Barry's Blog

I recall reading a few years ago an article by Philip Yancey in which he dealt with the poet W. H. Auden, who observed that the human species is distinctive in at least three ways. "Humans," Auden suggested, "are the only creatures that work, laugh, and pray." While we might disagree with Auden - don't honeybees work? mantises pray? and dolphins grin? - his words still provide a valuable perspective for self-reflection. How do you and I measure up?

In our work, few would disagree that here, Americans excel. While many nations around the globe have a place for leisure (Europeans are known for their extended "holiday" weeks over the summer months), Americans often take gleeful pride in how many hours a week they put in at work. But really, what can we expect from a nation whose forefathers invented the Protestant work ethic? As a matter of fact, few would dispute that we value the work ethic so highly that it gobbles up everything in sight.  Even our churches have come to resemble high-powered corporations (I recently heard of one pastor in a fast-growing megachurch who declared that if the church didn't double in membership in a few years, they would shut the doors...).

In our prayer, one would think that with all the books, entreaties, and teachings on prayer, we Americans would have it mastered by now, but it is doubtful. In many ways, we are constantly tempted to turn prayer into another form of work. Yancey comments: "This may explain why prayers in evangelical churches major on intercession. We bring God our wish lists and rarely get around to listening...I have noticed lately that biblical prayers (as in the Psalms) seem closer in form to the conversation you might hear in a barber shop than to a shopping list. Oddly, to those who saturate their lives with prayer, it seems less like a chore and more like a never-ending conversation, like ordinary life with the simple addition of an Audience." 

In our laughter, the third leg of Auden's triad, Christians probably trail behind the rest of the world. How else are we to explain the disdain of humor and laughter among so many religious people? Why the low circulation of a satirical magazine like The Door? Why do so many Christians take themselves sooooooooooo seriously?

To correct this imbalance among work, prayer, and laughter, Auden proposed resurrecting the medieval practice of Carnival, the raucous holiday preceding Lent. Auden observes, "Carnival celebrates the unity of our human race as mortal creatures, who come into this world and depart from it without our consent, who must eat, drink, defecate, belch, and break wind in order to live, and procreate, if our species is to survive. Our feelings about this are ambiguous...we oscillate between wishing we were unreflective animals and wishing we were disembodied spirits...the Carnival solution of this ambiguity is to laugh, for laughter is simultaneously a protest and an acceptance."

As Yancey reminds us in his article, the only good reason to find humor in such phenomena as sex, death, and the belching reflex, is that we still retain a faint glimmer of Eden. Deep down, it seems odd to us that we upright vertebrates, tipped with a divine flame, still act so much like other vertebrates. But as C. S. Lewis observed, "The Christian has a great advantage over other people, not by being less fallen than they nor less doomed to live in a fallen world, but by knowing that he or she is a fallen person in a fallen world."

For this reason, we dare not forget how to laugh at ourselves. Auden ends his reflection with this warning: "A satisfactory human life is possible only if proper respect is paid to all three worlds. Without Prayer and Work, the Carnival Laughter turns ugly...Without Laughter and Work, Prayer turns Gnostic, cranky, Pharisaic, while those who try to live by Work alone, without Laughter or Prayer, turn into insane lovers of power, tyrants who would enslave Nature to their immediate desire - an attempt which can only end in utter catastrophe, shipwreck on the Isle of Sirens."

So let me ask, when was the last time we were able to laugh at ourselves? It may be more telling of who we are than we might imagine.

For FinishingWell,

Barry Morrow