I have spent the last week and a bit in South America, trying desperately to communicate in Spanglish.  As a speaker who speaks regularly around the world in different cultures to people of different languages, I find speaking in cross cultural environments my biggest challenge.  This is mainly because I like to think of myself as a funny guy - and more specifically, because I use humour as a technique to get my points across.

The problem is that humour does not translate.  It's as simple as that.  Audiences laugh when you're trying to be serious, and stare blankly at you through your best humourous moments.  It can be quite unnerving.

And so, one tends to tone the humour down, and concentrate on getting your point across.  As I sat in a church service, where an English missionary friend of mine preached in Spanish (he has been a missionary for 15 years, and is fluent), I wondered whether this could be why the Gospel has got so serious.
Every now and again I have an AHA moment - one of those rare moments of lucid clarity where something just suddenly makes sense.  The world is never the same after one of these moments.  As a postmodern Christian, I do trust the feeling these moments give that I have finally discovered completely objective, first principle truth of Cartesian proportions in those moments.  But, as a Christian who believes in revelation, I am learning to trust myself and the insights these moments bring.

One such moment came a number of years ago when I was watching the made for video series of the Gospel of Matthew.  In it, the protrayal of Jesus is of a sparkly eyed, smiling faced man, with a great sense of humour.  Watching him act out the issue of Peter's log-filled eye by trying to ram a tree branch into Peter's head got our group giggling.  I think that may have been the original intent.

I wonder how much of the inherent humour in the Bible has been "lost in translation"?  I know that my presentations lose their humour when I have to translate or be translated.  I think my missionary friend was possibly too serious, too.  Not by his own choice, of course, but just because of the dangers of trying to be funny in another language and culture.  A 15 year veteran, he was certainly better than I was - just a few days in Spanish South America.

But it did get me thinking.  If the first missionaries to venture into the dark parts of the world did not appear humurous or light hearted, then as the natives accepted the Gospel, they may have thought it was serious by design.  So, they adopted a serious posture too.  This perpetuated itself, until the Gospel itself lay devoid of humour and light heartedness.

Just a thought...

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