If Jesus was a toddler, he likely laughed. I’m sure he experienced childlike delight and wonder. And he offered some pretty sarcastic quips when berating the Pharisees. But it’s likely he wasn’t the constantly grinning and smiley Chosen Jesus. This just seems obvious.
If Christ never laughed out loud, surely He did to Himself, and just had the self-control to keep it from others. For example, on the road to Emmaeus, where at first He plays dumb about Himself, then disappears the moment they finally realize it's Him, after He breaks the bread. It demonstrates a playfulness in our Lord Jesus. We should not forget His full Humanity.
Laughter can also come from having knowledge that others don't. It's like when you give someone a wrapped present, and you giggle when you see them shaking the box to see what it is.
It was created by protestants, shows Jesus as a conman, teaching children game known as 'three cards', intended to gamble, cheat. It gives wrong idea of Jesus. There are many blasphemous, incorrect things there. I'm upset about casting. All main heroines are pretty, gentle, charming but Mother Mary. They depicted Her as some vulgar, harsh, crude woman. Which mother mentions that her child was born in poo? And to put it in her mouth, about Jesus is blasphemous. Very bad is also a musical: 'Journey to Bethlehem' where Archangel Gabriel is depicted as demon (deep voice, dark clothes, scale like breastplate, levitating not merely flying) and he wakes up Mary in the night, scares Her, rehearses his speech. Mighty Archangel preparing like for job interview? ...
By the way, I truly believe God has a sense of humor because I've seen the way certain things happen in my life that make ME laugh. And I believe He is probably having the last laugh on some of these incidents. 😆
@@panoramicprismFor real, if God has no humor in Him, I'd be dead. I'm a father with 2 young sons, and if they're acting up all day, there's more or less 3 things that will soften my heart towards them; Acting sorry/trying just a little to be good, doing somthing kind, and finally if they do something cute and/or funny. If my sinners heart can be warmed by these things, wouldn't God's on a much higher level in regard to all of us as His children?
Apostles wanted to prove that he was God. It was obvious He was a human so why mention it? why to show His human side? Like there was no need to talk about using oils, practice well known for Jews.
Christ didn't laugh because it shows a lack of self-control, as it is a involuntary reaction. Often, humor is based on some kind of error, a fall, a trick, a setup, or an unexpected revelation. It's not "logo-centric", so to speak. That doesn't mean it's sinful inherently though. Saints and holy people had humor, although definitely a refined one.
''Christ never laughed'' bros when they read that He, the all knowing One, apparently - marveled - at the centurion's faith. Clearly theres a good way for a human being to laugh as the Creator made it to be and a child/brother-like adoration(marveling) of someone's deed. Christ was fully human so what you say makes sense to me Bojan. God bless you.
No one bats 1000, not even saints. Some have completely contradictory options on particular subject. Even in divine grace, we are still individuals shaped by personal experience and disposition. Love your commentary.
I think people who make this ridiculous claim are simply projecting their own dead-end personalities onto our Lord: I've never met a jolly, happy person who claims that Christ never laughed.
This seems like a silly anecdotal claim. I love to laugh, tell jokes, go to comedy shows and what have you but I personally don't believe Christ laughed. It's not a hill I would die on as personally I don't think it really matters one way or the other but none the less I don't think it should have any bearing on whether we can laugh or not, plenty of saints laughed and it's certainly not sinful to do so.
The best argument I’ve heard is not that He was never happy or joyful or smiling along with others, but that His Omniscience made it impossible to truly surprise Him. A joke would make him smile, but he already knew the punchline, so he couldn’t laugh at it. But as you say, His human will wasn’t always in on what his Divine Will knew was coming, ergo, He could paradoxically both KNOW and not know.
I remember reading somewhere that some of the parables and figures of speech Jesus used would have been considered very comedic in that time period. Like the speck of dust vs a plank in someone's eye. So He clearly has a sense of humor.
Very good points, and funny video. ;) don't we have a modern saint who laughed a lot? You're right about the "dour" "monkish" mindset a lot of people take on this. I remember a priest once tweeted 2 points if Christ laughed in His earthly life: 1) It wasn't considered important enough to note. 2) It certainly wasn't at anyone's expense. Anyone who implies or states humor is inherently bad, always felt a little Gnostic to me. And to be dead honest I think it even encourages despair in some people, like the sensitive and neurotic. I have anxious OCD and been tempted to this sort of "pessimistic" theology, and it doesn't bear good fruit. Let's try to make life a bit brighter for all.
@@IN-pr3lw St Eumenios. I deal with religious OCD, and when I find out he was known for his booming laughter life felt so much easier. You can read about it online, I did.
