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Laughter as a Spiritual Practice

If you’re a more serious type of person (like me), you may feel some resistance to the idea that laughter can be a spiritual practice, something that can have a profound impact on the darkest parts of our souls. Laughing seems frivolous and unspiritual, even undignified.

I don’t laugh easily, just so you know.

I can make other people laugh, but actually laughing myself is a discipline I’ve had to develop and practice. When I went away to college, I was surprised to discover that people laughed out loud. In my experience, laughing was something you reserved for family dinners or gatherings. You wouldn’t just laugh in a public space or with people you barely knew. One time, when a new friend burst out laughing at a television show we were watching in her room, I almost asked if she was okay.

After a while, I began to realize that I was very serious person. Something about my personality kept me from laughing too often or out loud. Years later, when I became a lawyer, my seriousness deepened. Lawyers don’t laugh. (Really, they don’t. We are a pretty serious and stressed-out bunch.)

Becoming a Christian was serious business, so I thought.

About eight years into my legal career, I became a Christian. I was so relieved to have been rescued by God from a life that seemed to be spinning out of control that my seriousness deepened even further. I wanted to be devoted and follow God as best I could. And although the Bible has lots to say about joy, I never connected joy with laughter or had the faintest sense that laughter might be important to my spiritual growth and walk with Jesus. After all, many of the mature Christians I knew appeared quite serious.

On the other hand, I came to know several people who had walked through very difficult seasons of loss—and still, they laughed. In fact, these people had laughs that other people would talk about—“Oh, is he the one with that deep laugh?” “She’s the one that laughs, right?” Laughing with abandon and Christian. Very interesting.

I don’t think the early church fathers laughed much.

Questioning the propriety of laughing Christians is not new. The early fathers “often assumed that [laughter] had no worthwhile place in the Christian community.”[1] John Chrysostom, a venerated theologian and saint, argued that based on Scripture, Christ never laughed and that we would be more bonded to God through tears and sorrow.[2] As theology professor and author Brian Edgar wrote,

The Christian tradition has developed a long list of objections to humor. It has been seen as offensive, aggressive, excluding, irresponsible, hedonistic, mocking, undignified, frivolous, spiteful, madness, anarchic, unworthy of God, and foolish.[3]

Of course—to paraphrase the apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 10:23)—not all laughter is beneficial or useful. We should be on guard against the impulse to laugh at jokes that tear people down or diminish them. But we should not dismiss the reality that laughter is very, well, human. As Edgar tells us, “to be human is to be humorous and this humor is, along with all aspects of the person, to be redeemed and a part of the future,” life in God’s Kingdom.[4]

Did Jesus laugh?

So why is there such little laughter in the Bible, particularly in the New Testament? As I’ve studied, I’ve found two helpful explanations.[5]

First, the Gospels were not biographies, and their writers weren’t interested in sharing everything about Jesus.[6] They don’t reference Jesus using the bathroom, but given that he was fully human, we can assume he did. Similarly, given the humanness of laughter, and Jesus’ humanity, we can also assume he laughed.

Second, we can reasonably assume that Jesus’ stories and parables—full of statements and questions that turned the patterns of the world on their head (the last shall be first, etc.)—elicited laughter and astonishment.[7]

My husband loves to laugh. He even studied laughter (and he’s a pastor).

In 2017, about nine years after I became a Christian, I began dating and then married (all in the same year) my husband. He loves to laugh and has a great sense of humor. He studied comedy as a craft with Second City in Chicago; he knows how jokes work and what makes something funny. He laughs when he’s alone, and sometimes things he thinks make him laugh out loud! As I observed him, I started to reflect on two things: Why I didn’t laugh more and why I didn’t feel like laughing more. I began to notice that I would hold back laughter. Laughter required a kind of vulnerability that I didn’t like. I was worried my face would contort in weird ways or that I would snort. Our bodies, after all, spontaneously do things that we have no real control over. According to Brian King:

It starts with the face, with a smile, then that smiling turns into laughter. It involves the use of fifteen different facial muscles. Something really peculiar happens when we begin laughing: our larynx, the little muscular organ in our throat that we sometimes call the voice box, half closes. This tightening of our throat makes it very difficult for us to breathe and because we are now at risk of not getting enough of that sweet, sweet oxygen we seem to like so much, we begin gasping for air. That is where the sound of laughter comes from, literally the sound of laughter is simply us GASPING FOR AIR! If we continue, the struggle for oxygen will activate our tear ducts and we’ll start tearing up, maybe even crying.[8]

The health benefits of laughter have been well-studied and documented: reducing our sensitivity to physical pain and our need for painkillers in recovering from surgery; lowering blood pressure and blood sugar; relieving anxiety and depression; and improving our immune system, among many other things.[9] Laughter also helps to “relieve stress, overcome tragedy, cope with disappointment, elevate mood, encourage optimism, and create social bonds.”[10]

What does laughter mean for our places of brokenness, shame, anxiety, and fear?

