Tim Keller on the Gospel and Humour

Q Ideas has a brief piece by Tim Keller on the gospel and humour.

Sarcastic humour which puts other down, he says, is ‘a form of self-justification’, and ‘self-directed ridicule’ can be ‘just as self-obsessed’. Moreover, another kind of self-righteousness ‘produces a person with little or no sense of humor’.

‘The gospel, however, creates a gentle sense of irony... In gospel-shaped humor, we don’t only poke fun at ourselves. We also can gently poke fun at others, especially our friends, but it is always humor that takes the other seriously and ultimately builds them up as a show of affection.’