FEATURE
All these elements can be found in
Bible stories in the Old and New
Testaments, yet many have become so
familiar that we’ve often missed the
humour at the very heart of them.
The same can be said for so many
incredibly visual Old Testament
stories, full of extraordinary yet
flawed characters, called by God to
do often apparently crazy things:
OTT IN THE OT
cN
oah (Genesis 6-9): ‘build the
world’s biggest boat, and fill it with
animals’. The OT story that has
inspired at least one musical and
countless songs.
Even with an event of such enormity
as the Fall, there is humour in the
midst of it: when Adam and Eve eat
from the tree of knowledge (Genesis
3:6–10), the first thing they realise is
that they’ve got no clothes on, and
they swiftly knock up the first item of
Eden couture: fig-leaf jumpsuits.
Then, even more bizarrely, when God
comes to see them, they hide. As if he
might not see them. Basically they
panic. And who wouldn’t? It’s farce
mixed with Carry On films and a twist
of Jacques Tati. Not a story people had
a problem remembering.
cA
braham and Sarah (Genesis 16
onwards): it reads like the most
unlikely episode of EastEnders
ever written, and includes a very
unlikely pair of new parents. I
would love to have been a fly on
the wall when God explained what
circumcision involved.
c J oseph and his multicoloured hippy
coat, plus rather unwise dreamsharing (Genesis 37 onwards)
AS THE WRITER OF ECCLESIASTES
REMINDS US, THERE IS ‘A TIME TO WEEP,
AND A TIME TO LAUGH; A TIME TO
MOURN, AND A TIME TO DANCE’.
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And these are before we even start
getting into Gideon, Moses, Samson,
David, Daniel and the prophets.
Startling stories full of action,
unforgettable scenarios and examples
of God at work despite the daft, crazy
and very human heroes he uses.
The book of Proverbs is full of
humorous asides. Clearly there must
have been occasions when Proverbs
22:13 was used as an excuse for not
turning up for work: ‘The sluggard
says, “There’s a lion outside! I’ll be
killed in the public square!”’ That’s
pretty inventive for a duvet day.
Proverbs 27:14, meanwhile, was clearly
written for those with thin walls, or
flat-sharing: ‘If anyone loudly blesses
their neighbour early in the morning,
it will be taken as a curse.’ Yeah, keep
it down a bit, mate.