Laughter: A Tool in the Toolbox

Welcome to Brevis Talk. The talks you are about to hear will be honest, revealing, and unfiltered. Join us as your host, pastor Wayne Whiteside lifts the lid of silence and has conversations about mental illness and health in the church. The goal here is simple. It is to help someone along this journey of life who is struggling. It is to tell the truth to the unsuspecting, and it is to lighten the load of a fellow traveler. This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not intended to serve as medical advice or to replace consultation with your physician or mental health professional.

If you are experiencing a medical crisis, call 9 1 1 or go to the nearest Emergency Room. Now, here's your host, pastor Wayne.

Speaker 2 (43s): Welcome to another brevis Talk. Today we'll talk about another tool in the toolbox. Proverbs chapter 17, verse 22 says that a merry heart does good like a medicine. Another translation reads that same verse like this, a cheerful heart is good medicine. So humor and laughter, I will use those two words interchangeably.

Laughter is the shock absorber of life. The bumps in the road in life are real and they come often. We don't get to vote on a lot of things in our life, but we can choose to laugh. You say, well, no. Wait a minute. I'm so depressed I can't laugh. I understand that. I absolutely understand that. But in fighting depression, you must engage your will.

Your will may not be so strong. It may be strong, strong at other times, but you must not be passive, totally passive in this fight against depression. You say, well, I don't have much left in me. Well, please use what you have left in you and make an intentional fight against depression. Again, humor and laughter, it is simply one tool in the toolbox.

But I'm dishonest with you and I'm not a helper to you and or myself if I don't rightly mention the place that humor and laughter has in combating depression. I mentioned earlier that depression is like having a dark black blanket on. The medications will punch holes into that blanket, and F fragments of light will be able to come in through that blanket.

Laughter is a good medicine. Also, humor and laughter will punch more holes or take the holes that are punched in and make them wider than simply just having one tool in the toolbox. You know there's some folks that are very serious about humor. If you care to go to the government's website on a medication or medic medical lab reports, things like that, PubMed, P-U-B-M-E-D, just Google that and and just go do a search.

Put in humor or hu put in laughter or put in laughter therapy and you will find more than you care to read. Let me share something with you that I found that was hyper technical humor stimulates multiple physiological systems that decrease levels of stress hormones such as cortisol and epinephrine and increase the activation of the meso limbic dopamine reward system.

Now, if you understood that, I applaud you, but I am simply saying that the sciences see the validity and the strength of humor and laughter to help the human Laughter to therapy therapeutic Laughter. There are laughter classes in our country, and I'm sure in other countries as well, groups offering laughter classes for those who have high pressure and emotionally investing jobs.

One of the reports I read was concerning someone who is a grief counselor and this gentleman goes to laughter classes. It's a way to take some of the edge off of the steam, and I applaud him for that. I applaud these people for seeing the value in it, and they are, if you will, they're taking Laughter, serious And. that makes me laugh, that there are people who are serious about laughter, but I applaud them for trying to break this down.

And then the end result is they promote it that it's important. But the holy scripture written thousands of years ago tells us that a merry heart does good like a medicine You know that word medicine there in Proverbs 1722. That's the only time that word is used in the Old Testament, and yet Solomon, who is the author of most of the Proverbs, was the wisest man. the Bible says that there was none wiser, there will be none wiser, and he and his sort of dreary outlook if, if you don't believe that, go read the book of Ecclesiastes, which he was the author of, and it seems like he's looking back toward the end of his life and and having a lot of regret because of the mistakes and his personal sins.

But he says in the book of wisdom Proverbs that a cheerful heart is good medicine, so laughter is being studied. It affects blood sugar, the someone who's diabetic or someone who is in that range of being pre-diabetic. It's not a cure all, it's not a healer alone, but it can help blood sugar. These neurotransmitters, laughter, just the simplicity of a good strong belly life will help you in fighting mental illness.