When we laugh, we are professing with our bodies that we aren’t taking ourselves so seriously. We are not thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought. We are leaning into and embracing our humanity. When Paul wrote to the Romans about how to offer their lives as a living sacrifice to God, he instructed them to “laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down” (Romans 12:15, MSG).

Laughing with your happy friends is a way of placing your whole life—including your body—before God as an offering.

Even Martin Luther, who I never imagined to be the laughing type, used laughter therapy when he pastored those with depression.[11] Karl Barth was known as a humorist who “saw laughter as a recognition of human frailty.”[12] When I withhold laughter when it springs up naturally, I am rebelling against how I’ve been created. The lightness and joy of laughter is a gift of our humanity, a gift from our Creator, who knows how heavy our lives can be. When we choose to accept that gift, we find that the things encumbering us suddenly seem smaller and that God joins us in the midst of the joy.

Have you ever experienced the pure joy of uncontrollable laughter?

It always seems to happen at the most inopportune times, when laughter is not socially acceptable—formal dinners, funerals, during a speech. Just recently, at my stepfather’s funeral, I thought I’d have to get up and leave the service for fear of bursting into laughter. The full range of my emotions was close to the surface . . . and the priest was conducting the whole thing so oddly! His tone, his manner—everything was so strange, my mom was struggling to contain her laughter, too; when she glanced at me, I thought we were both going to lose it. Yes, we were sad—so sad. But something about the absurdity of the whole thing led us right to the brink of overwhelming laughter. (It turns out that most everyone else there experienced the same thing—we all held it together until the luncheon, when we collectively cried with laughter.)

A heart that is free is open and vulnerable.

This spontaneous, pee-your-pants laughter reflects a heart that is—even if only momentarily—free and unencumbered by shame, anxiety, and fear. And a heart that is free is open and vulnerable. I had not experienced God’s presence with me at the moments surrounding my stepfather’s death like I really wanted to—when he breathed his last breath or when we drove home from the hospital and sat around telling stories. But at the luncheon as I laughed, I imagined my stepfather laughing with us. Pictures of him at various points in my life flashed through my mind. I was tenderhearted and open—and there I felt God’s peace and presence. The stress my entire body carried and the fear that was lurking in me dissipated. The first few words of Julian of Norwich’s famous quote washed over me: “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”[13]

Why do we struggle with laughter?

The usual culprits—worry and fear—are at work to stymie joy, even more so than any pain or grief. This reality makes me sad because I can’t imagine my anxiety and fear going away anytime soon, given that they’ve been with me most, if not all, of my life. But I’d like to laugh freely and uncontrollably more often and be increasingly free of the anxiety that so often hangs on me.

If you don’t feel like you’re good at laughter, I have good news for you, as a fellow struggler. Learning to laugh and find the joy in life is something that a person can get better at through practice. According to psychologist Brian King, “Like any behavior, laughter takes practice. We did not learn how to walk on our first try. We didn’t learn how to speak with our first drooly mumblings, and we don’t learn to laugh without the right socialization and practice.”[14] So if you find that the fears and anxieties of your life are hard to shake, start seeking out ways to practice laughter.

Laughter isn’t something you have to manufacture.

Our world and lives are full of ways we can spark laughter and joy, and each of us can figure out what works for us. Let me share a few that have resonated deeply with me.

Participate in the laughter that comes with kids.

In the winter of 2019, through an amazing Christian ministry called Safe Families, my husband and I had the privilege of opening our home to host two siblings (a five-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl) for nearly three months while their mom found a home and a job. My husband and I have three grown children in their twenties (and no grandkids yet), so it had been quite a while since we had little ones around. But, putting aside the fact that we nearly died from exhaustion because we weren’t used to so much energy, we had an amazing experience and fell head over heels in love with these kids.

And you know what we did more than usual? We laughed. The body noises, the uninhibited dances and wiggles, the crazy new moves we came up with during family dance parties—all of it cracked us up. We colored, cut up paper, “played” ping-pong, tickled little toes, sang in the bathtub, opened Christmas presents, swung and slid down slides, and jumped on trampolines and inflatable slides at the bouncy house. Even eating dinner was fun. There was no end to their energy, and nearly everything we did made us laugh.

The thing about it was, I never felt self-conscious with them. If they wanted me to sing a silly song, I did, and it brought me great joy. I laughed with abandon and stayed present in the moment (until my energy started dipping ahead of their bedtime!). Our kids are back with their mom now, but they still come and visit once a month so we can give their mom a little break. And these are the sweetest, most fun, most laugh-filled times we have. In these moments, I best understand some of Jesus’ words:

“I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom. What’s more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it’s the same as receiving me” (Matthew 18:3-5, MSG).

Practice: Three Suggestions for Practicing to Laugh

Get around kids.

If you struggle with laughter, my first suggestion is to be around kids! They force you out of your comfort zone but still manage to allow you to feel completely at ease as you act goofy and play like a child. When they laugh, you can’t help but laugh too.