I always think Jesus was laughing when he called James and John as sons of thunder bearing in mind John is traditionally believed to be a teenager and perhaps James wasn't much older.
@@Stopitpls depends on how you define assault, but he did drive out the moneychangers and such from a temple, apparently by overturning their tables and chairs.
Please note during the Temple incident, Christ, being God, could simply have instantly vaporized the people. Instead he merely chased them out with the whip. He didn't actually hurt anyone or try to. It was just like blowing a horn. 📣
@@hamaon2800 _The_ Temple, not a temple. There was only one Temple back then, the one in Jerusalem. He overthrew their tables, and then drove them out of the Temple by whipping them.
I'd also like to point out that having foreknowledge of something happening doesn't make it not funny. When you play a joke on someone you have an idea of what's gonna happen (you can't know for sure because we do not have foreknowledge) and its still funny when what you thought was gonna happen, happens.
C.S. Lewis wrote The Great Divorce, not G.K.Chesterton (also a wonderful writer :) I agree with you whole heartedly. But I would add that the East views laughter as the behavior of a 'fool' traditionally. Though EVERYONE laughs, excessively it is viewed as the hysterics of the mad. Due to this, I believe the claim that Christ never laughed may also have been made in order to impress upon listeners how serious and not to be taken lightly Christ's work was/is. The claim, I think, should never have been made.
My favorite category of Saint is the Holy Fool/Fool for Christ, actually. And my favorite subset of them were the Early Christian "Grazers". What a stark contrast to what many people think is proper behavior tk be judged...
I listened to the life of Lazarus the other day with my daughter and they said he laughed once while watching somebody steal a clay pot. "A piece of dirt steals a piece of dirt." was his remark
I remember someone telling me that laughter is an example of losing control and Christ doesn't lose control. Also, if Christ laughed why wasn't it written down?
It was impossible to write down everything He did in 3 years. I believe most important was to convey His message, convince reader, listener that He was a Messiah. What laughter has to do with this? Of course He laughed, enjoyed things, attended weddings, was meeting friends. It wasn't important detail to keep repeating it. Maybe He didn't want to give early rise to 'Church Nice'.
I wonder if Byzantine iconography may have inadvertently contributed to this notion. After all, look at how it depicts religious figures: grim and stoic.
Three thoughts (1) I find my mental image of an Infant Jesus who never giggled or laughed very disturbing. Laughter comes so naturally to infants and it is free from malice and sin. (2) the best comedians never laugh and are often extremely deadpan. Not laughing is not a sign of no sense of humour. I think too many people equate Christ not laughing with Christ having no sense of humour which is plainly wrong. (3) Those in the comments who are scandalised by your comments because they contradict Church Fathers are missing the point. If a Church Father says Christ never laughed, then we need to look at what laughter means. More often than not, it is a result of some minor misfortune or embarrassment befalling a friend due to comic mistiming or over confidence. Laughter deflates pride but at the expense of the one who has fallen. Using these definitions, I think the Church Fathers have a point. However, I am willing to submit to the idea that there are other reasons for laughing that involve pure love and I am less willing to believe that Christ never did this.
Insofar as much of ordinary human laughter comes upon us involuntarily, and Christ, when it comes to human frailties like hunger and fatigue and even death, willed to take these on, it seems fitting to say that if He did ever laugh He made the active choice to do so and did it at whatever time would have been most appropriate for it.
FR. Augustyn Pelanowski a Polish monk, recognized as a prophet (seen empty churches in his vision in 2017) had vision of the Nazareth house. The Holy Family was laughing and talking in the Bible verses. One happy, pious family.
It's may be unreliable as it's considered spurious by some but allegedly the only contemporaneous piece of writing about Christ from the time of His earthly life, The Epistle of Lentulus, claims "and all he says or does, he performs pleasantly and with discernment. And he has never been seen to laugh at all, but very frequently is he seen weeping." Again not a 100% knock down argument but I believe it has some merit.
I was told that Christ didn't laugh because it shows a lack of self-control, as it is a involuntary reaction (and it weakens you physiologically). Often, humor is based on some kind of error, a fall, a trick, a setup, or an unexpected revelation. It's not "logocentric", so to speak. Makes perfect sense honestly, but although perhaps there is a distinction to be made, such as the kind of laughter and the content of the humor in question. The saints and holy people had humor, albeit a more refined one and probably not uncontrolled laughing fits. Important to not also fall into the whole "what would jesus do" mindset. Jesus is too mysterious for us to operate with that mindset. Just because he didn't do a particular thing, doesn't mean that thing is bad.