Now, here's a cheap plug for a cheap ebook. I have a little book out. It's on, it's available on Amazon. It's for 99 cents. The reason it costs 99 cents and doesn't cost has a price on it. It has, I wanted it to have no cost, but the publisher says, no, it's gotta be, you gotta charge something. And so 99 cents was as low as they would let me go. My desire is not sell books. It's to help maybe some, someone laugh in Life's journey, and the title of the book is Laugh and Live in My name if you served under author Wayne Whiteside.

So that's a cheap plug for a cheap ebook. And so you might get a chuckle out of that and I'll wanna share a few with with you in just a moment, and I won't bore you to death, but I'll, I'll share just a few with you. But long, long ago it was said that a merry heart did good like a medicine And that long, long ago. Principle is true in 2024, it still does good like a medicine.

The Christian, the saints of God whose sins have been forgiven. They should be a joyful lot You know sinners like being around Jesus. Why was that? Well, there's probably several reasons, but I believe he was not a person who was too serious. I know he had his mission and I know he came to seek and to search that which was lost, and he was absolutely, totally 110% given to his mission.

But I believe he related well with people and they felt an acceptance there. And perhaps Jesus used laughter. I know some of his teachings have a bit of sarcasm in them. You can read some of them, read through that a little bit. He's blasting the disciples and I, and I think in some ways a fun hearted way. I really believe that. I don't believe the savior savior is just an old rigid in bendable scalp, and he's not someone a scalpel and he's not someone we would wanna be around.

Children loved him. The magnetism that he had that would make children want to come to him speaks a lot because children are very, very keen in their discernment. I would recommend getting a really silly movie. I've had several that make me laugh over and over. My wife rolls her eyes. If I watch these, I've seen them before. There are no surprises. But I love the old Pink Panther movies. They're ridiculous. They are just ridiculous.

But they make me laugh. Monty Python material of the seventies and the eighties, again, that makes me laugh. And if that says something about me, then it, it says something about me. The book that I mentioned has several jokes in it. Some they're called dad jokes. A friend of mine said, some of 'em are dad jokes on steroids or around my part of the country. We call 'em groaners. They're the kind of joke, once you hear 'em, you just sort of groan and I even joked and said, we've had a, we have a grown scale And that I tell a joke and someone said, well, that'll, that'll rank at about a number seven or eight on the groan scale.

And the higher the groan, the more terrible the joke is. And it's so, they're so terrible. Some of them that they're good. It's, it's like you've heard someone say something about a puppy being so ugly. He's cute. Well, these jokes are so bad. That's perhaps what makes some of them funny. But I hope you hang out with funny people. I hope you got some friends or a friend that is just a real pick me up and you can get out with that person and just laugh and enjoy life and, and, and there are some gifted people there.

I just, I don't think they think it, it's a anything special, but I believe there's some people who are anointed and they are anointed to make others laugh, to lighten the load, hang out with those people, befriend those people, and no mental illness is no joke. And I'm absolutely not making light of mental illness. Absolutely not. I'm, I'm in the fight with you. But this is one of the tools that's in the toolbox, and I don't want you to forget that laughter is a very, very strong tool.

So punch holds into that dark blanket of darkness so that more light can shine because of laughter. Now, here's some terrible jokes. The guy at the furniture store told me the sofa would hold five people without any problems. Then it occurred to me, I don't know, five people without any problems. I went in for a covid test and my doctor asked if I had a sudden loss of taste.

No, I always dress like this. I replied, my home keeping style or housekeeping style is best described as there appears to have been a struggle with the rise of self-driving automobiles. It's just a matter of time until there's a country song about a man's truck leaving him. Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes, small, medium, large, thin crust, thick crust, extra toppings.

The patient says, doctor, I broke my arm in three places, doctor. Well, don't go to those three places. I grilled a chicken for two hours today and it still wouldn't tell me why it crossed the road. And one of my favorites, Methodist brethren and sisters, please forgive me for this, but I think it's cute. The Methodist Church caught fire during the morning service. The sprinkler system came on.

Everyone was saved. Well, God bless you until the next time,

Speaker 0 (13m 13s): And. that concludes our broadcast today. Please don't forget to subscribe to the podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Plus, check us out at our Facebook page or brevistalk.com and take a look at our blog and remember, be kind. Always be kind.