THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 25, 1994                    TAG: 9406240122 
SECTION: DAILY BREAK                     PAGE: E5    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: Betsy Mathews Wright 
DATELINE: 940625                                 LENGTH: Medium 

LIGHTEN UP AND LAUGH - IT'S A GENTLY HUMOROUS CARTOON

No, I wasn't bothered by yet another ``We Love Ollie'' letter, nor was my interest piqued by someone's insight into health-care reform.

{REST} There, about three letters down, was a note from Thea Spitz of Chesapeake.

``I cannot adequately express the outrage I feel,'' wrote Spitz, ``about the cartoon `The Family Circus' published in the June 9 comics section, which depicts a toddler baptizing her doll in the commode and repeating a perverted form of the words used in the Christian baptism.

``The Sacrament of Baptism is something sacred to Christians . . . How dare you mock Christianity. You owe me, and every other Christian in Hampton Roads, an apology.''

Later I discovered that Thea wasn't alone in her opinion. Over a dozen readers and newspaper staff members contacted the Public Editor's office to gripe.

Sorry folks, but I'm not with you on this one. Maybe I'm wrong, but this is one Hampton Roads Christian who doesn't need or even want an apology over this cartoon.

When it comes to this kind of gentle humor, I happen to agree with Tom McCarthy of Norfolk, who wrote:

``Lighten up! . . . The cartoon depicts a child already in touch with her religion, impressed by its rituals, and attempting to pass them on to one she holds dear. She needs to work out the details a little, but I found it touching.''

So why is it that humor and God don't mix for everybody? I haven't a clue. To me, the Bible is full of funny stuff.

Think about it. In the Book of Exodus, the awesome, all-powerful Pharaoh is humbled by a plague of frogs. Frogs in his closet. Frogs in his bed. God must have giggled when he saw the pompous Pharaoh ascending his throne, just to sit on a whoopee cushion of frogs.

And there's more: Jacob and his angelic wrestling match; Jonah and his ``you're not gonna' believe this one'' fish story; and Balaam being fussed at by his Mr. Ed-wannabe donkey.

Jesus Christ also played it for laughs. He used irony all the time to prick the egos of the pompous and the self-righteous. A rich man who wants heaven at no price becomes a camel passing through the eye of a needle. Petty religious leaders become blind men leading blind men. Legalistic fools are those who strain at gnats while swallowing camels.

``We are so sure that Jesus was always deadly serious,'' writes Elton Trueblood in his book, ``The Humor of Christ,'' ``that we often twist his words in order to try to make them conform to our preconceived mold. A misguided piety has made us fear that acceptance of His obvious wit and humor would somehow be mildly blasphemous or sacrilegious. Religion, we think, is serious business, and serious business is incompatible with banter.''

Why is it that so many Christians I know have bought into this belief lock, stock and empty barrel of laughs?

``Misguided piety'' seems correct, but there's another thing there . . . a deeper, more disturbing thing.

I believe it is what one Jewish rabbi calls a form of idolatry.

In ``The Jewish Way,'' Rabbi Irving Greenberg explains why humor is ``the language of faith'' to the Jewish people.

``Satire prevents us from making the sacred absolute. Only God is absolute,'' Greenberg writes. ``The unchecked tendency to respect religion all too often leads to deifying the ritual and the outward form of God. If people take the sacred too solemnly, they are confusing their religious expression - which is relative and limited in truth - with the infinite God whom they really seek to serve.''

Baptism is an expression of God. It is not God. So too are the other sacraments of faith. So, too, is the Bible. Even our own peculiar images of God - an old man in a white beard, for instance - are not really God.

If we leave no room at all for gently ridiculing these things, then we set these things up as equal to God. And anytime we equate something with God then we are engaging in idolatry.

Does God have a sense of humor?

``Sure he does,'' says my friend Eric Feber. ``He made people didn't he?''

by CNB