Well, 3 years before Crucifixion He could be preparing for that moment. Could be tired, upset about sinners. He dealt with teachers, priests, scholars, and during these confrontations there was not much fun. He would be too kind to laugh at them, had not much chance to laugh with them either. There was no need to write down how much he enjoyed Cana wedding. Already he was accused of drinking with wrong people so why to support such opinion. Surely he wouldn't spoil the mood by being deadly serious. Parchment was too expensive to write obvious things. The New Testament was written after His death, not during His lifetime. It conveyed the message, wasn't a memoir. Also sensibility of people was different.
Consider the greatest humour from god is placing the promise land at the very crossroad of known continents of its time amongst emerging empires to rule over it. Truly a halarious when you start thinking about it. Or Jerusalem meaning the city of peace, yet has never really ever seen peace. 😂 there is an old saying, “god has an interesting sense of humour”
In my humble opinion its the extreme piousness of committed men of the cloth that puts a great many people off from embracing Christianity (although that probably goes for all religions). Lack of a 'funny bone' is almost an inhuman trait. Having said that there really arent too many jokes in the Bible. I'm not sure if God Himself wasnt having a laugh in Leviticus when he advised against eating centipedes (it certainly made me chortle).
I will add something else. To me, humour is one of the higher virtues. The good that comedians do in getting people to laugh is psychological but also close to spiritual. Laughter heals, it soothes, it fortifies. Children laugh naturally, all the time. I am English but the thing that makes me most proud of belonging to this race is our dry and ever-present sense of humour. The truly humour-less among us may as well be the walking dead. If God doesnt find Fawlty Towers funny then there's something wrong with Him. (I hope that's not blasphemous).
If the eternal weeping and gnashing of the damned means Jesus can't allow himself to experience joy and mirth in the Kingdom, then how could we experience that peace and joy in the Kingdom? Shouldn't it follow that we too must eternally sorrow for those lost forever to sin? The arguments against Jesus laughing come across as hyper-pious, that Jesus has to always be stern with a piercing gaze like in the Icons (I suppose even when he wept for Lazarus, like some kind of Galilean Zoolander always maintaining his modeling pose). I can easily think of a better argument, not a good argument just better, for why Jesus doesn't laugh. One theory of comedy says humour comes from experiencing some misdirection, equivocation, or other kind of communication trickery, and then the trick is revealed with a punchline. That moment of realization gives rise to the experience of mirth and laughter. Even observational and slapstick comedy fits this formula, just that the trickery is implied rather than stated. Jesus, being God, is omniscient and is never misled by such communication trickery. So even though he knows it's comedy and understands the joke, even appreciates the cleverness of the joke, because he never has that moment of realization he never experiences mirth. So what's the problem with this argument (other than it borders on a Christological heresy)? It isn't actually an argument that Jesus never laughs, it's an argument that Jesus doesn't experience humour. Likewise the pious argument isn't an argument that Jesus never laughed, it's an argument that Jesus experiences perpetual sorrow for the sins of the world. Both arguments presuppose that people only laugh because of mirth, but people can laugh for reasons other than mirth. Don't people laugh for social reasons too, like politely laughing when someone tells a social joke that isn't really that funny? Or using laughter to show camaraderie with friends and family? Isn't laughter also a tool of rhetoric? Is it impossible that Jesus laughed when challenging the teachings of the Pharisees? So even if we accept that Jesus does perpetually sorrow for the damned, it doesn't follow that he never laughs (or is incapable of experiencing mirth simultaneous with his sorrow).
I'm pretty sure our lord had emotions like any other human being. He cried, He got angry, He got hungry, he was thirsty, he felt pain. Just normal human traits. As long as Christ didn't laugh in someone's face or to make someone feel bad about themselves or laugh at someone's flaws then I'm sure Christ did laugh wholeheartly at good things and not bad.
Bojan, forgive me if you may have already tackled this topic but I have not seen a video about it: Would you consider doing a video, on either channel, to answer why Christ was never married? As Orthodox, I should imagine it is obvious why-- but it goes very much the way of the laughing argument, I think. If Christ was fully human in all but sin, and relations between a man and his wife having been ordained by God at the beginning of time are then not sinful, why should he not have also been married? The question may seem a little dated as The Da Vinci Code came out 20 years ago-- but there is a fairly large sub-culture of lay persons outside of the Church that believe that Jesus was having relations with Mary Magdalene. Certainly I have spoken to many.
All of us are His children. That would be preferential, and God loves us all. A wife is to be preferred above all others. I also agree with the above that the marriage supper of the lamb shows Christ marrying the Church.
