Found the quote. It’s from Heretics. Here we go:

“A critic once remonstrated with me saying, with an air of indignant reasonableness, “If you must make jokes, at least you need not make them on such serious subjects.” I replied with a natural simplicity and wonder, “About what other subjects can one make jokes except serious subjects?” It is quite useless to talk about profane jesting. All jesting is in its nature profane, in the sense that it must be the sudden realization that something which thinks itself solemn is not so very solemn after all. If a joke is not a joke about religion or morals, it is a joke about police-magistrates or scientific professors or undergraduates dressed up as Queen Victoria. And people joke about the police-magistrate more than they joke about the Pope, not because the police-magistrate is a more frivolous subject, but, on the contrary, because the police-magistrate is a more serious subject than the Pope. The Bishop of Rome has no jurisdiction in this realm of England; whereas the police-magistrate may bring his solemnity to bear quite suddenly upon us. Men make jokes about old scientific professors, even more than they make them about bishops–not because science is lighter than religion, but because science is always by its nature more solemn and austere than religion. It is not I; it is not even a particular class of journalists or jesters who make jokes about the matters which are of most awful import; it is the whole human race. If there is one thing more than another which any one will admit who has the smallest knowledge of the world, it is that men are always speaking gravely and earnestly and with the utmost possible care about the things that are not important, but always talking frivolously about the things that are. Men talk for hours with the faces of a college of cardinals about things like golf, or tobacco, or waistcoats, or party politics. But all the most grave and dreadful things in the world are the oldest jokes in the world–being married; being hanged.”

Quite appropriate, no?

A few other thoughts: I didn’t mean to sanction what this fellow did. I think it’s wrong, but I also think that it’s not obviously wrong. And the point of my comment was that it may not be his view of marriage specifically that’s problematic, but something else.

You said: “What we must do, it seems to me, is not make pronouncements about what we will, God willing, die before renouncing: we have to actually clean up our act, and teach the candidates for marriage that they are not entering into an episode of “Friends” when they step up to the front of the local congregation and tell God and His people that they want to be joined together as one flesh.”

This is precisely the sort of false dichotomy that I critiqued before. Why must we choose between pronouncements and cleaning up our act? We probably disagree about this, but I tend to think the natural law case for traditional marriage (a la MD) is not only consonant with a sacred view of marriage (a la the Church), but also beneficial to the structure of society to whom the Church ministers and in which the Church exists. Why should I have to choose again?

Also, I have three questions for you, one based on a hypothetical: (1) Is any humor appropriate at a wedding? (2) What type? (3) Suppose he had done what he had at the reception, maybe while at the head table. Would it have been as funny?

My intuition is, possibly–but probably not. What made the move so jarring, and so funny to many of the audience, was the context. If he pulls that joke at any other moment, it wouldn’t have nearly the force it did. That weddings are the sorts of things where that kind of behavior is unthinkable is the only reason doing it in the way he did can be conceived as a joke. Otherwise, he’s simply boorishly rude, and has no sense of social skills–which clearly does not describe this fellow.

Again, I’m not condoning the action. I just doubt that what’s at stake (here) is our view of marriage alone.

Also, while I’m at it, I’ll register disagreement with Adam’s bifurcation of the wedding and the marriage. Weddings have meanings in light of the meaning of the marriage–but they also influence the meaning of marriage. It’s no surprise that as the meaning of marriage has declined, the emphasis on the symbols of marriage has increased. There’s no substance left, so people go all out on the externals (to critique an unrestrained externalism for the moment).

But that doesn’t mean the wedding is irrelevant. I have frequently recalled my wedding as a confirmation of God’s gracious kindness to me–which was never more evident to me than when my wife said “yes” (and I am often reminded of when she keeps saying “yes”). That my wedding happened the way it did, with the people it did, has had a profound impact on my understanding of grace and the meaning of our union.

