Humor is the holy art of not taking the world at its own overstatement. It is the glad refusal to grant sin, suffering, and self-importance the final word. Where disenchantment grows vine-heavy with its own serious insistence to be wholly and boringly dead to hope, humor lightens the monotony with a honeysuckle haphazardness that refuses to be dimmed to death by the somber patchwork of this guilt-sodded age. And in that refusal, hope throws a party. For the Christian, this hilaritas is not a retreat from the serious things of life, but a birdsong of resurrection hope when the world would have us whisper of its absence: a hope-filled confession that death has lost its sting, that the grave has been made ridiculous, and that no tyranny—whether of despair or dignity—can stand long before the risen Christ. To laugh, then, is to hope, to agree with heaven, to echo the hilarious mirth of a God who has already overturned the world’s most solemn claims, and to join in on the greatest joke ever told: the death of death in the death of Christ. In this way, birdhouse seeks to plant a way of life that is the life of the party.

Here you will find theological and philosophical reflections and book reviews on humor; comedic writings and short films; joke contests (and the occasional prize to sweeten the folly); humorous exegesis that dares to smile within the text; and comic strips and jokes of all sorts. These are our small attempts at planting flowers in the dimming of the self-serious age. Acts of faithful laughter that, by grace, become acts of hope. [B]birdhouse invites you to let go of the weight of your pharisaical seriousness and be a buffoon for Christ. Who knows, maybe in the process you’ll kill that man-pleasing fear of yours and grow hope in a God who is already pleased with you in Christ.