Dance!

My second suggestion is to dance! From time to time, even when the kids aren’t here, my husband and I and our girls will have our own little dance parties to loosen up and bring joy back into the room. In the Bible, dance is both a reflection of and a trigger for joy and laughter. Spiritual teacher Barbara Holmes explores dance’s especially “prominent role in the black church,” where “it affords a worshipping community a way to share in the spiritual journey.”[15] She provides a revolutionary perspective on the relationship between dance and joy, pointing out that “some scholars suggest that the words rejoice and dance are the same in Aramaic, the language Jesus and the disciples spoke.”[16] If we replace rejoice with dance in the New Testament, we see Jesus suggest that we dance when people hate us and mock us because we follow him (Luke 6:23).[17] We also see the shepherd, the woman who lost her coin, and the father in the story of the Prodigal Son rejoice (dance) when they find what has been lost (Luke 15:6, 9, 25).

Play a game.

Another source of laughter for me? Games! Our family loves cards, board games, darts, ping-pong, bags (or cornhole), basketball, mini-golf—pretty much anything. This was always true in my family growing up as well. Most of my memories of laughing hysterically have involved playing games. Grandma failing to offer a single clue in Taboo before the one-minute timer runs out. My then-eight-year-old sister’s drawing skills approximating a Rorschach ink blob instead of a snowblower. Playing the speed card game Spoons, and the mad rush for a spoon when someone falls over and knocks drinks and food off the table. And if you’re looking for an easy game guaranteed to help you practice laughter, I can’t recommend Apples to Apples more.

Your practices can be anything that helps you feel unhindered enough to laugh, and they’re particularly important to pursue when you’re feeling battered down by shame, anxiety, and everything else.

Here are a few more ideas:

– Tell dumb “dad jokes”

– Lip-sync songs (or do kareoke!)

– Set up some silly competitions (like home Olympics or throwing cards into a basket)

– Blow bubbles

– Play tag

– Hula-Hoop

Reflection: What connection do you see between laughter and your relationship with God?

I hope you have enjoyed this journey to vulnerability. In these four weeks, you have been introduced to three spiritual disciplines to grow in your holy vulnerability.

Let’s keep the conversation going. Facebook @MomentsoftheSoul @navpresspublishing // #journeytovulnerability #holyvulnerability

[1] Brian Edgar, Laughter and the Grace of God: Restoring Laughter to Its Central Role in Christian Spirituality and Theology (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019), 26.

[2] James Martin, Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the Spiritual Life (New York: HarperOne, 2012), 20.

[3] Brian Edgar, Laughter and the Grace of God: Restoring Laughter to Its Central Role in Christian Spirituality and Theology (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019), 19.

[4] Brian Edgar, Laughter and the Grace of God: Restoring Laughter to Its Central Role in Christian Spirituality and Theology (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019), 14.

[5] For a fuller explanation of laughter in the Bible, see Brian Edgar, Laughter and the Grace of God; and James Martin, Between Heaven and Mirth, 20.

[6] Brian Edgar, Laughter and the Grace of God: Restoring Laughter to Its Central Role in Christian Spirituality and Theology (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019), 3.

[7] Brian Edgar, Laughter and the Grace of God: Restoring Laughter to Its Central Role in Christian Spirituality and Theology (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019), 3.

[8] Brian King, The Laughing Cure: Emotional and Physical Healing—A Comedian Reveals Why Laughter Really Is the Best Medicine (New York: Skyhorse, 2016), “Speaking of Laughter . . .” chap.

[9] Brian King, The Laughing Cure: Emotional and Physical Healing—A Comedian Reveals Why Laughter Really Is the Best Medicine (New York: Skyhorse, 2016), introduction.

[10] Brian King, The Laughing Cure: Emotional and Physical Healing—A Comedian Reveals Why Laughter Really Is the Best Medicine (New York: Skyhorse, 2016), introduction.

[11] Brian King, The Laughing Cure: Emotional and Physical Healing—A Comedian Reveals Why Laughter Really Is the Best Medicine (New York: Skyhorse, 2016), introduction.

[12] Brian Edgar, Laughter and the Grace of God: Restoring Laughter to Its Central Role in Christian Spirituality and Theology (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019), 99.

[13] Julian of Norwich, “A Revelation of Love,” in The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Volume 1, The Medieval Period, 3rd ed. (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2015), 624.

[14] Brian King, The Laughing Cure: Emotional and Physical Healing—A Comedian Reveals Why Laughter Really Is the Best Medicine (New York: Skyhorse, 2016), “Practice Laughter, and Laugh Often” chap.

[15] Barbara A. Holmes, Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practice of the Black Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 76.

[16] Barbara A. Holmes, Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practice of the Black Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 76.

[17] Barbara A. Holmes, Joy Unspeakable: Contemplative Practice of the Black Church (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), 77.