Laughter Is Really Serious

A long time ago when someone was interested in possibly joining our ministry here, our team compiled a list of what we thought were missionary "essentials" in order for our team to work well. If you wanted to join our team, we hoped that you would agree with these essentials and have them in your own life. Since then, I've sometimes thought of other "essentials," or at least, good-to-haves. I thought I'd share them with you when the mood strikes.

So what makes a good missionary?

One of the original points on the list was a sense of humor. We were not made to carry the gravity of the most serious task in the world without a break of merriment. Steel can only be stressed so long and so hard. Now this point does not require that you would be expected to perform extemporaneous stand-up comedian routines, but can you recognize humor and have an appropriate sense of humor?

This is actually an important issue in team ministry. What we laugh about says a lot about us. Likewise, what a culture in general finds funny communicates their worldview and character. So in a mission team, when there is only one other person or couple in your large area who understands both your home culture and your host culture, it can be extremely frustrating if the teammate laughs at things that you deem un-funny, or highly disappointing if they don't see the humor in something you find obviously hilarious. In fact, we can get very angry about what others laugh at or don't laugh at.

You won't be sorry if you read this very long quote that says this much better than I can:

...I propose to cut through it by considering one of the raw materials from which culture is built, namely laughter. All rational beings laugh--and maybe only rational beings laugh. And all rational beings benefit from laughing. As a result there has emerged a peculiar human institution--that of the joke, the repeatable performance in words or gestures that is designed as an object of laughter.

Now there is a great difficulty in saying exactly what laughter is. It is not just a sound....Nor is it just a thought, like the thought of some object as incongruous. It is a response to something, which also involves a judgment of that thing. Moreover, it is not an individual peculiarity....Laughter is an expression of amusement. Laughter begins as a collective condition, as when children giggle together over some absurdity. And in adulthood amusement remains one of the ways in which human beings enjoy each other's company, become reconciled to their differences, and accept their common lot. Laughter helps us to overcome our isolation and fortifies us against despair.

That does not mean that laughter is subjective in the sense that "anything goes," or that it is uncritical of its object. On the contrary, jokes are the object of fierce disputes, and many are dismissed as "not funny," "in bad taste," "offensive," and so on. The habit of laughing at things is not detachable from the habit of judging things to be worthy of laughter. Indeed, amusement, although a spontaneous outflow of social emotion, is also the most frequently practiced form of judgment. To laugh at something is already to judge it, and when we refrain from laughing at what someone nevertheless believes to be funny, we may thereby show our disapproval of that person's stance.

~Roger Scruton in Culture Counts, pgs. 6-7

When stressful events rain down all at once like it's trial monsoon season or it seems like your life is an all-too-frequent example of Murphy's Law (we had nine machines break in a short period of time one year--car, fridge, stove blew up, etc.), sometimes you have to crack a sarcastic joke about it.
When you're going nuts because of some element of the host culture that you're not used to or even think is rude, sometimes it is cathartic to laugh with your teammates until the tears come to your eyes at the unexpectedness of this or that happening. Just keeps you sane sometimes and helps to release the anger or bitterness that shouldn't be there.

Those are examples of how you might laugh at events out of your control, such as elements of your host culture. But being able to laugh at yourself is perhaps even more important. Isn't that really an element of humility? To be able to laugh at yourself when you make a language mistake or harmless cultural gaffe or have a most embarrassing moment on furlough, etc., is very important as well. Be humble, and laugh at yourself.

I was embarrassed to see this proof of my failure to tie my baby to my back African style that my teammates took of me while I was keeping score at a Bible Quiz tournament. But it WAS funny!

Seth has tried before to pin down what people may universally find funny, and he came up with this: "Connecting two things in an unexpected way." You weren't expecting those two ideas to be put together like that. Let me give you one example recently that our team found funny in our host culture because it was unexpected. There is danger in giving examples because someone may miss my main point in shooting down the example, but here goes:

Recently our team laughed until there were tears in our eyes over someone's account and imitation of a song blared at his house. Here is an event that frustrated the missionary couple: neighbors 20 meters away put up 4-foot high speakers and blared an inane, offensive song so loudly in the direction of their house that the speakers went staticky; and this continued for hours, including the kids' naptimes. (I'm sure this is a common issue for missionaries, not only in Africa.) Now, this is actually a very frustrating occurrence, and we began by expressing our sympathy for them. The funny part was when the narrator told us, and then imitated, what was in the song: belching.

