Review Why do religious people take offense to church humour?

High Plains Drifter

High Plains Drifter

The Drifter
VIP
My grandfather is very religious. He was a deacon at his church for many years. The many years he has spent with the church he has lost his warped humour. Now he can't take a joke. I noticed that with many of my family who are involved in the church, not being able to joke around about church stuff.


Does joining a a church means you loss your humour?
Do you get a cleaner sense of humour in the long run?
What I'm asking is what you use to laugh at, now you think is just tasteless and not funny?
 
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Janine The Barefoot

Janine The Barefoot

Wacky Norwegian Woman
High Plains Drifter said:
My grandfather is very religious. He was a deacon at his church for many years. The many years he has spent with the church he has lost his warped humour. Now he can't take a joke. I noticed that with many of my family who are involved in the church, not being able to joke around about church stuff.


Does joining a a church means you loss your humour?
Do you get a cleaner sense of humour in the long run?
What I asking is what you use to laugh at, now you think is just tasteless and not funny?
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While I'm no expert (see my post on the Scientologists), I'll take a swing at this because G'pa and my favorite Uncle (both on Mom's side) were Lutheran ministers their whole lives and if there's one thing I can say with certainty is those guys were funny! My Uncle was a huuuuuge Seahawks fan and had his secretary sit in the office on Sundays so she could interrupt his sermons with point updates....
No kidding! His congregation loved it for the most part and if some didn't they never said so. I'm pretty sure they never left his church because when he retired, he had the largest congregation in the county. As did, in fact, my Grandfather. When my Grandma died, the city of Seattle provided her procession with an escort of both cars & motorcycles because it was one of the most highly attended funerals in the history of the city. And Grandpa, retired when Seattle got the Seahawks, used to tell jokes from the pulpit that were funny enough that all of us shared them with anyone we could and I can't remember any joke he ever told that fell flat or required/prompted heckling.

But, as with many other things in this country, we humans tend to take things to either one extreme or the other. Instead of actively seeking the middle ground on any subject, we turn it into a means by which to judge others and find them wanting. You could just as easily replace the word religion with politics, gay rights, equal opportunities for women and minorities or any single item in The Constitution. Because people become polarized by issues they view as integral to their view of the world. Consequently, any number of topics have become, over the years, either "PC" or totally off-limits and seen as a sign of "moral corruption" of some kind. People don't lighten up because they've wrapped themselves in a blanket of self-righteousness and feel obligated to convert as many others to their cause as possible. Honest-to-God I think the lunatic asylum in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest was more open-minded and middle of the road in terms of accepting differences and being able to laugh at themselves than 3/4 of the population in this day and age... in the US, other countries are laughing all right, they're just laughing at us as opposed to with us!

So, as I see it, it's a problem with people not with religion and my expectation is that it's going to get worse before it gets better.

If you give it a "pop-reference" I'd say: "Judgement; it's the new black!" On the other hand, I'm Norwegian and we think everything is funny!.... But we're a little bit sick that way!

:emoji_angel: :emoji_laughing: :emoji_hand_splayed: :emoji_ok_hand: :emoji_ghost:
 
chainsaw_metal1

chainsaw_metal1

Member: Rank 8
High Plains Drifter said:
Does joining a a church means you loss your humour?
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No. It depends on the person. When I was a churchgoer/believer, I still had a sense of humor. But I also had a different point of view of things. I always thought LIFE OF BRIAN was hilarious, but I know lots of christians who will tell you it's blasphemy.

High Plains Drifter said:
Do you get a cleaner sense of humour in the long run?
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Again, depends on the person. I could point to a great number of people I know who are religious who have no sense of humor whatsoever. Then I could talk about my old pastor, who told some of the dirtiest jokes I have ever heard.

High Plains Drifter said:
What I asking is what you use to laugh at, now you think is just tasteless and not funny?
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Not from a religious point here, but I find anything where the disabled are the butt of the joke in poor taste. That obviously comes from raising two special needs children, and I don't find humor in that. I remember when THE RINGER came out, my wife and I were highly suspect of it, but we sat and watched it, just to know what they were doing. In the end, it was actually quite sensitive toward the subject, outside of a few characters who get duly punished for their actions. I'm also not a fan of poorly done humor involving race or the LGBTQ community. If it's clever, I'll laugh.

In some instances, the church has taught people to never question their beliefs or the church itself, and that the system is infallible. And to them, if you make any sort of joke about it, they take it as an attack on not only their beliefs, but on them as well. And it's taught that anything sacred should not be made light or fun of, so they get upset at the prospect of anyone doing so. I had a co-worker who took offense at something once, going on about how it was now in vogue to make fun of religion. I explained that for centuries, the church had enough power to punish those who would make such jokes, and now people have the freedom to do so. I got an "Oh, whatever" as a response, so I guess I was schooled. *rolls eyes*
 
Janine The Barefoot

Janine The Barefoot

Wacky Norwegian Woman
Hux said:
How many jokes in the Bible, Koran etc?

