Winston Churchill was not only an inspirational leader against the terror of Nazi Germany, but he was also a humorist.
Adolf Hitler had announced at a Nazi rally during the Battle of Britain that Germany would wring England’s neck like a helpless chicken.
Churchill spoke the next day in Parliament and said that Herr Hitler was in for a big surprise because he would find out that England is “some chicken with some neck.”
We all know what happened, so we know what a good joke Churchill told, and we now realize that Churchill’s words, his cigar, his hat, and his proper London suit were humorous jabs at terrible fears, humor that a nation under siege really needed.
As Churchill demonstrated, leaders need to rise above their circumstances, and the spiritual health required is what Christians call joy.
Search for the Source
What is the source of the joy that sets us free from fear, that creates solidarity, and that clears our vision?
That source is the one who not only created human beings but also enjoys what he made. God is the one with the original sense of humor. And joy has its profoundest source in Jesus Christ the Lord.
The surest way to understand the Christian meaning of “joy” is to see how it’s used in the New Testament.
On the Thursday evening of Holy Week, Jesus speaks about joy with his disciples. True to its inner meaning, joy takes us by surprise.
Jesus tells of his impending separation from his disciples; he prepares them for the terror of his trial, his death, and the devastation that stands before him and his followers. Nevertheless, in this dangerous moment he tells them about joy:
“You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. … So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. … I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world” (John 16:20-24, 33).
“Joy” is united by Jesus to the word “peace,” which means wholeness and salvation. Sorrow will be turned to joy when we discover that Jesus Christ has won the victory over death itself. This transformation of sorrow into joy is at the core of comedy. What we thought would be a permanent loss, producing fear and grief, becomes (surprise!) a victory. The result of this remarkable reversal is laughter.
This is the comedy in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn as the runaway slave Jim and the boy Huck drift on their raft down the Mississippi River. They are approached by a boat of bounty hunters looking for runaway slaves.
“Hey, Boy, who is on that raft with you?”
Huck’s unexpected and bold response: “Hey misters, will you help my pappy and me—my pappy is sick here with the smallpox. Please help us!”
The hunting party quickly pulls back and orders Huck to go on down the river for help.
This is the essence of comedy. It is the possibility of the deadly smallpox that, in fact, rescues the quick-witted Huck and his friend Jim. In much the same way, we always assumed that death was the end of faith, hope, and love, but our Lord tells his friends on the Thursday before Good Friday that everything will turn upside down, even such powerful forces as death and sin and evil.
Joy helps us face what we fear, it encourages our relationships, and it helps us to see everything in a clearer light.
In this upheaval we have a definition of joy. Joy is the realization that Jesus Christ has denied death its finality. Its sting is not fatal, because there is a boundary beyond it. When we glimpse that greater boundary on Easter we rejoice.
We also calm down, which is why Jesus uses the word peace to describe one of the effects of joy. Joy is not hysterical or frantic, as if by our constant announcements of joy we are the more sure of it. One simple “praise the Lord” will do, then comes the laughter. Just as Jim and Huck were saved by imagined smallpox, we are saved by the real death and resurrection of Jesus.
No wonder two disciples were glad and their hearts strangely warmed on the road to Emmaus. It is the joy and peace of both good excitement and good relaxation, the excitement of victory, and at the same time peace knowing that I can now put my weight down and rest in Christ’s love and victory.
This is the joy that results from knowing the ending to the story, the ending that is better than anyone expected.
Joy’s counterfeits
Lay theologian C. S. Lewis was fascinated with the word “joy.” He offers his most complete discussion of it in his chapter on laughter in The Screwtape Letters, distinguishing between “Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, and Flippancy.”
Screwtape, a senior devil, speaks to Wormwood, his assistant: “Fun is closely related to Joy—a sort of emotional froth arising from the play instinct. It is very little use to us. It can sometimes be used, of course, to divert humans from something else which the Enemy [God] would like them to be feeling or doing: but in itself it has wholly undesirable tendencies; it promotes charity, courage, contentment, and many other evils.”
He also describes the meaning of jokes as a sudden perception of incongruity, and helps us understand the harm that bad humor does: “Cruelty is shameful—unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man’s damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke. … Any suggestion that there might be too much of it can be represented to him as ‘Puritanical’ or as ‘betraying a lack of humour.'”
His discussion of flippancy is brief and to the point: “If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from Joy; it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practise it.”
Finally, Screwtape discusses Joy:
“You will see (Joy) among friends and lovers reunited on the eve of a holiday. Among adults some pretext in the way of Jokes is usually provided, but the facility with which the smallest witticisms produce laughter at such a time shows that they are not the real cause. What that real cause is we do not know. Something like it is expressed in much of that detestable art which the humans call Music, and something like it occurs in Heaven —a meaningless acceleration in the rhythm of celestial experience, quite opaque to us. Laughter of this kind does us no good and should always be discouraged. Besides, the phenomenon is of itself disgusting and a direct insult to the realism, dignity, and austerity of Hell.”
Facets of genuine joy
According to Lewis, joy is a meaningful acceleration in the rhythm of our relationship with God, quite opaque to evil and the evil one, because all evil is baffled and offended by the essence of joy. Lewis has captured the biblical sense of the word.
1. Joy is the result of truth
Joy is the “gigantic secret” of God (G.K. Chesterton) that the world could never have expected, but it clears the air so that we see things as they really are.
2. Joy causes celebration.
Gladness and song go with joy; the slightest witticisms cause laughter when joy is present. There’s an energy in joy that cures fatigue and discouragement. This is what James says in his letter to churches that face persecution: “Count it all joy when you face trials knowing that God’s faithfulness lasts.”
3. Joy has a rhythm
Jesus unites peace with joy in his Thursday night discourse. Joy is a quietness as much as an exuberance. Together the two create a fundamental rhythm.
4. Joy is presence
It describes our relationship with God. Joy comes from knowing the Lord and knowing that the Lord is nearby. In the New Testament, joy is related to prayer and friendship with God. Jesus invites his disciples to pray so their joy might be full (John 15:11-17).
5. Joy is a protection
Quite opaque to evil and the evil one, joy is a mystery to evil just as laughter can be a sign of the dignity and resilience of brave hearts in the face of danger.
In J.R.R. Tolkien’s story The Lord of the Rings, Frodo and his friend Sam Gamgee laugh out loud high on the dangerous reaches of the dark tower where laughter had never been heard. Their laughter causes quakes on that mountain that had so long been under the oppressive control of evil. Their laughter was defiant and innocent and profoundly good at the same moment. It was good because it had its source in joy, and that made it powerful as well as destructive against the powers of evil.
Evil cannot understand joy. The devil is more austere and serious than God is, which makes us stop and think that if we are to feel at home in heaven, we will need to enjoy joy because “joy is the serious business of heaven” (G.K. Chesterton). It should also be the serious business of our lives and of our ministry.
Earl Palmer is pastor of University Presbyterian Church in Seattle, Washington.
1998 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.
