The Laugh and the Object

Russell Moore's title proves too much

Russell Moore says laughter at immigrant suffering is deforming our souls. Even those who want closed borders, he writes, should not find migrants’ pain entertaining. What we learn to laugh at disciples us.[1]

Grant the last sentence. A conscience can be trained by a joke. Grant also that an image-bearer is not a punchline. A lie about Haitians eating pets, told after it is known to be a lie, is not humor. It is Proverbs 26:18–19 covering cruelty with “Was I not joking?”

The title still proves too much. It treats three things as one act: a false joke, an official meme, and the fact that people lose a status and must leave. Satisfaction that a law is applied is then folded into “laughter at suffering.” So is satisfaction that a proud counsel failed. If that folding stands, Psalm 2 becomes a deforming text.

He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. The nations rage and take counsel against the Lord and his Anointed, and the laugh in heaven is aimed at that counsel — not at a sojourner’s face. If every public laugh at a people’s frustration or loss deforms the soul, then that laugh deforms the soul. It does not. Therefore it is false that every public laugh at a people’s frustration or loss deforms the soul.

Moore needs a narrower claim, or the psalm has already broken the title.

He can keep this: mockery that makes a man’s humiliation the entertainment is wicked. He can keep this: TPS may be ended justly or unjustly; the justice of the act is not settled by a meme or by a headline. He cannot keep this: laughter, an immigrant, and pain are already one sin, such that enforcement, expiry of a temporary status, and a joke at a neighbor’s throat are the same deformation.

What we learn to laugh at disciples us. So does what we learn to confuse. A conscience that cannot tell the Lord’s laugh at proud counsel from a joke told at a neighbor’s throat is not being guarded. It is being taught that Psalm 2 was always a little cruel. The title cannot survive the psalm. The title was too large.

Notes

1. Russell Moore, “The Trump-Era Laughter at Immigrant Suffering Is Deforming Our Souls,” Christianity Today, 9 September 2026.

2. Psalm 2:1–4.

3. Proverbs 26:18–19.

Scripture quotations are from the Christian Standard Bible®, copyright © 2017 by Holman Bible Publishers.