The real question is does God have a sense of humour (his followers' books would suggest not).
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I suppose my answer to that would be that God must have a sense of humor (depending on what anyone chooses to believe), he created us and we do don't we? I mean... I personally find something about the human race to laugh at almost every day! Also, as I said earlier, my belief is that those books were written by men. They may have been written as a direct representation of "God's word" but you still cannot get away from the fact that they were written by men. And I genuinely mean no disrespect to anyone's view of their religion. I have my own relationship with God and am equally passionate about it. It's just not a relationship that many others I've met seem to share.
 
chainsaw_metal1

chainsaw_metal1

Member: Rank 8
Janine The Barefoot said:
Also, as I said earlier, my belief is that those books were written by men. They may have been written as a direct representation of "God's word" but you still cannot get away from the fact that they were written by men.
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As had been proven, the Books of Moses are much older traditions, stories passed down from generations of Semitic tribes in a verbal tradition, written by various cultures until accepted by the Abrahamic sect as gospel. Also, many of the texts were changed to fit current political and social needs. For a long time, the culture had been female centric. When men wanted the power, they changed things to give them power. We have older examples of the New Testament where we see that things have been changed over time (also, the NT gospels were not written down by eyewitnesses, but rather a century later as hearsay). And finally, what Christians accept as the Bible was put together by a committee of men, and made official by the Roman Emperor, a man. It isn't the infallible word of God, but a representation of what a group of mortal men want the world to live by.

Amazingly, I have had people who get mad at me for pointing this out to them. Some who have told me that "people get too intellectual" (because, you know, knowledge is evil) and those who simply give the stock answer of "It's not about facts, it's about faith". These are some of the many reasons I'm an atheist.

(Additional, because I always feel I should make this clear - I have no issue with anything you believe. We're cool. I'm just a walking encyclopedia of useless knowledge, and I tend to get in a lot of arguments with people when they do try to force their beliefs on me.)
 
Janine The Barefoot

Janine The Barefoot

Wacky Norwegian Woman
chainsaw_metal1 said:
As had been proven, the Books of Moses are much older traditions, stories passed down from generations of Semitic tribes in a verbal tradition, written by various cultures until accepted by the Abrahamic sect as gospel. Also, many of the texts were changed to fit current political and social needs. For a long time, the culture had been female centric. When men wanted the power, they changed things to give them power. We have older examples of the New Testament where we see that things have been changed over time (also, the NT gospels were not written down by eyewitnesses, but rather a century later as hearsay). And finally, what Christians accept as the Bible was put together by a committee of men, and made official by the Roman Emperor, a man. It isn't the infallible word of God, but a representation of what a group of mortal men want the world to live by.

Amazingly, I have had people who get mad at me for pointing this out to them. Some who have told me that "people get too intellectual" (because, you know, knowledge is evil) and those who simply give the stock answer of "It's not about facts, it's about faith". These are some of the many reasons I'm an atheist.

(Additional, because I always feel I should make this clear - I have no issue with anything you believe. We're cool. I'm just a walking encyclopedia of useless knowledge, and I tend to get in a lot of arguments with people when they do try to force their beliefs on me.)
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And I'm a walking believer that no information is useless and the people who think so are!!! I'm also enormously grateful to meet someone else who actually reads and questions what is on the page... any page. One of the things I used to tell my kids in the classroom was that everything they were ever going to read was written by a person with a viewpoint all their own. That those viewpoints would color what they said even if they weren't aware of it. There's a reason for the saying that "history is written by the winners" only nobody seems to think history really matters except historians and people like you and I who understand that until we get a clear picture of who we are as a species we're going to continue to use the same old behaviors and beliefs to destroy each other for reasons that aren't any more valid today then they were 5 thousand years ago. Hence my problems with organized religion. As Marx once said (with another intent in mind) "I wouldn't join any that would have me!"

And just between us, my use of the term God is a bit limiting in terms of what I truly believe but it serves very well to help others understand where I'm coming from (as much as is possible because my beliefs, although seemingly simple, often defy the logic of others) whenever I end up in a conversation involving religion. It's not inaccurate, it's just not the whole story.
 
DeJoHnNiE

DeJoHnNiE

Member: Rank 4
Why do religious people take offense to church humour?

"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain" (KJV; also "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God" (NRSV) and variants) is one of the Ten Commandments.

