Dirty Jokes and God in Nature

I've always loved the metaphor of God illuminating the universe the way the sun illuminates earth. We'd be hopeless and lightless without Him, and He gives us life so naturally that we take Him for granted at times. Also there is not one thing we could do to stop Him from giving to us, though we could build somewhere we could hide in the shade, though we'd do that by the light of the sun, aka by the life and creativity He shares with us. Then there are places like caves that are not man-made but are naturally ways to escape the light, or, like, places we could go that are not conducive to receiving light and life. But that's a digression. The thing I hadn't thought of before is that nighttimes are not an accident. It's not as though something has gone horribly awry each night and we need to panic. Because the sun always comes up again, we simply trust that it will the next morning and sleep in peace.

If God seems distant for a time, that doesn't mean that we need to freak out and start trying to "relight the sun" by our own power. There are just different seasons for different things. We need to live and trust as though He's going to come back, because He will. Even on cloudy days when the sun is hidden, it's still the way we can see everything, even if we can't see it. And lastly, the moon gives light on most nights, but the moon is only reflecting the sun.

I see this-all (God sort of resembles self-evident things we can understand) as related but not the same as Romans 1:20 (NLT:) For ever since the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky. Through everything God made, they can clearly see his invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse for not knowing God.

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Now for dirty jokes. First of all, I think those are the funniest jokes. But I had a great conversation today that made me rethink some stuff. I went to a public high school, and because of that, I am aware of some humor that many home-schoolers (or people raised in a really restrictive home environment) will never understand (this is not me being sassy, it's a fact). This humor almost certainly falls under the category of coarse talk and foolish joking (Ephesians 5:4). I used to be proud of how I could get almost any joke, no matter how gross, proud of how I knew the normal definitions on urban dictionary (there's plenty of stuff on there that no one ever actually uses, so you can't blindly trust it) and was conversant in how to use them. The reason is because it seems more sophisticated, and, well, intelligent, to be able to understand, and furthermore, appreciate, a higher percentage of what's being said. In a way, I would pity those who didn't get it. A whole world out there they didn't understand, and didn't know they didn't understand.

The friend I spoke to today said something like, one's purity of heart may mean that they understand a smaller percentage of the jokes being made around them. This started me thinking, but better yet, they told an improv story. (Names omitted) She said a visiting university's improv troupe, for whom usually no subject was off limits, did a show at a Christian college. The Christian improvisers warned the visitors, "okay, you have to be squeaky clean here, you can't just say anything" and the visitors agreed. During the joint show, the normally-dirty improvisers had no idea what subjects were okay, so they challenged themselves to stay way away from anything slightly controversial. My friend thinks they were even funnier than the Christians who were fluent in the boundaries and stepped quite close to them, knowing what was fine and what wasn't.

Normally I am not huge on risks and challenges but something about the use of the term "challenge," really... reshuffled my mental cards on this matter (Ha. I've never used that metaphor before, or even heard it, ever, but it's exactly what I mean). Maybe being dirtier is not a sign of being smarter, but a sign of being lazier. Maybe you are not more sophisticated if you get more jokes, but instead you're less discerning. Maybe you're avoiding the real challenge, not rising to one.

After all, we call them dirty jokes, and dirtiness is another of those natural things that are self-evident and easily understood. What's harder, to stay dirty or to stay clean? You get dirty without even trying. Cleanliness requires a repeated effort. It doesn't just happen. It's more of a challenge than the alternative. Someone who manages to stay clean or pure should be honored, not pitied. It isn't easy to resist suggestive humor to the extent that you don't even get it. As they say, if you go with the flow you'll end up in a mud puddle at the bottom of the hill. Until now, I've been picking the lazy way out and, stupidly, being proud of that choice.

Lastly, I feel like God's reminding me how cynical I've become and how far I've gotten from a simple, childlike trust in Him. I like to think of how children watch movies (even kids movies) and their parents laugh at what seems like random times to them because they don't get all the nuances yet. I used to glory in being "the adult" no matter what movie it was, but God tells us His kingdom belongs to little children (Luke 18:16) and you must be like them to get into it (Matthew 18:3, Mark 10:15).

Deep Grief

Reading Joel, I came across the passage, "Mourn like a virgin in sackcloth grieving for the betrothed of her youth" (1:8). All the recent news of weddings/engagements of so, so many people from Wheaton made me appreciate this metaphor even more than usual. People are so excited about their futures together, about planning and the love that they already have now and want to have more of in the coming years of their lives. They probably feel certain that this is the person God hand picked for them to spend the rest of their life with. The verse is like, what if due to some tragedy, instead of a wedding there was a funeral? The anguish would be made a million times worse by the happy anticipation it replaces.

But then I thought, well if you never ended up marrying the person at all, would that be a relief at all? Would it be a little worse to lose your actual spouse, and/or the parent of your children? And that line of thinking made me remember sitting in a car with a few people and discussing whether it would be worse to accidentally kill your child or your lover. I think the answer to that one is pretty obvious: they are both terrible so it doesn't matter.

What all those things have in common, though, is that they represent among the darkest possible of human experience. Especially because it's so unexpected and thus seemingly so meaningless or accidental. Everyone has pain, but this type of loss seems pretty clearly worse than the other kinds.

So I have looked for a silver lining. I obviously would still never wish this stuff on anyone, just to be clear. But I think maybe the benefit to losing everything and hitting rock bottom is the freedom. I once read, [paraphrase] "Once I was dead, I didn't care about my wallet. I gave it away to the first person I saw."

If your entire perception of reality was flipped on its head, you would be free of all the stupid stuff that keeps the rest from doing what they really love. A person who had been through that kind of deep grief would literally be forced to find a reason to keep living and to keep loving. I don't know if the average person will ever find that reason. Often we kind of only do what we have to, to get by. I think it's fully possible (though sad) that someone could float through their whole life without really being free of vague fears that keep them from living the fullest life possible. Deep down, I really do think the only way to truly fail at life is not to try (to clarify, that "failed" attempts would be a form of success by putting the focus on the word "attempts"), but we let dumb things stop us, like pride or fear (which tends to be related to pride, too).

"The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning." -Ivy Baker Priest

I think this is where the idea of dying to self comes from.. Dead people are not worried about whether they look cool anymore.

Again, I repeat, I haven't had such an extreme experience, and I would never say someone ought to, but since they do happen, they can be dealt with in a way that brings more life and more joy and more freedom.

Also from Joel: "I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten" [the Lord replied to them]. (2:25a).