Introduction What good is a book? I am often reminded of the old Polish adage that says it is more difficult to live one day well than it is to write a book. No less a brilliant thinker than Ernest Becker said in the very last lines of The Denial of Death, "The most that any one of us can seem to do is to fashion something - an object or ourselves - and drop it into the confusion, make an offering, so to speak, to the life force." Death, Hope and the Laughter of God, is simply the most recent object fashioned and dropped "into the confusion". I know the title is a bit dramatic. Who would dare to suggest that God is in death or for that matter, that God laughs? To know someone well enough to describe their sense of humor or what it is that makes them grieve is to imply a certain amount of personal knowledge. Who in their right mind can claim to know God in such an intimate way? I can only give one of two responses. First, the absurdity of Christianity has always maintained that God, in Jesus, became man. What else can this mean other than that God in an instant of some sorts, left the largeness of the cosmos in the heavenly dimension to enter the smallness of the cellular in the earthly dimension? The trajectory of this movement is overwhelming.

The repercussions are staggering. The sheer weight of this one theological thought alone - the incarnation - forever tips the scales toward the idea that yes, God is interested in sharing Himself intimately with us. And so, if it is absurd to suggest such intimate knowledge of God then I can only point my little finger at God and the implications of the incarnation and hide behind the response of any common five-year old who, when asked how a particular indiscretion has been committed will point at someone and say, "He started it." Second, if this doesn't suffice; if the reader insists that anyone who would imply that God can be found in death and laughter is someone out of their mind then I would respond with the following. Sigh. you may be right. The news of my daughter's death was the launch code for an existential warhead deep inside of me. Grief is the aftermath of the detonation.

I am, I imagine, like a post-war survivor who emerges from his basement to wander the rubble of his hometown. My imagination wanders over the ruptured ground of my soul. I stumble along in shock and gaze at the destruction. Maybe I am out of my mind.