Irreverent Humor and the Majesty of God
Having been brought up in a home that took religion, morality, and discipline very seriously, I struggled to understand people who didn’t. Until I read Mark Twain.
Twain’s heroes, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, didn’t mind breaking rules or defying the prevailing social order. Propriety, formal education, and religion were to Mark Twain suffocating strictures on freedom. I wasn’t brought up to see things that way. But Twain’s irreverently humorous style got past my protests to show me his unorthodox way of seeing the world.
When my own faith was drowning, I came upon Twain’s essays on the Bible and Christianity, including Extracts from Adam’s Diary and Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven. Twain straightforwardly mocked religious beliefs and behaviors, and Twain’s critical and irreverent humor resonated with my soul because of my bad experiences in ministry. I wanted to know more about what made Mark Twain tick.
Mark Twain was the penname of Samuel Clemens. Born in Missouri in 1835 when Missouri was the American frontier, bathed in freedom and lawlessness, Clemens was forced to leave school to support the family when his father suddenly died. Clemens was only eleven years old.
For a time, Clemens found work on a steamboat. He encouraged his younger brother Henry to join him. When Henry died of severe burns in a steamboat explosion, Samuel Clemens blamed himself for it.
Clemens married Olivia Langdon in 1870. They had four children, but Twain outlived all but his second daughter, Clara. The couple’s firstborn, a boy, died of diphtheria at only 19 months of age. Their oldest daughter, Susy, died at age 24 of spinal meningitis in 1896. Heart disease took Twain’s wife in 1904. Finally, his youngest daughter, Jean, an epileptic, died at home on Christmas Eve 1909 of a heart attack brought on by a seizure. Jean was only 29. Each loss was a bitter blow to Twain’s soul.
Though renowned today, his writing was not always well-received in his own day and he often struggled financially. Risky financial investments eventually forced Mark Twain into bankruptcy. At the end of his life, Mark Twain had grown cynical and lonely.
Twain’s unbelief was rooted less in intellectual doubt than in emotional pain. Much unbelief is. Twain distrusted a too-rosy view of life. How could such a cruel reality be governed by a good and almighty God? Twain’s clear-eyed irreverence found humor in any social convention or religion or politics that tried to mask or prettify the ugly side of life in this world.
Mark Twain’s irreverent humor provided me with a helpful perspective. Instead of getting angry with petty religionists, I learned not to take them so seriously and to find humor in them.
In the process I learned to laugh at myself and not take myself so seriously. Growing smaller in my own eyes gave me a better view of the majesty of God.
Twain’s heroes, Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, didn’t mind breaking rules or defying the prevailing social order. Propriety, formal education, and religion were to Mark Twain suffocating strictures on freedom. I wasn’t brought up to see things that way. But Twain’s irreverently humorous style got past my protests to show me his unorthodox way of seeing the world.
When my own faith was drowning, I came upon Twain’s essays on the Bible and Christianity, including Extracts from Adam’s Diary and Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven. Twain straightforwardly mocked religious beliefs and behaviors, and Twain’s critical and irreverent humor resonated with my soul because of my bad experiences in ministry. I wanted to know more about what made Mark Twain tick.
Mark Twain was the penname of Samuel Clemens. Born in Missouri in 1835 when Missouri was the American frontier, bathed in freedom and lawlessness, Clemens was forced to leave school to support the family when his father suddenly died. Clemens was only eleven years old.
For a time, Clemens found work on a steamboat. He encouraged his younger brother Henry to join him. When Henry died of severe burns in a steamboat explosion, Samuel Clemens blamed himself for it.
Clemens married Olivia Langdon in 1870. They had four children, but Twain outlived all but his second daughter, Clara. The couple’s firstborn, a boy, died of diphtheria at only 19 months of age. Their oldest daughter, Susy, died at age 24 of spinal meningitis in 1896. Heart disease took Twain’s wife in 1904. Finally, his youngest daughter, Jean, an epileptic, died at home on Christmas Eve 1909 of a heart attack brought on by a seizure. Jean was only 29. Each loss was a bitter blow to Twain’s soul.
Though renowned today, his writing was not always well-received in his own day and he often struggled financially. Risky financial investments eventually forced Mark Twain into bankruptcy. At the end of his life, Mark Twain had grown cynical and lonely.
Twain’s unbelief was rooted less in intellectual doubt than in emotional pain. Much unbelief is. Twain distrusted a too-rosy view of life. How could such a cruel reality be governed by a good and almighty God? Twain’s clear-eyed irreverence found humor in any social convention or religion or politics that tried to mask or prettify the ugly side of life in this world.
Mark Twain’s irreverent humor provided me with a helpful perspective. Instead of getting angry with petty religionists, I learned not to take them so seriously and to find humor in them.
In the process I learned to laugh at myself and not take myself so seriously. Growing smaller in my own eyes gave me a better view of the majesty of God.