He wouldn't marry a woman knowing He'll be crucified. He wouldn't leave a widow, maybe with children behind. He knew better love than marital bliss. She would have to be without a sin like Mother Mary. And we would have two Queens. I guess it wasn't God's plan. Would be detour. He didn't came just to enjoy life but to show us by example how to live our life, and to sacrifice Himself for our salvation.
It's not your own belief that the damned torture themselves, Bojan. That's the church teaching lol I know you know tht already, just don't want people to think that that's some radical innovation you made up haha
Ecclesiastes 7: 1 A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one's birth. 2 It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart. 3 Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. 4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. 5 It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools. 6 For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool: this also is vanity.
Laughter (not just smiling) is a loss of control. You are literally making meaningless noise out of a surprise, similar to a cough. It's a good image of giving in to passion in general, i.e something outside of you that acts upon you and prevails over you.
Stopped watching about 3 minutes in. I’ve appreciated your takes until now, but blithely dismissing the consensus of Orthodox saints who have addressed this question doesn’t go into your win column, Bojan. Our Lord, I’m certain, had an exquisite sense of humor. He made the penguins, the duck billed platypus, and the parrots. He called St. John and St. James “the sons of thunder,” and he was even wry with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4. However, our Godbearing Fathers know from their own experience of theosis that one in that state would not laugh, for whatever reason, and most likely having to do with the transformation of the psyche. Really, what makes you think you’re qualified to contradict them? I’m sincerely disappointed, brother, and if I watch you again, it will be with heightened caution. And that is a shame.
They weren't alive at the time of Christ. They don't know if He never laughed. I find the argument "He never laughed because of our sin" thoroughly unconvincing, and I see no issue in arguing against something that's not a dogma of the Church.
Also, St. Anthony, the greatest of monastic saints, laughed and told jokes and this story was important to be included in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Did he or did he not achieve theosis and transformed his psyche?
For perseverance to the end, try emulating that of the Theotokos and St. Joseph as they made their way back to Jerusalem after they realized 12-year-old Jesus wasn't with them! "Your father and I have been worried sick about you," His Mother said when they finally found Him in the Temple. "Mother, you should have known I'd be up to my Father's business," He answered her. Hey... that's a pretty funny line.
@@dalescott831 Surprising line in my opinion of honest teenager not being aware that He may sound arrogant, all knowing. One more moment of realisation who is He?
No, laughter is sin. --- Show me the verse, the witness of a laughing Christ. ---- Dont talk so many words. So it is a sure apostelic throuth. - There is one book: the apokryphic Evangelium of St. Thomas. In it Jesus laughts 4 times, and always cause of the ridicoulus men. So laugther clearly shows sin in this deadly arrogance. So it's completely clear that "laughter" means a very specific, typically human laugh of arrogance over others. It is never intended that it could be a laugh of pure joy at the holiness of children. The heavenly laughter. But this cannot be found on earth and lives there rather in the tears of joy over a lost sheep that has found its way back to earth.
Sir, you seem like the kind of person who looks angrily at loud children in the church. From your writing I am guessing that you must have forgotten the last time you had a good whole-hearted laugh and I feel sorry for you.
If Jesus was a toddler, he likely laughed. I’m sure he experienced childlike delight and wonder. And he offered some pretty sarcastic quips when berating the Pharisees. But it’s likely he wasn’t the constantly grinning and smiley Chosen Jesus. This just seems obvious.
If Christ never laughed out loud, surely He did to Himself, and just had the self-control to keep it from others. For example, on the road to Emmaeus, where at first He plays dumb about Himself, then disappears the moment they finally realize it's Him, after He breaks the bread. It demonstrates a playfulness in our Lord Jesus. We should not forget His full Humanity.
100% agree, I always think He's having fun when He did that
Christ has lived a human life with everything this entails. (except sin of course). Joy and sadness are both parts of that.
Laughter can also come from having knowledge that others don't. It's like when you give someone a wrapped present, and you giggle when you see them shaking the box to see what it is.
Bojan this can't be right, in The Chosen, Jesus was laughing all the time, sometimes he was laughing and crying at the exact same time.
Good one
😂
It was created by protestants, shows Jesus as a conman, teaching children game known as 'three cards', intended to gamble, cheat. It gives wrong idea of Jesus. There are many blasphemous, incorrect things there. I'm upset about casting. All main heroines are pretty, gentle, charming but Mother Mary. They depicted Her as some vulgar, harsh, crude woman. Which mother mentions that her child was born in poo? And to put it in her mouth, about Jesus is blasphemous. Very bad is also a musical: 'Journey to Bethlehem' where Archangel Gabriel is depicted as demon (deep voice, dark clothes, scale like breastplate, levitating not merely flying) and he wakes up Mary in the night, scares Her, rehearses his speech. Mighty Archangel preparing like for job interview? ...
