Dear Josh, your humor is not funny

In my grammer class today one of the questions in our work book was 'Do you read Tom Clancy books?' It was almost fate that I got this question because I just got done reading (lets be honest...rereading) The Hunt for Red October last weekend. However, before I even got a chance to respond, she wanted to move on past the question because she did not know who Tom Clancy was. I listed of of some books to jog her memory and she shrugged. Some other people said 'What about movies...do you like 'Hunt for Red October', 'Patriot Games', 'Sum of all Fears?' All that got was a 'I've never seen them...' from her.

Here is where my real zinger takes shape. In a totally seriously and incriminating voice I said, 'What, you don't like movies?!?' She looked at me funny. That was the end of my joke.

A couple others laughed but it is a good reminder to me that humor can be totally lost across languages. This is true if I am speaking spanish or english. Lets rephrase that last statement. This is ALWAYS true when I speak spanish and can even be true when I speak english. Even worse than humor being lost, I might (and probably already have) offended people. Something to be mindful of.

So our guest speaker for the week in chapel mentioned the tower of babel today in his message. For those of you not familiar, its basically one more time in history where God had about enough of humans trying to make themselves out to be gods when in fact we are certainly not. As I was flipping through some articles today, something caught my eye. Yet another crazy attempt at a building that is spectacular and a monument to human achievement. In order of my top three, here we go....(drum roll...)

#3) In motion building
#2) Dubai tower
#1) Mile high tower

I'm not an end times is here tomorrow type of guy (it'll come - who knows when), but it does at least make you raise your eyebrows when in the very region that the original tower of babel was constructed we see the exact same thing happening again four thousand plus years later. I don't know whether to laugh, cry or be concerned when I see articles like this again and again.