"By laughter we do not mean the sublime heavenly joy that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, nor the joy that 'spiritual persons' like to talk about in soft, gentle terms (a joy that can easily
produce a somewhat insipid and sour effect, like the euphoria of a harmless, balanced, but essentially stunted person). No, we mean real laughter, resounding laughter, the kind that makes a person double over
and slap his thigh, the kind that brings tears to the eyes; the laughter that accompanies spicy jokes, the laughter that reflects the fact that a human being is no doubt somewhat childlike and childish. We mean the
laughter that is not very pensive, the laughter that ceremonious people (passionately keen on their dignity) righteously take amiss in themselves and in others. This is the laughter we mean. Is it possible for us to reflect on this laughter?
Yes, indeed, very much so. Even laughable matters are very serious. Their seriousness, however, dawns only on the one who takes them for what they are: laughable.
"In the most pessimistic book of the Bible we read: 'There is a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance' (Eccles. 3:4). This is what laughter tells us first of all: there is a time for everything. The human being has no fixed dwelling place on this earth, not even in the inner life of the heart and mind. Life means change. Laughter tells us that if as people of the earth we always wanted to be in the same fixed state of mind and heart, if we always wanted to brew a uniform mixture out of every virtue and disposition of the soul (a mixture that would always and everywhere be just right), laughter tells us that fundamentally this would be a denial of the fact that we are created beings. To want to escape from the atmospheric conditions of the soul--the human soul that can soar as far as the heavens in joy and be depressed down to death in grief--to want to escape by running under the never changing sky of imperturbablity and insensitivity: this would be inhuman. It would be stoical, but it would not be Christian. This is what laughter tells us first of all. A praising of God is what laughter is, because it lets a human being be human.
"Laughter that springs from a childlike and serene heart... can exist only in one who is not a 'heathen,' but who like Christ (Heb. 4:15; cf. 1 Pet. 3:8) has through love for all and each, the free, detached 'sympathy' that can accept and see everything as it is....Because there are great and small, high and low, sublime and ridiculous, serious and comical, because God wills these to exist--that is why this should be recognized, that is why everything should not be taken as being the same, that is why the comical and the ridiculous should be laughed at. But the only who can do this is the person who does not adapt everything to himself, the one who is free from self, and who like Christ can 'sympathize' with everything; the one who possesses that mysterious sympathy with each and every thing, and before whom each can get a chance to have its say.
"But only the person who loves has this sympathy. And so, laughter is a sign of love. Unsympathetic people (people who cannot actively 'sympathize' and who thus become passively unsympathetic as well) cannot really laugh. They cannot admit that not everything is momentous and significant. They always like to be important and they occupy themselves only with what is momentous. They are anxious about their dignity, they worry about it; they do not love, and that is why they do not even laugh. But we want to laugh and we are not ashamed to laugh. For it is a manifestation of the love of all things in God. Laughter is a praise of God, because it lets a human being be a loving person.
"But it is more, this harmless, innocent laughter of the children of God. Scripture makes this small creature into a picture and likeness of God's own sentiments. So much so that we would almost be afraid to attribute to God the harsh, bitter, scornful laughter of pride. The thrones in heaven laugh (Ps. 2:4). The Almighty laughs at the wicked man, for he sees his day already approaching (Ps. 37:13). Wisdom, speaking of the ungodly, tells us that the Lord shall laugh them to scorn (Wisd. 4:18).
"God laughs. He laughs the laughter of the carefree, the confident, the unthreatened. He laughs the laughter of divine superiority over all the horrible confusion of universal history that is full of blood and torture and insanity and baseness. He laughs sympathetically and knowingly, almost as if he was enjoying the tearful drama of this earth (he can do this, for he himself wept with the earth, and he, crushed even to death and abandoned by God, felt the shock of terror). He laughs, says Scripture, and thus it tells us that an image and a reflection of the triumphant, glorious God of history and of eternity still shines in the final laugh that somewhere springs out from a good heart, bright as silver and pure, over some stupidity of this world. Laughter is praise of God because it is a gentle echo of God's laughter, of the laughter that pronounces judgment on all history.
"Fools laugh, and so do the wise; despairing non-believers laugh, and so do believers....Our laughter should praise God. It should praise him because it acknowleges that we are human. It should praise him because it acknowleges that we are people who love. It should praise him because it is a reflection and image of the laughter of God himself.
It should praise him because it is the promise of laughter that is promised to us as victory in the judgment. God gave us laughter; we should admit this and-- laugh."