I’ve seen orthodox people on twitter who say that God doesn’t have a sense of humor.
I've seen enough funny coincidences in my life alone to know for a fact that isn't true
I personally just think that it wasn't added to the gospel that He laughed because it wasn't important enough to add.
By the way, I truly believe God has a sense of humor because I've seen the way certain things happen in my life that make ME laugh. And I believe He is probably having the last laugh on some of these incidents. 😆
@@panoramicprismFor real, if God has no humor in Him, I'd be dead.
I'm a father with 2 young sons, and if they're acting up all day, there's more or less 3 things that will soften my heart towards them; Acting sorry/trying just a little to be good, doing somthing kind, and finally if they do something cute and/or funny. If my sinners heart can be warmed by these things, wouldn't God's on a much higher level in regard to all of us as His children?
Apostles wanted to prove that he was God. It was obvious He was a human so why mention it? why to show His human side? Like there was no need to talk about using oils, practice well known for Jews.
Christ didn't laugh because it shows a lack of self-control, as it is a involuntary reaction. Often, humor is based on some kind of error, a fall, a trick, a setup, or an unexpected revelation. It's not "logo-centric", so to speak.
That doesn't mean it's sinful inherently though. Saints and holy people had humor, although definitely a refined one.
@@drooskie9525 While I agree in a way, why did He cry out of sadness? Couldn't that also be viewed as a lack of self control?
''Christ never laughed'' bros when they read that He, the all knowing One, apparently - marveled - at the centurion's faith. Clearly theres a good way for a human being to laugh as the Creator made it to be and a child/brother-like adoration(marveling) of someone's deed. Christ was fully human so what you say makes sense to me Bojan. God bless you.
No one bats 1000, not even saints. Some have completely contradictory options on particular subject. Even in divine grace, we are still individuals shaped by personal experience and disposition. Love your commentary.
I find it exceedingly hard to believe that any man (and Christ was fully man) in a group with 12 friends never shares a laugh with them.
I think people who make this ridiculous claim are simply projecting their own dead-end personalities onto our Lord: I've never met a jolly, happy person who claims that Christ never laughed.
They remind me of that one angry monk from "Il nome della rosa".
I don't know, i try to look to the modern saints for stuff like this
This seems like a silly anecdotal claim. I love to laugh, tell jokes, go to comedy shows and what have you but I personally don't believe Christ laughed. It's not a hill I would die on as personally I don't think it really matters one way or the other but none the less I don't think it should have any bearing on whether we can laugh or not, plenty of saints laughed and it's certainly not sinful to do so.
@ why do you not think Christ laughed?
The best argument I’ve heard is not that He was never happy or joyful or smiling along with others, but that His Omniscience made it impossible to truly surprise Him. A joke would make him smile, but he already knew the punchline, so he couldn’t laugh at it. But as you say, His human will wasn’t always in on what his Divine Will knew was coming, ergo, He could paradoxically both KNOW and not know.
I remember reading somewhere that some of the parables and figures of speech Jesus used would have been considered very comedic in that time period. Like the speck of dust vs a plank in someone's eye. So He clearly has a sense of humor.
Very likely.
Lewis, not Chesterton, sorry :D
Lewis would be flattered. Gilbert was his favorite author.
Chesterton says something very similar in the las lines of Orthodoxy,
Yes, Chesterton wrote about Christ's mirth. I remember that line.
Very good points, and funny video. ;) don't we have a modern saint who laughed a lot? You're right about the "dour" "monkish" mindset a lot of people take on this. I remember a priest once tweeted 2 points if Christ laughed in His earthly life: 1) It wasn't considered important enough to note. 2) It certainly wasn't at anyone's expense.
Anyone who implies or states humor is inherently bad, always felt a little Gnostic to me. And to be dead honest I think it even encourages despair in some people, like the sensitive and neurotic. I have anxious OCD and been tempted to this sort of "pessimistic" theology, and it doesn't bear good fruit. Let's try to make life a bit brighter for all.
I don't know if there's a modern saint who "laughed a lot" but i would also like to know. I know a lot who made people laugh though
@@seronymus Very much so agree. After all, the pharisees were rebuked for intentionally going around all dire while fasting
@@IN-pr3lw St Eumenios. I deal with religious OCD, and when I find out he was known for his booming laughter life felt so much easier.
