I believe with more than ordinary conviction the simple statement of Proverbs 17:22: A merry heart doeth good like a medicine . . . After hearing me speak several times, a publisher wanted a little book on humor from me, so I wrote a little one. It is quite modest. I did not really research the topic, except for a couple of ideas. One was related to the medicinal value of humor. I read how many humorists and comedy people had lived long lives. However, my primary interest was in Norman Cousins, who was an eminent person in literary circles at the time. Found to have a debilitating disease that would be fatal, and finding nothing that provided hope for healing, he closed off nearly everything that he was told, and turned to humor for solace. He ordered a number of TV programs that he knew would make him smile and laugh. He detailed his story. It wasn’t long before he was navigating at full throttle, back doing things he liked to do, and reveling in his family and friends. He found that humor for him, generated several more years of happy, productive and healthful life. That life was found in the medicine of humor. He even lectured about his miracle. He did not believe that every person would be able to apply his solution.
Although my own story is not quite like that of Cousins, I know that my interest in, and fallibility to, humor has been an ingredient in saving my life. Told to put my affairs in order because of cancer, I committed my way to God, and took the road of a merry heart. Actually I have always been on that road, but emphasized it with energy when I realized that it would be personally beneficial. I was forty four years of age. I am editing this Page in my tenth decade – more than twice the years and several more surgeries, since the doctor’s prognosis. In that time the usefulness of the observation of Jeremiah and Solomon served well. My wife, before her death, told me that it had helped move her out of the dismal depressions she had suffered, from her ‘teen years. The merry heart does offer a medicine – for those who can receive it.
Abraham Lincoln loved humor. He could keep a group of men laughing for a whole evening, so that they would complain that their sides hurt. He said if he did not laugh he would die. He suffered depression. His friends and close colleagues affirmed that his whole being was naturally depressed and melancholy until he would tell or hear some humorous story. Lincoln also found the lift of Scripture, and found a humorous turn now and then by using Scripture. It may be that Lincoln knew as much Scripture as any other president, and there have been many who were serious students of the Bible, including George Washington. With all the treatment of dark subjects in the Bible there is an underlying emphasis on the brightness of promise, hope and God’s care to make true humor important, sometimes necessary, to the whole person. Note the responses of biblical characters after some deliverance. They were joyful.
The merry (affirmative) heart is the point in all this. Some persons do not tell stories well. They could not be funny to save their lives, but they have the spark. It shows in much of what they do in relationships. One writer was utterly surprised to discover that laughter was common in the Nazi Concentration Camps. In the misery, the merry hearted lifted the depressed, carried them along in some faint hope. Many were open to the belief that God had not abandoned them, and there is something more to be gained. The guards and officers were the most humorless of the persons behind the fences and barbed wire. I heard the story told by an American officer who, with fellow soldiers in a Nazi prison camp, sang the whole of Handel’s Messiah on a dark Christmas Eve. Two men played an old piano – one at a time, while the other put his fingers in a pail of warm water so to flex in striking the cold keys. Prisoners sang with joy. Guards relented at the event, seeing and hearing the miracle of merry hearts. I recall memorial services of loved ones where there was not only serious concern for grieving persons, but also the cloud that this service forewarned their demise. The gentle moments of the service were always those that offered future hope in Scripture, and the recollections, especially from family and colleagues of the light moments shared with the deceased. The ugliness of the denial of the presence of someone loved is diluted in the lightness of the memory spoken. Christians can well afford such moments with memory’s joys. *Mark W. Lee, Sr. — 2016, 2020