Taking Laughter Seriously Series

Tom Mullen begins his book, Laughing Out Loud and Other

Religious Experiences with this story. An engineer, a psychologist,

and a theologian were hunting in the wilds of Northern Canada. They

came across a isolated cabin, and decided to check it out. When no

one answered their knocks, they tried the door and found it open. It

was a simple two room cabin with a minimum of furniture. Nothing

was surprising about the cabin except the stove. It was a typical pot

bellied cast ironed stove, but it was suspended in mid air by wires

attached to the ceiling beams.

The psychologist was the first to speculate on this strange location

for a stove. He said, "It is obvious that this lonely trapper, isolated

from humanity, has elevated his stove so he can curl up under it and

vicariously experience a return to the womb." "Nonsense!" Replied

the engineer. "The man is clearly practicing laws of thermodynamics.

By elevating his stove he has discovered a way to distribute the heat

more evenly throughout the cabin." "With all due respect,"

interrupted the theologian, "I'm sure that hanging his stove from the

ceiling has religious meaning. Fire lifted up has been a religious

symbol for centuries."

As the three debated their theories, the trapper returned, and they

asked him immediately why he hung his stove by wires from the

ceiling. He said, "Because I had plenty of wire, but not much stove

pipe." The answer to many mysteries is much simpler than we think.

Reading commentaries on the book of Ecclesiastes is often like

listening to those three hunters speculate about the stove. They come

up with complex and confusing theories to explain this book, and the

theories are more difficult to grasp than the book itself. The simple

and obvious, and commonsense approach is the best. All we have to

do is recognize that Solomon is simply telling us how he really felt. He

is not saying he should feel this way, or that it is good to feel this way,

but that it is how he really felt. He had himself a ball, and laughed his

head off, and then he examined the experience afterward, and he

concluded that laughter, like the rest of the pleasures of life, is of no

use.

You do not need any complex theory to explain this. It is simple.

He is depressed because laughter and pleasure are merely passing

experiences, and they are not permanent, and so they do not fill the

human need for the eternal. The merry monarch found his mirth of

little worth, and it left him melancholy. This is no surprise, for we

have all had that kind of experience where after a good time we

become to some degree depressed simply because the laughter

doesn't last, and the pleasure of it does not persist.

This is an universal experience, and that is why it is in the Bible. It

good for all of us to know that even the man with everything goes

through the same experience we do. This releases us from the burden

of envy where we think we could escape this type of feeling if only we

were somebody else, especially somebody with everything life can

offer. It also releases us from the burden of loneliness when we feel we

have emotions that the rest of the human race does not have. Paul

said in I Cor. 10:13, "No temptation has seized except what is common

to man."

What the Bible teaches is that the common man is the only kind of

man there is. Solomon was so great, wise, and unique in many ways,

but he was still a common man. That was the kind of man Jesus

became as well, for there is no other kind, and he entered into the

same temptations and the same feelings that we all experience. "He

was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin." Jesus

understood what Solomon was saying in this book. He had plenty of

good times and laughter, but he also knew its limitations, and he

endured the experience of depression, and was a man of sorrows and

acquainted with grief.

Solomon was right, for laughter is not enough to give life ultimate

meaning. But it is, nevertheless, a vital part of the meaningful life.

Solomon is himself one of the key authorities in the Bible for

supporting the value of laughter. Why then, if he sees the worth of

mirth, does he stress the worthlessness of it here? It is because, like

all other values of life, if they are sought as goal of life, and one

becomes as obsessed with them that they push God into a secondary

position, they become sources of sickness rather than health, when this