One day I was sitting on a bench at a train station when two boys sat down next to me. They talked about some war and by their description it must have been WW I. But they had the dates wrong. So I interrupted in a nice and friendly and absolutely (you know me) not condescending way to mention that WW I was from 1914 until 1918. The answer was a polite “Yes, we know. But thank you.” which kind of irritated me a bit. If they knew then why did they talk such nonsense? It took me a few more minutes of listening to realize that they were talking about a computer game set sometime in the future. Needless to say I felt a little bit embarrassed. My super helpful and absolutely relevant comment just revealed that I had no clue what was going on. And it made me feel really old.
It would be a lie to pretend that this taught me a lesson I will never forget. I run into situations like that time and time again because I am to quick jumping to conclusions. But at least this little incidence made me aware one more time that it is always good to know what is going on before I try to interfere.
In a way this is already the point I am trying to make: If you want to talk about something, first know what is going on. Or in other words: Don’t talk about something you have no clue of. But I don’t want to leave it this unspecific.
The other day I saw a picture of a billboard. It was black with white handwriting on it saying “On first sight things often seem to be incomprehensible.” But even though it used the Latin alphabet it was written in such a way that at first glance it seem to be Arabic. A very clever sign indeed. But the message is clear. Try to understand before you complain. In this case of course it is talking about religious differences.
It is funny to hear young kids mess up jokes. I was witness to the conversation of two seven year old boys reciting a joke they had heard. Even though it was obviously funny for them the punch line was of the weaker kind. But then they tried to derive new jokes from the one they knew. And it was instantly evident that they had not grasped the concept of jokes. They rearranged the sentences and introduced new characters but the old joke was still there. Yet it was robbed of its meaning and the little bit that was funny in the first place. But of course the two had a private comedy club all for themselves. Giggling and laughing while the nonsense piled up all around them. After a while it couldn’t take it no longer and left. In a way it had become a senseless conversation because nobody knew how to tell a joke. They had no clue and they didn’t know it.
This is often how I feel when I read comments on Christianity. Like listening to people joking around about something they know basically nothing about. The notion for example that the Bible says that eating shrimps is a sin. (No seriously I really read that.) And isn’t it funny how stupid that is? they say. And I thought: What?! I mean I do understand where that comes from. The people of Israel were advised to eat only fish with fins and scales. And yes, shrimps are fish that don’t qualify. But makes that eating them a sin? And what is sin anyway? When I eat chocolate, isn’t that a little sin? And are there big and little sins? I am not going to answer these questions here. I just want to show that things are a little bit more complicated than that.
Don’t get me wrong. I think we need to be able to laugh about ourselves. And that absolutely includes our (non-)religious believes. My sister for example reminded me a while back that one of my favorite jokes used to have the punch line that Jesus couldn’t walk on water anymore because he now has holes in his feet. And I still find the picture rather amusing. But I think it is important to make fun of the known only. To talk about the known. To judge the known. And for the unknown we should listen. We should investigate. We should try to understand. And then we might find that we only thought it funny because we just didn’t understand what we were talking about. Then we understand what a joke really is and we become able to tell our own. And good ones.