In short, I think the way we enter marriage matters. Even in our relationally screwed up world, weddings still represent a definitive break in the type of relationship and signify something important. Even if their meaning is derived from the nature of the relationship they inaugurate, how we inaugurate the relationship shapes our understanding of it. I can think of no better equivalent than the beginning of Genesis.

Best,

matt

Weddings are not mandated in the Bible. There is no prescribed way to do them. People have the liberty to walk down the isle to dance music or tweet their vows or whatever. Being traditional and valuing the sacred is important. But it isn’t a hill to die on.

Other notes:

But I wanted to respond to the bulk of your comment first. Specifically, I think that making the question one of our view of marriage is, well, to narrow. And your own comment doesn’t even seem to do that.

You say that this is really about “whether taking a solemn oath before God for the sake of marriage is a merely a setting for situational comedy (sit com).” You seem to have built in a theory of comedy there, and a theory of when and where it is appropriate. I presume that not all forms of humor are inappropriate in the wedding ceremony, but this one clearly was. My question is why, and (as your post assumes) part of that analysis is what we make of humor.

I think that’s exactly backwards: what we make of marriage determines how laughable we are willing to make it. That is: we don’t mistake this ceremony or the union it forms for just any situation. This is not the set-up for a laugh-track: it is where the church (small “c”, local church) is speaking to what God has joined together.

It is exactly what you have said in your front-page post: the death of the sacred.

Which, interestingly enough, is why this comment by you puzzles me so:

What’s more, our asking the question of what’s wrong here seems to indicate that we care about marriage and getting it right. So again, making this all about our problematic views of marriage doesn’t seem to fit. Why must we choose between the MD (is everything to be about that now?) and the view of marriage you describe? That strikes me as the sort of false dichotomy that isn’t much helpful.

It seems to me you’re missing my point for the sake of defending the MD.

It is certainly not “either MD or sacred marriage”. As the old blog post I linked to in my comments indicates, it is instead, “Why MD if not sacred marriage?” Your counter — that since you personally are asking this question, and the commentors at the site you found it were more or less upset by it, we obviously have the right sense of the sacred here — lacks a lot of force because it ignores most of the context and evidence. For example, the bride and the gent marrying these two were obviously complicit; the audience (are they a congregation if they are in on the joke?) obviously thought this was hillarious. And this video doesn’t hardly stand alone as the only spoof on this moment.

What we must do, it seems to me, is not make pronouncements about what we will, God willing, die before renouncing: we have to actually clean up our act, and teach the candidates for marriage that they are not entering into an episode of “Friends” when they step up to the front of the local congregation and tell God and His people that they want to be joined together as one flesh.

And to be sure to say it: this is actually about whether the MD was a meaningful way of cleaning up our act because we both recognize that the common view of marriage among the people who call themselves Christians is in shambles. When we allow the actual act of marriage to be a prop comedy stand-up routine, signing a declaration that says that we oppose “gay marriage” is its own kind of comedy.

Reforming amrriage is not a matter of trading documents with those who disagree with us — both inside and outside the camp. It is a matter, as you have noted on your front-page post, of recovering a specific sense of the holy, the sacred.

I’ll have to dig up the Chesterton quote later. I’m tired now, and headed to bed.

But I wanted to respond to the bulk of your comment first. Specifically, I think that making the question one of our view of marriage is, well, to narrow. And your own comment doesn’t even seem to do that.

You say that this is really about “whether taking a solemn oath before God for the sake of marriage is a merely a setting for situational comedy (sit com).” You seem to have built in a theory of comedy there, and a theory of when and where it is appropriate. I presume that not all forms of humor are inappropriate in the wedding ceremony, but this one clearly was. My question is why, and (as your post assumes) part of that analysis is what we make of humor.

What’s more, my question about why this is problematic only has force if people share the intuition that, in fact, it is problematic. That most people seem to think so (even the comments at Techcrunch were overwhelmingly negative) suggests we all have an intuitive grasp that a wedding is something special and that the fellow’s behaviors were problematic.

