Does the Holy Ghost Have a Sense of Humor?

 

Does the Holy Ghost have a sense of Humor?

When I was a teenager I was taught by Sister Boyack about Amos 3:7 in the Old Testament; Surely the Lord God will do nothing but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. I quickly began to study that principle and have felt from that time that this is one of the most significant verses in the Bible and believe in it strongly.

In my faith I believe we have a current prophet who is the spokesman for the Lord. In April 2018 he spoke to our Church and said in the coming days it would not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and consistent influence of the Holy Ghost.

I have taken this to mean I need to deepen my relationship with the Holy Ghost and have taken this to heart as I have been continually impressed how important this message to us is. I expect to make more than one blog entry about this subject so don’t be surprised if there seems like more should be written here.

Last Sunday in church Joe Cutler lead a discussion about the Holy Ghost. Joe began talking about the personality of the Holy Ghost and as he did so it pulled together two pondering's that I have had. He talked about things that are common knowledge like the operating range of the Holy Ghost. The upper limit is seldom talked about however the lower limit is something we talk about frequently. It’s been voiced as those are areas the Holy Ghost won’t go, usually associated with a location where the commandments are being broken. This time Joe used a different perspective. If the Holy Ghost has a personality what is the likelihood that he doesn’t like going where the commandments are being violated because he does not want to? I know he went into prison with me and was very helpful.

During the lesson sarcasm and sardonic humor came up as topics in relationship to whether we encourage the Holy Ghost to be present or the opposite if our humor is too mean.  While I understand Joe was asking if we can expect the Holy Ghost to help us when even our humor is mean in that thread of topic I went somewhere else with it. A few weeks back I had been at the Storehouse where my wife and I are serving as service missionaries and had been working with our young service missionaries, 18 to 22 year olds, and I had been on a roll with little sayings. On this day I had been saying things like “the Holy Ghost likes it when we follow the rules” and “The Holy Ghost like a clean warehouse” and one or two more things I had heard when I was younger and for some reason had started coming out of me. They were said in a light hearted manor and not preachy. I think the young men understood that I was trying to find a light hearted way to remind them of what we were doing and work at a higher level of devotion to the task. After one of these “isms” I had a flash back to the 1994 movie Maverick with Mel Gibson and James Garner. Throughout the movie Gibson’s character has been quoting his father over and over with different saying, “My pappy used to say…” In one of the last scenes it’s revealed that Garner and Gibson’s characters are father and son. Gibson’s character starts to say “my Pappy used to say” when Garners character interrupts him and say’s “I never said any such thing” he goes on to lecture Gibson’s character about how wrong it is to make all those quotes about things he never said. In that moment I had a vision of a possible face to face interaction with the Holy Ghost after I die where the Holy Ghost does his best James Garner impression and tells me that he never said all those things where I claimed to be quoting him. Today when Joe was talking about the Holy Ghost having a personality, I felt the Holy Ghost had used that scene from the movie to show me he has a sense of humor and he got a small laugh at me or from me that day. Is building a relationship with the Holy Ghost confined to just listening to his promptings for our personal needs, or is there room for getting to know him and his personality?