Laughter is Deadly












	“Heh, hamburgers are funny because they don’t have any ham in them!”, says Arnold to his friend. “Yeah. They are also funny because they made you fat Arnold!”, responds his friend Fred. Both of these boys told equally humorous jokes. One boy, Fred, however, joked without regard to his friends feelings. A week later Arnold commits suicide because of his “weight problem”. Arnold dies weighing 100 pounds at age 12. This situation is extreme, but it show s the damage of indulging in humor. 
	Laughing is a popular stress reliever. When you laugh you can in a way escape your problems. You can chuckle, giggle, gasp for breath, etc. and shed a little light on you and whomever is laughing with you. But, indulgence in laughter/humor is a problem. 
	If you’re a Christian and you indulge yourself in being funny you do three things: You tell others you are not serious about your faith, you chase away every meaningful relationship you have because of your inability to be serious, and you replace God with this need to be funny. Even metaphorically taking God out of the loop, you can laugh and laugh and laugh, but when your done nothing has been solved. 
	You may think, “laughing doesn’t fix your problems, but it doesn’t hurt anyone.” Contrary to this thought process and running hand-in-hand with Arnold’s story, indulgence in humor can kill! Maybe not literally, but it will empty you until you are nothing but a bitter empty human being. Referring to the third thing you do if you indulge in humor, when you replace God with humor then humor becomes your “false God” and you treat it as your true God. What does this do but secure a place a Hell.
	Beside condemning yourself if you do nothing but joke you have nothing meaningful in your heart supplying your serious needs like passion, love, friends, family even! As a result of this you become bitter. With this bitterness comes a lack of integrity. Why would someone like Arnold trust Fred with something like his bicycle after Fred called him fat, even though he was just joking and Arnold was almost exactly the weight he was supposed to be for his age. No trust, bitterness, a seat in Hell; It can’t get worse can it?! The topping on the cake is emptiness. Joking doesn’t solve problems so no fulfillment comes from it; joking can’t be your God because of the ten commandments and its inability to satisfy your needs.
	Joking is not a problem in itself. Indulgence is the killer. Even God has a sense of humor or else he wouldn’t have created people like me or the people who came up with the name for “hamburgers”! A laugh can be good and sometimes can ease your stress, but you can’t help anyone with laughter more than temporarily. Indulgence in humor can kill you. How close to the “humor fire” are you willing to get?
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