worse, when a person loses their ability to laugh at their own self, they lose a part of their humanity.

    Jokes are a conduit to laughter. They often come from the very real experiences we go through, simply to show us that there is an upside to any situation. If we become "too mature" to laugh at a good joke, we have really become too immature to appreciate one of God's greatest shared qualities with us.

    A meme is a snapshot of reality. It is the lack of context that makes a meme funny. It reminds us that, often times, we rely on context to excuse our rationale and behavior. Memes give us greater perspective by removing the surrounding circumstances that would allow us to act a certain way and expose some of our greatest flaws.

        Satire is one of my personal favorite forms of comedy. The goal of satire is to bring an idea to its logical conclusion. In other words, if you have an idea, it will lead somewhere. Satire challenges us to ask the question, "where?" Without it, we find ourselves doing the very ridiculous things our very worst ideas lead to. 

    The goal of humor is to make us laugh. The goal of laughter is to lighten the darkness. If we continue to lose our sense of humor in this darkened world, I am afraid we will begin to lose more of the light that is so precious to us now. We will find ourselves given over to one of the enemy's greatest defeats - a loss of hope.

    I leave you with the words of one of the greatest humorists to ever grace our culture with his pen, Mr. GK Chesterton:

"Madmen are always serious; they go mad from lack of humour."