The Cost of Comedy: When Truth Is Too Hard to Hear

Read Genesis 19:14-22

All of the events that unfold in this chapter really are bizarre, men wanting to do unspeakable things with other men, all of them being struck with blindness, strange men with a message of destruction for Sodom. After the men share this urgent message with Lot they tell him to gather his family and run for their lives.

So he goes to his future son-in-laws and tells them, but they think he is joking. Now here we are introduced to one of the greatest tactics devised by mankind to ignore the realities of the gospel especially judgement day…Humour.

God and Christians are often seen as easy comedy material by comedians. Ridiculing the faith not through reasoned debate, or genuine seeking, but simply saying “You have to be dumb to think there is some heavenly dad out there who will solve all your problems.” Christianity is boiled down to something only an idiot can believe in and then declared with comedic ease, as only an option for the dim-witted and stupid, those too scared to face reality.

When in reality, they are the ones too scared to genuinely engage. It is much easier to boil someone down to a caricature of who they really and belittle that, than actually engage with a real, intelligent, bible-believing Christian.

Jokes and humour will be used to slander that which you believe in, because it is the easier route. To engage with you is to give some validity to what you believe. But we know the truth that those who are of the world hate God. They suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18).

Don’t be surprised when your faith is belittled, when people say things about you that are so far from what you actually believe it isn’t even funny. Our saviour was mocked too, when he said he was king, they dressed him in robes, put a crown of thorns on his head and spit in his face.

People will do whatever they can to avoid the truth of judgement day, of Jesus being the only way of salvation. They will get mad at you, mock you, even harm you if they can. That is the lot of the Christian, and it is one we must accept, and in the midst of it all we must continue to love those hate us most, believing that the power of God can break through even the hardest of hearts.

Prayer:

“Lord, we pray for your almighty power to be at work in those hearts which are hardest of all. There are people with hearts so hard, they see judgement day as nothing more than laughing matter. There are many that don’t even believe you are real, many in our own families and among our friends. We pray you would open their eyes to see the truth and to turn to you for salvation from the wrath to come. In Jesus name, Amen.”