Have You Had Your Daily Laugh?

If I'd told you two weeks ago that I could announce I liked something and have other people who like that thing hate me for it, what would you have said? Probably something to the tune of "You're insane, get off the crack pipe." Well, guess what? Last week I did, and they did.

Some Christians are funny. In last week's article I said I liked Jesus because he told the world to bite him. Not only was the interpretation of his life that I gave entirely fallacious, but I went to such great lengths to set up that it was a joke that I did everything short of announcing it. Let's look at the setup, shall we?

First of all, it was at the end of an article about having a sense of humour. That alone should have made it suspect. Then there's the line that immediately preceded it: "Even money says I lose readers for my following explanation of why I think Jesus is awesome." If that's not an obvious set-up I don't know what is. Finally, there's the totally awesome picture at the bottom. That picture just drips with serious interpretation, doesn't it?

Now, here's what's really funny to me: Suppose I was being completely serious last week. That means I said Jesus was awesome, provided my drastically flawed interpretation of his story as evidence, and concluded by saying I think Jesus is awesome. That means I'm agreeing with Christians that Jesus is awesome. I should be okay at that point, right?

Wrong! From my obviously flawed understanding, Christianity is supposed to preach understanding and acceptance except for gays and Jews (remember to tell your Jewish friend that he personally killed Christ next time you see him). That means, in part, a respect for the opinions of others, even when those opinions differ from their own. Apparently, that doesn't extend to people who share the same opinion for bad reasons.

Rather than telling me that my understanding of the events in Jesus Christ's life was wrong, the only comments I received about that part of my last article were things like:

No... you'll lose readers for *intentionally setting out to offend*. There was no "innocent misinterpretation" or "mis-statement"... claiming Christ's post-resurrection message was "bite me" is a clear intent and cheap attempt to cause controversy.

Remember that whole "context" thing? It's called satire.

The point I'm making is this: Everyone needs to be able to laugh, and everyone needs to be able to laugh at themselves. That's one reason Canadians definitely don't suck: Canadians have such a good sense of humour that we laugh at ourselves before anyone else even gets a chance to start.

That's also a good way to fend off bullies, for anyone reading this who gets picked on: make fun of yourself before they do, and they'll get bored and stop. Of course, bullies suck from both having no sense of humour and from the fact they're bullies, but that's an argument for another time.

The moral of these last two articles? Learn how to fucking laugh!

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