You can read about it online, I did.
I always think Jesus was laughing when he called James and John as sons of thunder bearing in mind John is traditionally believed to be a teenager and perhaps James wasn't much older.
Doesn't Isaac mean "he who will laugh"? Wasn't that because Abraham's wife laughed at the idea of them having a son at their age?
If He is able to feel anger to the point of assaulting people , sure He can feel joy to the point of laughing.
Who did Christ assault?
@@Stopitpls depends on how you define assault, but he did drive out the moneychangers and such from a temple, apparently by overturning their tables and chairs.
Please note during the Temple incident, Christ, being God, could simply have instantly vaporized the people. Instead he merely chased them out with the whip. He didn't actually hurt anyone or try to. It was just like blowing a horn. 📣
@@hamaon2800 _The_ Temple, not a temple. There was only one Temple back then, the one in Jerusalem.
He overthrew their tables, and then drove them out of the Temple by whipping them.
@@seronymus very true.
I'd also like to point out that having foreknowledge of something happening doesn't make it not funny. When you play a joke on someone you have an idea of what's gonna happen (you can't know for sure because we do not have foreknowledge) and its still funny when what you thought was gonna happen, happens.
"I'm the boy in question"
C.S. Lewis wrote The Great Divorce, not G.K.Chesterton (also a wonderful writer :)
I agree with you whole heartedly. But I would add that the East views laughter as the behavior of a 'fool' traditionally. Though EVERYONE laughs, excessively it is viewed as the hysterics of the mad. Due to this, I believe the claim that Christ never laughed may also have been made in order to impress upon listeners how serious and not to be taken lightly Christ's work was/is. The claim, I think, should never have been made.
My favorite category of Saint is the Holy Fool/Fool for Christ, actually. And my favorite subset of them were the Early Christian "Grazers". What a stark contrast to what many people think is proper behavior tk be judged...
We believe Lazarus didn't laugh after his ressurection.
I listened to the life of Lazarus the other day with my daughter and they said he laughed once while watching somebody steal a clay pot.
"A piece of dirt steals a piece of dirt." was his remark
@showmeanedge yeah, but i think that's where the idea comes from
And maybe not after his own. They were trying to kill him since he was a living proof of Jesus' Miracle.
If God is incapable of humor, I think the human experiment would have ended permanently a long time ago. Just my take, I have no real insight
I remember someone telling me that laughter is an example of losing control and Christ doesn't lose control. Also, if Christ laughed why wasn't it written down?
It was impossible to write down everything He did in 3 years. I believe most important was to convey His message, convince reader, listener that He was a Messiah. What laughter has to do with this? Of course He laughed, enjoyed things, attended weddings, was meeting friends. It wasn't important detail to keep repeating it. Maybe He didn't want to give early rise to 'Church Nice'.
@RG-CooperTrooper can something be "repeated" if it never happened at the first place?
That's like saying that he didn't need to use the toilet 🙃
I wonder if Byzantine iconography may have inadvertently contributed to this notion. After all, look at how it depicts religious figures: grim and stoic.
Three thoughts
(1) I find my mental image of an Infant Jesus who never giggled or laughed very disturbing. Laughter comes so naturally to infants and it is free from malice and sin.
(2) the best comedians never laugh and are often extremely deadpan. Not laughing is not a sign of no sense of humour. I think too many people equate Christ not laughing with Christ having no sense of humour which is plainly wrong.
(3) Those in the comments who are scandalised by your comments because they contradict Church Fathers are missing the point. If a Church Father says Christ never laughed, then we need to look at what laughter means. More often than not, it is a result of some minor misfortune or embarrassment befalling a friend due to comic mistiming or over confidence. Laughter deflates pride but at the expense of the one who has fallen. Using these definitions, I think the Church Fathers have a point. However, I am willing to submit to the idea that there are other reasons for laughing that involve pure love and I am less willing to believe that Christ never did this.
Insofar as much of ordinary human laughter comes upon us involuntarily, and Christ, when it comes to human frailties like hunger and fatigue and even death, willed to take these on, it seems fitting to say that if He did ever laugh He made the active choice to do so and did it at whatever time would have been most appropriate for it.
FR. Augustyn Pelanowski a Polish monk, recognized as a prophet (seen empty churches in his vision in 2017) had vision of the Nazareth house. The Holy Family was laughing and talking in the Bible verses. One happy, pious family.