It is a prohibition of blasphemy, specifically, the misuse or "taking in vain" of the name of the God of Israel. Exodus 20:7 reads:

"Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." (KJV).[1]
Based on this commandment, Second Temple Judaism by the Hellenistic period developed a taboo of pronouncing the name of God at all, resulting in the replacement of the Tetragrammaton by "Adonai" (literally "my lords" – see Adonai) in pronunciation.

In the Hebrew Bible itself, the commandment is directed against abuse of the name of God, not against any use; there are numerous examples in the Hebrew Bible and a few in the New Testament where God's name is called upon in oaths to tell the truth or to support the truth of the statement being sworn to, and the books of Daniel and Revelation include instances where an angel sent by God invokes the name of God to support the truth of apocalyptic revelations.[2] God himself is presented as swearing by his own name ("As surely as I live …") to guarantee the certainty of various events foretold through the prophets.[3]
Source: Wiki

This is why I think... Especially when they are taught that making jokes about a religion is a offence and they take everything so friggin serious, so none of them can take a joke. But joke about non believers and they can chuckle a bit, that's obviously allowed to sortof ridicule the infidels


 
Janine The Barefoot

Janine The Barefoot

Wacky Norwegian Woman
DeJoHnNiE said:
Why do religious people take offense to church humour?

"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain" (KJV; also "You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God" (NRSV) and variants) is one of the Ten Commandments.

It is a prohibition of blasphemy, specifically, the misuse or "taking in vain" of the name of the God of Israel. Exodus 20:7 reads:

"Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain." (KJV).[1]
Based on this commandment, Second Temple Judaism by the Hellenistic period developed a taboo of pronouncing the name of God at all, resulting in the replacement of the Tetragrammaton by "Adonai" (literally "my lords" – see Adonai) in pronunciation.

In the Hebrew Bible itself, the commandment is directed against abuse of the name of God, not against any use; there are numerous examples in the Hebrew Bible and a few in the New Testament where God's name is called upon in oaths to tell the truth or to support the truth of the statement being sworn to, and the books of Daniel and Revelation include instances where an angel sent by God invokes the name of God to support the truth of apocalyptic revelations.[2] God himself is presented as swearing by his own name ("As surely as I live …") to guarantee the certainty of various events foretold through the prophets.[3]
Source: Wiki

This is why I think... Especially when they are taught that making jokes about a religion is a offence and they take everything so friggin serious, so none of them can take a joke. But joke about non believers and they can chuckle a bit, that's obviously allowed to sortof ridicule the infidels


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Outstanding DeJ! And clearly... I'll be quoting your quote!
 
Gavin

Gavin

Member: Rank 6
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Speaking as a Christian, I don't have any issues with jokes. I can happily laugh at jokes about the church and God. The main thing is that they're funny jokes. Some people's idea of a joke is just nastiness and that's not funny. But a funny joke, even if it's at my expense will get me laughing. And there is plenty of humour in the Bible if you look in the right places. Unfortunately a lot of the humour is contextual and doesn't translate well over 2000 years from a rural agrarian society to a contemporary metropolitan society.
 
chainsaw_metal1

chainsaw_metal1

Member: Rank 8
Carol said:
Who therefore haven't actually seen it, or really have no sense of humour.
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True dat. There are always protests around controversial films dealing with religion, and the three I can think of that seem to have had the biggest furor around them were BRIAN, THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST and DOGMA (the last two being in my lifetime, I remember the protests being widely reported on). And every time, the loudest voices crying out for their banning were from people who had not only never viewed the films, but had no intention to. The irony of that seems to escape people like that, who just accept what has been told to them by the collective Mary Whitehouses of the world, Closed-mindedness is a disease for which there really is no cure.
 
Gavin

Gavin

Member: Rank 6
VIP
chainsaw_metal1 said:
I always thought LIFE OF BRIAN was hilarious, but I know lots of christians who will tell you it's blasphemy.
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I've always loved Life of Brian since the first time I saw it (Monty Python were one of the best comedic groups of all time). I've used clips from that movie in church services on a few occasions now with no complaints.

chainsaw_metal1 said:
(also, the NT gospels were not written down by eyewitnesses, but rather a century later as hearsay).
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Actually, current accepted historical research, suggests that they were written down between 30 and 50 years after the events. And most researchers accept that, while the gospels most likely weren't written by their "traditional" authors, they were probably written by authors who had known them and were in communities that had been taught by them.

chainsaw_metal1 said:
And finally, what Christians accept as the Bible was put together by a committee of men
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If you read the reports about the process, it was less a case of a group of men deciding what would become the Bible (and therefore what Christians believe) and more a case of the group determining what were the commonly accepted texts of churches around the world at the time and formalising that process. The books that were left out were largely already rejected by the majority of the church (and have been historically determined to have been written at much later time periods than those that were accepted).
 
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