{"id":97521,"date":"2022-11-20T20:54:08","date_gmt":"2022-11-21T03:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=97521"},"modified":"2022-11-22T11:11:16","modified_gmt":"2022-11-22T18:11:16","slug":"humor-in-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2022\/11\/humor-in-heaven.html","title":{"rendered":"Humor in Heaven?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
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Balanced Rock, in Arches National Park, at sunset\u00a0 \u00a0(Photograph by Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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After our friend and her two young daughters left for home, my wife and I spent the late afternoon and early evening in nearby Arches National Park, where we enjoyed a variety of spectacular and almost otherworldly landscapes.\u00a0 I have to say that my adopted home state offers some truly remarkable vistas.\u00a0 The colors were magnificent as the sun began to set in the west; they change constantly throughout the day, making it worthwhile to come in the morning and in the evening and in between.<\/p>\n
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Delicate Arch, in Arches National Park, should be familiar to locals because it\u2019s featured on many Utah automobile license plates.\u00a0 This image shows it at dusk, when many of the park\u2019s colors are at their most vivid.
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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I\u2019ve just run across a review of a new book from a prolific Catholic thinker whom I\u2019ve enjoyed over the years:\u00a0\u00a0\u201cMaking God Laugh:\u00a0A new book makes the case that humor is heavenly.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n
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For some reason, the review reminded me of a comment from Brigham Young:\u00a0 \u201cThere is no music in hell,\u201d he once said, \u201cfor all good music belongs to heaven.\u201d\u00a0 And it\u2019s true that a recurring theme in a substantial minority of reports of near-death experiences is that of incredibly beautiful music.\u00a0 I wonder, though, whether Brigham\u2019s confident statement is entirely true:\u00a0 After all, wouldn\u2019t hell be a wonderful place for bad<\/em> music?\u00a0 Personally, I believe that I\u2019ve had repeated direct and personal experiences with hellish<\/em> music.\u00a0 To cite just one instance, the interminably long \u201cIt\u2019s a Small World\u201d ride at Disneyland, in Anaheim, California<\/a>, offers a harrowing foretaste of an eternity of excruciating torment for all those with ears to hear.\u00a0 (For those who lack<\/em> ears to ear, though, it\u2019s probably pretty much harmless, and the line moves really fast.)<\/p>\n
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But the review also reminded me of something else:\u00a0\u00a0I was the founder and, for years, the editor-in-chief of Brigham Young University\u2019s former Middle Eastern Texts Initiative, which, a few years after my enforced departure from the project, was transferred by the Maxwell Institute to E. J. Brill Publishing in the Netherlands. \u00a0The Middle Eastern Texts Initiative (METI) \u00a0produced bilingual editions of books (mostly Islamic, but also sometimes Eastern Christian and Jewish) from the classical Islamic world. \u00a0The books were printed at Brigham Young University Press and distributed by the University of Chicago Press.<\/p>\n
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Anyway, one of the volumes features what I still consider the best single line that we ever published.\u00a0 But, first, just a tiny bit of prefatory material:<\/p>\n
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Al-Ghaz\u0101l\u012b (d. AD 1111), who was one of the most significant figures in the history of Islamic thought, a legendarily brilliant philosophical theologian and legal thinker who spent most of his life in Iran and Iraq but also sojourned for a significant period in Jerusalem, is talking about extremely poor students, and, in that context, attributes the following remark to Jesus:<\/p>\n
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\u201cEven though I managed to raise the dead, I have never been able to cure an idiot!\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
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(See al-Ghaz\u0101l\u012b, \u201cO Son!,\u201d trans. David C. Reisman, in Classical Foundations of Islamic Educational Thought<\/i>, ed. Bradley J. Cook [Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 2010], 103.)<\/p>\n
