Sep 15, 2026 · 29 min · 9 segments
Christians, as a faith tradition, are not known for their sense of humor. If anything, they sometimes get a bad wrap as being a bunch of sticks in the mud. The austere Puritans of Hawthorne’s The…
Ephesians 5, 4 says, let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.
I mean, to me, most of the put-away foolishness and the ways of the world, we're not talking about the occasional curse word or the fact that every single one of us came to be through the exact same physical process as everyone else, and that is a part of our lives that can be joked about.
There are ways of the world that keep levels of humanity separate from equal access to participation, the very things that Christ came to put down.
And I think when we start to make light of the realities of just oppression, when we make light of the realities of grief, and when we make light of the realities of struggle and sin and death and pain and all of the things that are the real big concerns in the world, that's not appropriate.
Despite there being deeply serious topics that one ought not laugh at, Eric believes that sometimes the most serious things are the very things which we ought to laugh at.
just remind myself that Jesus himself had a real flair for responding to questioning with puns and with quick quips back.
And he was often discussing things that fell into all of that same waves of the world and finding a way to stay engaged, I guess, without being broken by it.
And there's something about comedy that enables us to confront the things that are too big to confront in a way that keeps them able to be imagined.
If I'm going to paraphrase Fred Rogers there, that once you can imagine it and name it, you can confront it for real.
There is a level of comedy that fits that role that does not fit the mocking of serious things.
He believes Christians often exhibit hypocrisy when it comes to the comedy they consume.
But there are audiences and audience members for sure who will absolutely be out at the improv or the laugh factory listening to some of the crudest stuff in the world and laughing at it and then get outraged because someone like Taylor Tomlinson acknowledged that sex exists in the world.
If this is something that you're fine with in your life, then you have to come to terms with that for some reason you're fine with it.
Or if it's something that you feel doesn't represent your Christian faith, you have to come to terms with that as you view your faith, you shouldn't be fine with it.
Trying to live a life where in the moments that I brand myself as participating in Christianity, this is unacceptable, but in other moments of my life it is, is bifurcating ourselves in a way that, I don't find to be spiritually helpful an audience preference Is an audience preference if if this is what I like and that's what I listen to well then find Comedians that fill that need that's why there's different genres of music.
That's why there's different comedians That's why there's different genres of writing because people have different tastes but when you when you claim that this is what i'll listen to as christian comedy and then really are fine with something else i mean it just reminds me of the old joke with the punchline that baptists don't recognize one another in a liquor store
for eric laughter is one of the most transcendent experiences and he echoes peter's feelings that it is often a
holy virtue Laughter is an involuntary response that we don't think about, that magically, when we're in a group doing it, connects us with the other people who are there.
Ephesians 5, 4 says, let there be no filthiness, nor foolish talk, nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving.
I mean, to me, most of the put-away foolishness and the ways of the world, we're not talking about the occasional curse word or the fact that every single one of us came to be through the exact same physical process as everyone else, and that is a part of our lives that can be joked about.
There are ways of the world that keep levels of humanity separate from equal access to participation, the very things that Christ came to put down.
And I think when we start to make light of the realities of just oppression, when we make light of the realities of grief, and when we make light of the realities of struggle and sin and death and pain and all of the things that are the real big concerns in the world, that's not appropriate.
Despite there being deeply serious topics that one ought not laugh at, Eric believes that sometimes the most serious things are the very things which we ought to laugh at.
just remind myself that Jesus himself had a real flair for responding to questioning with puns and with quick quips back.
And he was often discussing things that fell into all of that same waves of the world and finding a way to stay engaged, I guess, without being broken by it.
And there's something about comedy that enables us to confront the things that are too big to confront in a way that keeps them able to be imagined.
If I'm going to paraphrase Fred Rogers there, that once you can imagine it and name it, you can confront it for real.
There is a level of comedy that fits that role that does not fit the mocking of serious things.
He believes Christians often exhibit hypocrisy when it comes to the comedy they consume.
But there are audiences and audience members for sure who will absolutely be out at the improv or the laugh factory listening to some of the crudest stuff in the world and laughing at it and then get outraged because someone like Taylor Tomlinson acknowledged that sex exists in the world.
If this is something that you're fine with in your life, then you have to come to terms with that for some reason you're fine with it.
Or if it's something that you feel doesn't represent your Christian faith, you have to come to terms with that as you view your faith, you shouldn't be fine with it.
Trying to live a life where in the moments that I brand myself as participating in Christianity, this is unacceptable, but in other moments of my life it is, is bifurcating ourselves in a way that, I don't find to be spiritually helpful an audience preference Is an audience preference if if this is what I like and that's what I listen to well then find Comedians that fill that need that's why there's different genres of music.
That's why there's different comedians That's why there's different genres of writing because people have different tastes but when you when you claim that this is what i'll listen to as christian comedy and then really are fine with something else i mean it just reminds me of the old joke with the punchline that baptists don't recognize one another in a liquor store
for eric laughter is one of the most transcendent experiences and he echoes peter's feelings that it is often a
holy virtue Laughter is an involuntary response that we don't think about, that magically, when we're in a group doing it, connects us with the other people who are there.
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