Completely unexpected. Songs and belching don't go together. Add to that volume. These Africans liked this music so much, they wanted it to be heard loudly by everyone! Who produces this music??? It's just...funny.

Now some people at this point may object. "You're judging their culture. You're laughing at them!" Our politically correct culture doesn't like to laugh at other people's cultures. But as that quote above begins to express, we are making judgments all the time in what we laugh at. Every culture does this. Some things shouldn't or can't be laughed about. For example, when someone is hurt or when something is sinful, we shouldn't laugh at those things. Some people have a cutting sense of humor that only makes fun of others in a belittling or demeaning way. That's inappropriate. But some things can and should be laughed at.

And that brings me to the next objection: "Are you saying someone shouldn't be a missionary if they don't have a sense of humor? What if they just don't have the same sense of humor as you?" Exactly. This is the issue.

It isn't enough to say that the teammate must have a sense of humor. Even though we may judge another person with the statement, "He doesn't have a sense of humor," what we mean is, "He doesn't appreciate my sense of humor." Or "I don't appreciate his sense of humor." So that is the key. Can that teammate laugh at things that you deem important to laugh at? Can she laugh at herself? Can you laugh together over similar things without one squirming with discomfort or another blankly staring in misunderstanding?

Remember that excellent quote above: "And in adulthood amusement remains one of the ways in which human beings enjoy each other's company, become reconciled to their differences, and accept their common lot. Laughter helps us to overcome our isolation and fortifies us against despair."

Yes, some things shouldn't be laughed at. But on the other hand, "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine."

What I Learned from My Homeschool Room: People Are More Important

As I've been excitedly sharing on my blog, we have been converting our garage into two rooms--a larger homeschool room and a smaller storeroom. Recently we took a midyear break from school, and we hoped to finish the room so that we could move in when school began. We worked feverishly nights and some days to paint, lay tile, and install desks and bookshelves. Even the kids helped. We were so excited.

We turned their clothes inside-out and let them paint with us one day.

Although christened the "Schoolroom," our secondary purpose for that room would be to house visitors. We get lots of visitors, sometimes of the overnight kind, and we were having to get pretty creative about where to put them.

Little did I know that what I thought would be the room's secondary purpose would actually be its first! Woman may plan...

But God knew.

When Seth worked on his day off to lay tile...
and stayed up the next night until 3:00 AM grouting
and still frantically painted and drilled desks into the wall on the 4th of July before our teammates came over for a "holiday"
and when I stayed up late organizing books on shelves,
God knew that we needed to get that room done.

For the first day after we could potentially call it "done" (though we still have lots of things to do for it), we had a guest!--of a sort of long-term nature.

A girl we knew remotely is in a crisis pregnancy situation, and we took her in until she has her baby. After that, we are not 100% sure what's going to happen, but this situation should last until about mid-August.

Our new family member joins us for family devotions. She is turning out to be a very easy guest!

Over and over I have begun a post for Missionary Monday on how missionaries must be flexible, how flexibility is a requirement for this job; but I've never finished the post. My plans for the post got interrupted. :) (I wanted to write something along this line: Ready for Anything.) Maybe this post about my changed plans is the best example of that thought.

It is anti-climactic. We were so excited, and I was going to try to make a pretty, efficient space for our instruction. I was anticipating the move away from the kitchen table, where the children distracted one another sitting elbow to elbow listening to me teaching one phonics while the other worked on math, and where the littles generally created loud chaos. I know that a schoolroom wouldn't have fixed all of those That's-Life Problems, but I was excited nonetheless.

And then, crash. In the space of an hour, my hopes, in part for a haven from outside interruptions, were exchanged for one of the biggest invasions of privacy you can get--a long-term house guest--from a different culture.

One of the difficulties of living in the village is that it saps your energy over time--the constant borrowing and asking for things or help, the incessant knocking and visiting and interrupting--basically, feeling like you lack privacy--an American essential that is almost assumed in an independent American's lifestyle. So it's a sacrifice to open up your home--your only hope for an escape from the fishbowl-live-in-a-glass-house type of a life.

BUT--it must be done. People are more important. Their souls are more important. If in this way, we can help a young couple to strive to be pure from sin, to have a child instead of an abortion, to mature spiritually and emotionally into adulthood, and to prepare for a God-honoring marriage, what is the loss of a little privacy to all of those eternal values?

Give. No rights. Take up your cross--daily--and follow Me.