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Now, I\u2019ll admit that my first inclination when I came across the passage was to say that this alleged statement can\u2019t possibly be authentic.\u00a0 And that\u2019s still probably correct.\u00a0 But al-Ghaz\u0101l\u012b is entirely serious, and plainly regards the statement as genuine.\u00a0 Furthermore, his citation of it takes us back fully a thousand years or more, halfway to the time of Jesus.\u00a0 So . . .<\/p>\n
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I have to confess that I rather like the idea that the Savior might have said such a thing.\u00a0 It humanizes him a bit.\u00a0 Surely, with all those long walks from Nazareth to Capernaum, and from Capernaum to Jericho, and from Jericho to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem back up to Capernaum or Nazareth, it can\u2019t all have been immortal sermons and solemn earnestness.\u00a0 (Can it?\u00a0 Maybe I\u2019m just not fit for heaven.)\u00a0 There must have been some small talk.\u00a0 And the image of Jesus trudging along with the disciples down those dusty paths and confiding, at the end of a tough day, \u201cYou know, Peter?\u00a0 I can raise the dead, but I just can\u2019t cure idiots\u201d is oddly appealing to me.<\/p>\n
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Still, alas, it\u2019s probably bogus.<\/p>\n
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Here are a couple of other cases, though, where I think that an impish divine sense of humor may actually play a role.\u00a0 Both are instances where, if my hypotheses are on target, the prank was set in place long before it was noticed:<\/p>\n
1)\u00a0 The appearance of Elijah in the Kirtland Temple: \u201cElijah did come at Passover time \u2014 as pious Jews had long hoped he would \u2014 although he did not avail himself of the hospitably opened door of a faithful Jewish family but came to the House of the Lord in Kirtland.\u201d\u00a0 See Stephen D. Ricks, \u201cThe Appearance of Elijah and Moses in the Kirtland Temple and the Jewish Passover,\u201d BYU Studies<\/em> 23\/4 (1983): 483-486.\u00a0 Neither the early Latter-day Saints nor anybody else noticed for several decades.\u00a0 When they do notice, though, it becomes one of those things about Joseph Smith that are rather difficult to explain.<\/p>\n
2)\u00a0 The appearance of Early Modern English (EModE) in the original English dictation of the Book of Mormon.\u00a0 Once again, though, neither the early Latter-day Saints nor anybody else noticed for several decades.\u00a0 And, also once again, it becomes difficult to explain away.\u00a0 It\u2019s very strange for believers, but, for those who seek a naturalistic explanation for the appearance of the Book of Mormon in the late 1820s, it\u2019s virtually impossible<\/em>.<\/p>\n
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Landscape Arch, in the Devils Garden area of Arches National Park, is the longest natural arch with the boundaries of the park and the fifth longest in the world.***
(Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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\u201cWater, water, water\u2026.There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0 (Edward Abbey, <\/span>Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness<\/a><\/span>)<\/span><\/p>\n
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Arches National Park, with the La Sal Mountains in the background
(Wikimedia CC photo by Betty Wills)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Posted from Moab, Utah<\/p>\n
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***\u00a0 \u00a0 After our friend and her two young daughters left for home, my wife and I spent the late afternoon and early evening in nearby Arches National Park, where we enjoyed a variety of spectacular and almost otherworldly landscapes.\u00a0 I have to say that my adopted home state offers some truly remarkable vistas.\u00a0 The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3823,32169,32184,32181,32178,32175,32172,32187,32196,4841,4898,2601,1176,66,32202,32190,32193,32199,4856,1769,19957,782],"class_list":["post-97521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-al-ghazali","tag-arches-national-park","tag-balanced-rock","tag-brad-cook","tag-bradley-cook","tag-bradley-j-cook","tag-classical-foundations-of-islamic-educational-thought","tag-delicate-arch","tag-devils-garden","tag-divine","tag-education","tag-god","tag-humor","tag-islam","tag-its-a-small-world","tag-la-sal-mountains","tag-landscape-arch","tag-making-god-laugh","tag-moab","tag-muslim","tag-peter-kreeft","tag-utah"],"yoast_head":"\nHumor in Heaven?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\" After our friend and her two young daughters 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