It's may be unreliable as it's considered spurious by some but allegedly the only contemporaneous piece of writing about Christ from the time of His earthly life, The Epistle of Lentulus, claims "and all he says or does, he performs pleasantly and with discernment. And he has never been seen to laugh at all, but very frequently is he seen weeping." Again not a 100% knock down argument but I believe it has some merit.
I was told that Christ didn't laugh because it shows a lack of self-control, as it is a involuntary reaction (and it weakens you physiologically). Often, humor is based on some kind of error, a fall, a trick, a setup, or an unexpected revelation. It's not "logocentric", so to speak.
Makes perfect sense honestly, but although perhaps there is a distinction to be made, such as the kind of laughter and the content of the humor in question. The saints and holy people had humor, albeit a more refined one and probably not uncontrolled laughing fits.
Important to not also fall into the whole "what would jesus do" mindset. Jesus is too mysterious for us to operate with that mindset. Just because he didn't do a particular thing, doesn't mean that thing is bad.
Well, 3 years before Crucifixion He could be preparing for that moment. Could be tired, upset about sinners. He dealt with teachers, priests, scholars, and during these confrontations there was not much fun. He would be too kind to laugh at them, had not much chance to laugh with them either. There was no need to write down how much he enjoyed Cana wedding. Already he was accused of drinking with wrong people so why to support such opinion. Surely he wouldn't spoil the mood by being deadly serious. Parchment was too expensive to write obvious things. The New Testament was written after His death, not during His lifetime. It conveyed the message, wasn't a memoir. Also sensibility of people was different.
Consider the greatest humour from god is placing the promise land at the very crossroad of known continents of its time amongst emerging empires to rule over it. Truly a halarious when you start thinking about it. Or Jerusalem meaning the city of peace, yet has never really ever seen peace. 😂 there is an old saying, “god has an interesting sense of humour”
I think that the EO community can really benefit from this reflection. Thank you!
In my humble opinion its the extreme piousness of committed men of the cloth that puts a great many people off from embracing Christianity (although that probably goes for all religions). Lack of a 'funny bone' is almost an inhuman trait. Having said that there really arent too many jokes in the Bible. I'm not sure if God Himself wasnt having a laugh in Leviticus when he advised against eating centipedes (it certainly made me chortle).
I will add something else. To me, humour is one of the higher virtues. The good that comedians do in getting people to laugh is psychological but also close to spiritual. Laughter heals, it soothes, it fortifies. Children laugh naturally, all the time. I am English but the thing that makes me most proud of belonging to this race is our dry and ever-present sense of humour. The truly humour-less among us may as well be the walking dead. If God doesnt find Fawlty Towers funny then there's something wrong with Him. (I hope that's not blasphemous).
loved it. more videos
If the eternal weeping and gnashing of the damned means Jesus can't allow himself to experience joy and mirth in the Kingdom, then how could we experience that peace and joy in the Kingdom? Shouldn't it follow that we too must eternally sorrow for those lost forever to sin?
The arguments against Jesus laughing come across as hyper-pious, that Jesus has to always be stern with a piercing gaze like in the Icons (I suppose even when he wept for Lazarus, like some kind of Galilean Zoolander always maintaining his modeling pose).
I can easily think of a better argument, not a good argument just better, for why Jesus doesn't laugh. One theory of comedy says humour comes from experiencing some misdirection, equivocation, or other kind of communication trickery, and then the trick is revealed with a punchline. That moment of realization gives rise to the experience of mirth and laughter. Even observational and slapstick comedy fits this formula, just that the trickery is implied rather than stated.
Jesus, being God, is omniscient and is never misled by such communication trickery. So even though he knows it's comedy and understands the joke, even appreciates the cleverness of the joke, because he never has that moment of realization he never experiences mirth.
So what's the problem with this argument (other than it borders on a Christological heresy)? It isn't actually an argument that Jesus never laughs, it's an argument that Jesus doesn't experience humour. Likewise the pious argument isn't an argument that Jesus never laughed, it's an argument that Jesus experiences perpetual sorrow for the sins of the world. Both arguments presuppose that people only laugh because of mirth, but people can laugh for reasons other than mirth. Don't people laugh for social reasons too, like politely laughing when someone tells a social joke that isn't really that funny? Or using laughter to show camaraderie with friends and family? Isn't laughter also a tool of rhetoric? Is it impossible that Jesus laughed when challenging the teachings of the Pharisees?
So even if we accept that Jesus does perpetually sorrow for the damned, it doesn't follow that he never laughs (or is incapable of experiencing mirth simultaneous with his sorrow).
