{"product_id":"2940154403884","title":"How to Laugh and Think Like a Christian","description":"\u003cp\u003eIf you tell a hundred jokes a day, some of them are bound to be funny. After all, it’s just a numbers game.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIf you keep track of the same jokes that were funny, and you keep using them over and over again, but in front of different people, you will come across as a comic genius everywhere you go. Of course, this requires you to also keep track of the people to whom you told the funny jokes. As you can see, being a humorist is less about being funny and more of being organized.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHowever, considering my organization skills, I guess I’ll just have to keep winging it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHumor is frequently the professor that instructs me where all other teachers fail. I believe God shows us truth in different ways, including a good giggle and a belly-aching laugh. Of course, humor isn’t equipped to teach every lesson. When life forces us to look at cruelty and evil, laughter assumes the role of comforter. On November 13, 2015, over 130 people in Paris, France were murdered by ISIS perpetrators in a series of bombings and other related attacks. I had been blogging for ten months at that point. I thought that I should write something thoughtful and poignant related to the violence. But the humorist won in the end; I made fun the health craze and I imagined triglycerides were childhood monsters. The decision to write something funny was strategic; there was an enormous amount of material already available about Paris and to add one more to the pile didn’t seem as though it would do anybody any good. A good laugh to take people’s minds off of the ugliness in the world proved the better choice.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhether laughter is the teacher or the comforter, I am certain Christians need to DO more of it and BRING more of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMy aim is to encourage Christians to laugh and think at the same time, a skill that has all but vanished in the church. Ask any non-Christian about today’s church folk. They come across as stuffy, uptight, hypocritical, judgmental, and even unloving. That last one should sting. I decided to start a blog that could make people laugh about the very issues that trip them up, while still giving them a chance to contemplate the issues further.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere are 73 articles in this book, and I placed them in no particular order. Simply read one or two at a time while you contemplate the marvels of the universe while on the throne (for those of you from Hickory, NC, that means “bathroom”). If you like, you can binge-read the whole volume in one night. Heck, the book is yours so the last thing you need is some uptight author telling you how to read it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Scott R. Cyre","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47070693032176,"sku":"2940154403884","price":6.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940154403884_p0.jpg?v=1764111389","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940154403884","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}