Graduation

I will graduate on Saturday. Amber, Benjamin, David, and I are driving to Lexington, Kentucky this week (pray for us by the way – that is a long trip!) to attend a few dinners, receptions, a chapel service, and the commencement service. We are looking forward to see the place we used to live—at least the three oldest members of our family. I want to thank all of the people who prayed for me and encouraged me as I finished my dissertation.

I thought I would share the Cliff Notes of my paper: 165 pages on the use of humor and public speaking condensed into a mere 2 pages.

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The God of Isaac (Yishaq), which is translated as laughter, is the God of Israel. Conrad Hyers explains the humor associated with the previous sentence:

The history of Israel begins—if it does not sound too impious—with a joke, a divine joke. The laughter of Abraham and Sarah at this joke was not so much a laughter of unbelief as of disbelief, as when we say “You can’t be serious” or “You’ve got to be kidding.” Yet it was a laughter that became the laughter of faith. Abraham and Sarah would be less inclined in the future to declare the impossible. And their laughter, in turn, would become the laughter of faith and hope for generations to follow. (And God Created Laughter 10)

God gave laughter to Sarah. Sarah declared, “God has brought me laughter! All who hear about this will laugh with me” (Genesis 21:5). Sarah had stopped dreaming that she and Abraham would have a baby, but the Lord was gracious to Sarah and did for Sarah “exactly what he had promised” (Genesis 21:1). God later told Moses that “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). The Hebrew reader understands that Laughter (Isaac) is the father of Israel (Jacob).

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The Gospels are serious, but seriousness does not exclude the expression of joy or the use of humor. A better understanding of life, self, and God can be attained when a person is able to recognize humor in the Bible.

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Another form of humor that Jesus used was overstatement. Jesus responded to the question of “How difficult is it for a wealthy person to enter the kingdom of heaven?” with an exaggeration: “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Matthew 19:24). The disciples were astonished by Jesus’ response and then asked him, “Who then can be saved?” (Matthew 19:25). Jesus answered the disciples with a surprise of grace: “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). Jesus used exaggeration during this conversation to teach the disciples that they could not save themselves—saving people is something God does.

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The sorrow of Good Friday is replaced by the joy and laughter of Easter Sunday.

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Profane humor can cause pain and profane humor can also prevent people from appropriately dealing with pain.

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Humor can be playful and it can be serious. While humor is not always appropriate, one cannot say that it is never appropriate. God wants his children to laugh. The Bible is clear that a “time to laugh” (Ecclesiastes 3:4) exists. People can be too serious. The Church should most definitely take God seriously but not take itself so seriously. Humor can be instrumental in urging the Church not to take itself so seriously.

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“A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person’s strength” (Proverbs 17:22).

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Excess stress and anxiety are barriers to personal, professional, and spiritual growth as well as barriers to healing. Humor relaxes by relieving anxiety and breaking down barriers to learning and growth.

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Boredom is a hindrance to effective communication. Humor is one remedy to boredom. People have a negative response to material that is predictable, tedious, unengaging, and dry.

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Another potential danger of using humor is the ineffective attempted use of humor. Attempted humor that is not humorous puts the speaker in a very awkward position.

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Participants were asked to respond true or false to the following statement: “There is a lot of laughter in our church.” In high-quality growing churches, 68 percent of the participants responded true to the statement while participants in low-quality declining churches responded true at only a 33 percent rate.

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High humor orientation is a socially desirable trait. Instructional communication research confirms this suggestion because people declare a sense of humor in numbers in excess of what is possible.

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Humor makes listeners feel positive toward the speaker, promotes a sense of community, boosts listener morale, lowers stress, creates a healthy environment for learning, and relaxes defenses.

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High and low humor orientation listeners will learn equally well from high humor orientation speakers, however, high humor orientation listeners will not learn as well from low humor orientation speakers. Also, both high and low humor orientation listeners prefer listening to the high humor orientation speaker.

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The results from the research project indicated that 2.4 percent of the total variation in affective learning is from perceived humor orientation, 3.1 percent of the total variation in affective learning is from relational solidarity, and 19.5 percent of the total variation in affective learning is from ethos. The research implies that perceived ethos best predicts affective learning.

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Ethos is the credibility, competence, character, and caring of the speaker.

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Finally, I am thankful for the people to whom I proclaim God’s Word each week. You have encouraged me as I have worked on this paper and you encourage me as your pastor. We have laughed together, we have cried together, and we have grown together. Thank you for letting me be me.

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In Christ,

Craig