We have a crazy language. The incongruent relationship between fun and funny is only one example of how opposites can live together quite comfortably. Fun things are not always funny and funny things are not necessarily fun. Someone dressed in formal attire tripping while going up stairs and landing splattered all over the stairs is not fun, but often the reaction is to laugh. Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton were masters of the funny fall. Amusement parks are advertised as fun. Is a “fun house” really fun? Roller coasters are supposed to be fun, but blood-curdling screams are what you hear, not laughter. I could never see why I should pay someone to scare me half to death and call it fun. And then we have funny, meaning peculiar. We usually do not eat food that smells funny. Lies are revealed when the details in the story seem funny that they don’t match.
Multiple meanings can also be problematic. Church is both a sacred space and the saints (separated ones) that occupy the space. We are taught that it’s not the building, it’s the people—yet we call the space and the activities within it “church.” We are the church; we go to church; we do church. Why can’t we have different words for things? Is there a limited supply and we simply ran out? It’s no wonder people say that English is so difficult.
It’s funny (peculiar) how we accept incongruities without an eyeblink in secular contexts, but the concept of “both/and” is so difficult in biblical contexts. Can saints (separated ones, not statues) be holy and also be hypocrites? Saints and sinners at the same time? Ouch! I’m always