I think the bottom line is this. Humor is good, in fact great, in it's pure form. Meaness is bad, in any form. So how to not marry the two? I think we need to keep our hearts in check and be aware of the people around us. The Bible is clear that our tongues can speak life or death. In any given situation, funny or not, that's what we need to be considering. Are we speaking life or death. The more we keep our focus on Jesus, the more our hearts grow to be like His. Then we are less likely to ever speak death. Until then, if we find we've said something that might have hurt someone, then we need to go back to them, check in with them, and make sure they understand not only that we did not mean to harm them and that we hold them in high regard. We go back and we fix it.
Example: I'm a nutritional counselor. One day I made some whole foods organic peanut butter bars for my friend's husband as a thank you for him helping with some heavy work at my house. They were for him only because the wife is not supposed to eat peanutbutter of sweets. I was riding to Bible study with his wife and a friend, so I gave the wife the bars to give to the husband when she got home. Then I went back into the house to get something else and when I returned both ladies were munching on the bars. Throughout the course of the night we I jibed them about stealing Stu's bars and hurting their health, and they jibed me calling me a nutritional legalist. I wasn't at all offended, because I know they were kidding and I am confident about where I stand nutritionally. But when I got thinking later, I realized food is a sensitive issue for many people and I might have unintentionally come off as shaming, which I never intended to do. So I called each of them and just told them that I'd been thinking and wondered if I'd come off as shaming and if I did I never intended that and I was so sorry. Each of them responded that the evening was fun and full of laughter and they had never given it another thought.
While this was a relief to me, I'm still glad I went back to them, checked in and made sure I hadn't caused harm. If it had been with another individual, the jibing might have caused harm. You never know what someone else has been through. Just because you have a thick skin doesn't mean someone else does. Additionally, the enemy can take advantage of our words. Even though those ladies had not felt any shame from my jibing at the time I called them, the enemy could have snuck in at any time and started shaming them about their lack of self control and used my words to do it. By having checked in with them and explained, it made my words much less likely ammuntion for the enemy.
Again, humor is great. There is nothing about it that's unholy, unless we make it so. The closer our hearts are to Jesus the less likely something is to slip out.
As for making fun of animals who are hurt. That's a huge red flag. Those folks need counseling, and I'm not joking.
And finally regarding political humor during this election year. Andy Stanley is going to be doing a series on that very topic, how to stay who we are in Christ during an election year. I think it starts this Sunday:
http://northpoint.org/ and they keep it online after the live services, because the reality is we don't have to like the candidates, but we are called to love them, and there's nothing loving about hateful jokes.
Love you!
A