Faith Must Fight to Ignite
To be clear, I’m not talking about physical warfare but spiritual warfare. The same Gospel that brings peace with God brings war with sin. We must be prayed up in order to be built up, live in the Word so we don’t live in fear, and worship to drive out worry.
We cannot usher in utopia while things continue to decline, but God calls us to fight, not flee. He calls us to step out in faith rather than run like cowards because our faith ignites faith in others.
Are we igniting fear, or are we promoting strong faith in the midst of adversity? Worry comes when we put fear over faith.
The Best Way to Please God
Walking in faith trains spiritual muscles for spiritual battles. We don’t always know the exact course we are to take with absolute certainty, but faith provides hope for the journey. “The Lord never builds a bridge of faith except under the feet of the faith-filled traveler. If He builds the bridge ahead, it would not be a bridge of faith.” (Streams in the Desert)
Hebrews 11:6 reminds us that without faith it is impossible to please God and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. When God calls, faith answers.
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The redemption theory holds that humor’s essence is found in humanity’s amused perception of ambiguity and incongruence, but also in God’s provision of humor as something that helps us deal with disorder, ambiguity, and pain that exist in a fallen world.

How many philosophers does it take to explain a joke? Quite a few, as it turns out. And not only philosophers. Psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists have exerted themselves to explain exactly what makes people laugh. Although everybody understands intuitively what humor is, the concept of humor is still elusive, being difficult to define in a way that encompasses all of its facets.
Humor may evoke a sly grin or it may detonate explosive laughter. It might be conveyed through words or images or actions. We find it in in a vast array of situations, including photos, interpersonal encounters, articles, and skits. It takes on a wide range of forms, from knock-knock jokes to slapstick physical comedy to puns to double entendre.
There is humor in which the joker deprecates himself or herself, such as Oscar Levant’s quip, “Under this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character” or British politician Boris Johnson’s statement after having been demoted in Parliament: “My friends, as I have discovered myself, there are no disasters, only opportunities. And, indeed, opportunities for fresh disasters.”
Conversely, there is humor that deprecates other persons or social groupings. Consider Dorothy Parker’s wit directed against one of her contemporaries: “The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature.” Or, Roger Kimball’s wit directed against America’s scholarly class who consider themselves independent minds but are “huddled together in bovine complacency, mooing ankle-deep in its own effluvia, safe within its gated enclosure.”
In thus recognizing the considerable diversity on offer when it comes to humor, many intellectuals and comedians have drawn conclusions about the essence of humor. With that in mind, this post will explore seven of those theories, offering examples that confirm the theory and examples that call that theory in question. Finally, it will offer an alternative—theological—explanation of the essence of humor.
Here are seven of the most prominent theories about humor:
1. The Superiority Theory
Some theorists, including philosophers Plato, Thomas Hobbes, and Roger Scruton, believe the essence of humor is its ability to bring laughter to the masses but shame for whoever is the butt of the joke. Thus, according to this theory humor rides on its ability to make a portion of the audience feel superior to another person or group of people. For example: “If you were any dumber, you’d have to be watered twice a week.”
However, this theory doesn’t quite work because, just as we are able to win competitions without necessarily gaining a feeling of superiority, we are able to tell and hear jokes without necessarily feeling superior to the person who is the butt of the jokes. For example: “Police were called to a daycare, where a three-year-old was resisting a rest.”
2. The Incongruity-Resolution Theory
Some theorists, including philosophers Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Soren Kierkegaard, believed that the essence of humor is found in pointing out incongruities. Other philosophers have revised the theory to say that the essence of humor is the resolution of an incongruity. For example: “I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror like his passengers.” Or, Groucho Marx’s quip: “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”
Yet, not all reinterpreted incongruities are humorous; conversely there are good examples of humor that doesn’t involve the resolution of an incongruity. For example: “A man at the dinner table dipped his hands in the mayonnaise and then ran them through his hair. When his friend looked astonished, the man apologized: “I’m so sorry. I’m quite embarrassed. I thought it was spinach.’”
3. The Benign Violation Theory
Some recent theorists, such as Thomas Veatch, argue that the essence of humor is the non-threatening violation of some type of norm—moral law, social codes, linguistic norms, or similar. For example: As Demitri Martin once quipped: “I’m sorry’ and ‘I apologize’ mean the same thing. Unless you’re at a funeral.”

Written by R. Fowler White |
Wednesday, July 27, 2022
Evidently, in our day, too many don’t share God’s view of sin. Instead, they insist that they’re good by nature and can earn God’s acceptance, having no need to seek from Him the forgiveness of sins. The truth is, however, that we sinners have a debt to God that we cannot pay. As such, our only hope is in God Himself, who graciously credits the full payment of debt to all who receive and rest on Christ alone. Wrapped in the robe of righteousness that He provides, we exult in our God, confessing as one, I believe … in the forgiveness of sins.

As we come to Article 10 of the Apostles’ Creed—I believe … in the forgiveness of sins, we’re still in what we take to be the third section of the Creed, where the focus is on the person and work of God the Holy Spirit. It might strike us as odd that the forgiveness of sins is placed in this section. After all, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus assumes that we will make our requests for pardon to our Heavenly Father (Matt 6:12). Meanwhile, the Apostle Paul tells us that it was Christ the Son who purchased forgiveness for us in His cross work (Eph 1:7). Nonetheless, we also remember that the Spirit’s ministry is to prove the world of sinners wrong about sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:7-11). In God’s application of salvation to sinners, we can say that the Spirit makes the first move necessary for us to receive forgiveness. So, what is it that we confess when we declare, I believe in … the forgiveness of sins?
To unpack this article we’ll start with this question: do we share God’s view of sin? In Scripture, of course, God talks about sin and condemns it as failure to conform to His nature and moral law in our actions, attitudes, affections, and nature. In briefer terms, sin is failure to be or do as God requires. Sin is also described as a debt. In the Lord’s Prayer, the forgiveness of sins is the forgiveness of debts. We should know why our sins are debts. It’s because we owe God obedience; that is, we have a debt of obedience to Him, particularly when we disobey. Our disobedience, in truth, expresses hatred of and indifference to God and His requirements, quite the opposite of what we owe Him. Recognizing the reality of personal sin, then, is affirming that we aren’t what God requires us to be, and we don’t do what He requires us to do. In fact, we can’t be or do good as He requires (Eph 2:1-3; Rom 3:23; 5:18-19). Yet, as recently as 2020, almost two-thirds of people surveyed believe that most people are good by nature. Friends, if this survey is accurate, deception about human nature is rampant. The Apostle John is clear: If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. … If we say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar and His word is not in us (1 John 1:8, 10). The Apostle Paul is blunt: none is righteous, no, not one; … no one does good, not even one (Rom 3:10, 12). The point? Only by affirming God’s view of sin can we also rightly affirm the forgiveness of sins as we confess it in the Creed’s tenth article.
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