Reinhold Niebuhr’s essay on humor and faith situates humor in the context of the Christian life. He begins with a verse from Psalms that records God laughing at sinners: “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.” Because this kind of laughter is pure judgment with no mercy, it represents a point Niebuhr wants to make about humor. True laughter acts as a gateway to the reconciliation of two contradictory principles, like justice and mercy. Thus, Christ is the answer to the derisive God who laughs in the OT, and the cross, while featuring irony, is not a place of laughter. It is deathly serious.
Why do people laugh? Because they are able to discern an incongruity between the way things are and the way they should be. The incongruity of human existence is still too much for laughter to solve. That’s where faith comes. Laughter can be a way of gaining self-transcendence, of experiencing what it feels like to stand outside oneself and discover a greater order existing above the current disorder. This ability has its limits when confronted with humanity’s simultaneous power and powerlessness. If one must err on either favoring a rationality that exalts human strength or humor that admits human frailty, Niebuhr agrees that humor is the better option because an all-encompassing rationality will only lead to despair. True laughter, however, dies away as the sinner enters the holy of the holies. Humor lays the groundwork for true faith in God, the only one who can address humanity’s sin but cannot forgive those sins.