Funny how unrelated things come together sometimes. A TV personality caused outrage by suggesting strikers should be shot.
Explanations about being satirical with a sharp edge, or words taken out of context, or apology that people were offended, didn’t redeem the situation.
They simply betrayed the dangerous deficits of compassion, understanding and ethical responsibility that can lurk in what is intended to make people laugh.
Then I had a discussion with some students about laughter. A sense of humour is an essential attribute if we want to learn, understand, enjoy and come to love human beings. Humour and humanity come from the same word family. What we laugh at says something unmistakable about what we live for and how we look at the world. Laughter with people creates deep bonds of togetherness, head nodding, hand-clapping, shoulder-shaking mirth, and joy in the oddity of things. Laughing at people is divisive, and tries to diminish the one laughed at.
The contrast of inhumane non-jokes about other human beings called strikers, and one of the nicest compliments I ever read couldn’t be greater: “he looked humanely forth on human life”. The greatest humorists manage to bring humour and humanity together. Then our laughter brings us close to tears, because we see ourselves, our ridiculous, wonderful , mistake-making selves, in their work.
Advent is the time we celebrate the birth and humanity of Jesus, ‘when God almighty, came to be one of us’. Christmas joy is because Jesus shows us the God who does not mock our humanity, but takes it and restores it, and redeems our own humanity in that great original act of generous love. Emmanuel. God with us.
The two images are carefully chosen – the one smiley amongst the blue down in the mouths – and the Annunciation (Botticelli) of what would become good tidings of great joy, to all peoples. The juxtaposition of humour, humanity and the redeeming touch of God.
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