It seems unlikely he’s was human
Jerusalem and hollywood have the same demographics,atleast a dozen comedy writers being stoned in the street(probably daily)
I don't think Jesus laughed. Funny jokes weren't invented till the 15th century
I'm pretty sure our lord had emotions like any other human being. He cried, He got angry, He got hungry, he was thirsty, he felt pain. Just normal human traits. As long as Christ didn't laugh in someone's face or to make someone feel bad about themselves or laugh at someone's flaws then I'm sure Christ did laugh wholeheartly at good things and not bad.
Bojan, forgive me if you may have already tackled this topic but I have not seen a video about it: Would you consider doing a video, on either channel, to answer why Christ was never married? As Orthodox, I should imagine it is obvious why-- but it goes very much the way of the laughing argument, I think. If Christ was fully human in all but sin, and relations between a man and his wife having been ordained by God at the beginning of time are then not sinful, why should he not have also been married? The question may seem a little dated as The Da Vinci Code came out 20 years ago-- but there is a fairly large sub-culture of lay persons outside of the Church that believe that Jesus was having relations with Mary Magdalene. Certainly I have spoken to many.
Because He is already promised to another. The Church
All of us are His children. That would be preferential, and God loves us all. A wife is to be preferred above all others. I also agree with the above that the marriage supper of the lamb shows Christ marrying the Church.
He wouldn't marry a woman knowing He'll be crucified. He wouldn't leave a widow, maybe with children behind. He knew better love than marital bliss. She would have to be without a sin like Mother Mary. And we would have two Queens. I guess it wasn't God's plan. Would be detour. He didn't came just to enjoy life but to show us by example how to live our life, and to sacrifice Himself for our salvation.
It's not your own belief that the damned torture themselves, Bojan. That's the church teaching lol
I know you know tht already, just don't want people to think that that's some radical innovation you made up haha
Ecclesiastes 7:
1 A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one's birth.
2 It is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men; and the living will lay it to his heart.
3 Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better.
4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
5 It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools.
6 For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool: this also is vanity.
The original emos.🙄
Laughter (not just smiling) is a loss of control. You are literally making meaningless noise out of a surprise, similar to a cough. It's a good image of giving in to passion in general, i.e something outside of you that acts upon you and prevails over you.
Crying is also loss of control. Christ did it.
Stopped watching about 3 minutes in.
I’ve appreciated your takes until now, but blithely dismissing the consensus of Orthodox saints who have addressed this question doesn’t go into your win column, Bojan.
Our Lord, I’m certain, had an exquisite sense of humor. He made the penguins, the duck billed platypus, and the parrots. He called St. John and St. James “the sons of thunder,” and he was even wry with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4. However, our Godbearing Fathers know from their own experience of theosis that one in that state would not laugh, for whatever reason, and most likely having to do with the transformation of the psyche. Really, what makes you think you’re qualified to contradict them?
I’m sincerely disappointed, brother, and if I watch you again, it will be with heightened caution. And that is a shame.
They weren't alive at the time of Christ. They don't know if He never laughed. I find the argument "He never laughed because of our sin" thoroughly unconvincing, and I see no issue in arguing against something that's not a dogma of the Church.
Also, St. Anthony, the greatest of monastic saints, laughed and told jokes and this story was important to be included in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers. Did he or did he not achieve theosis and transformed his psyche?
For perseverance to the end, try emulating that of the Theotokos and St. Joseph as they made their way back to Jerusalem after they realized 12-year-old Jesus wasn't with them! "Your father and I have been worried sick about you," His Mother said when they finally found Him in the Temple. "Mother, you should have known I'd be up to my Father's business," He answered her. Hey... that's a pretty funny line.
@@dalescott831 Surprising line in my opinion of honest teenager not being aware that He may sound arrogant, all knowing. One more moment of realisation who is He?
No, laughter is sin. --- Show me the verse, the witness of a laughing Christ. ---- Dont talk so many words. So it is a sure apostelic throuth. - There is one book: the apokryphic Evangelium of St. Thomas. In it Jesus laughts 4 times, and always cause of the ridicoulus men. So laugther clearly shows sin in this deadly arrogance. So it's completely clear that "laughter" means a very specific, typically human laugh of arrogance over others. It is never intended that it could be a laugh of pure joy at the holiness of children. The heavenly laughter. But this cannot be found on earth and lives there rather in the tears of joy over a lost sheep that has found its way back to earth.
Laughter isn't sinful.
At all.
Sir, you seem like the kind of person who looks angrily at loud children in the church. From your writing I am guessing that you must have forgotten the last time you had a good whole-hearted laugh and I feel sorry for you.
Lunatics
What a joyless and miserable life you must live