What’s more, our asking the question of what’s wrong here seems to indicate that we care about marriage and getting it right. So again, making this all about our problematic views of marriage doesn’t seem to fit. Why must we choose between the MD (is everything to be about that now?) and the view of marriage you describe? That strikes me as the sort of false dichotomy that isn’t much helpful.

That isn’t to say that our views of marriage don’t play in to our analysis of the situation. They clearly do. But they are not the sole determinant.

Also, that isn’t to say that we all have a great view of marriage within evangelicalism. They are clearly not perfect. But that might not be the problem here.

Anyway, way to random and scattered because it’s almost midnight here and I’m up too late. More tomorrow, I’m sure.

This is really not about humor or technology: this is about whether taking a solemn oath before God for the sake of marriage is a merely a setting for situational comedy (sit com), or if it’s actually a moment that our normal world of coping through humor and gadgets can be set aside in order to testify that this is where God intrudes on real life, and that our relationship to him makes it necessary for us to behave differently than the world.

The real problem, if you ask me, is that we look at this and think that we have a problem defining “christian humor” and “christian technophilia”, but then we want to sign the Manhattan Declaration against Gay marriage. It seems sort of blatantly-obvious that the reason non-Christians don’t take actual marriage seriously is that we don’t know how to take it seriously.

Interesting stuff. Like I said, I love thinking about specific situations like this because they are always the nexus of lots of competing goods.

First, the language of “judging” is really tough to argue with. After all, we’re called to discern things, right? That’s all discerning is–making a judgment about what is going on in a particular situation, and how we should respond.

Second, Jake’s two questions are exactly right. I am (right now) primarily interested in the former one, since it seems the technology is largely a tool (in this case) for the purposes of humor. Even if it wasn’t Facebook, he could have used something similar.

The question, of course, is whether sacred things can be funny. And I think we have to answer “yes” to that. As Chesterton argued, laughing at something is a sign of taking it seriously, not the other way around. But on some level, we need a criteria for jokes that are appropriate, and jokes that are inappropriate. While my intuitions are that this one crossed the line, articulating why is a challenge.

This isn’t worth thinking about forever–but it is worth thinking about. Thanks for indulging me in my little exercise in casuistry.

I’m all for diminishing the aversion to technology, and I’m all for eliminating our foolish sacred/secular divide. On the other hand, I still want to emphasize the sacred: not in contrast to secular moments but in contrast to mundane moments.

So I think really there are two issues here: The first is what does a Christian attitude toward humor look like? The second is what does a Christian attitude toward technology look like?

I think if you look at someone like G.K. Chesterton that’s a pretty good model of a Christian approach to humor – genuinely clever, treats the subject appropriately with an eye toward what’s ironic or unexpected about it.

As far as technology goes, I’d say the big idea is that as Christians we exercise discernment with technology and never use it solely for the sake of using it. For some, like Mark Driscoll, that means they’ll use Twitter and Facebook as tools. For others, like myself, we’re much more reluctant to allow anymore technology into our lives because we feel disconnected enough as is and fear that allowing something like Twitter to become part of our day-to-day routine will be an even more invasive use of technology.

Anyway, interesting issue for sure, I’ll look forward to reading what others have to say, thanks for posting Matt!

Again, don’t read too much into that, but the kiss and following sure seemed disinterested to me.

Making the trivial seem important has away of making the important become trivial.

I wish them well, but holy cow man, it’s a marriage, not an agreement to play monopoly for an hour…

But I still want to say, even if premeditated, was it right?

See http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/02/facebook-wedding/

Best,

matt

However, it also could be seen as part of the nature of a wedding – you publicly vow to be committed to one other person before witnesses. As part of that, you are saying your relationship status has changed. Why not include the public that sees your Facebook account? How many Facebook users fudge on their relationship status in order to keep their relationship options open?

Seems another way to express their commitment to one another that is part of the wedding ceremony.